Because it’s Thursday Friday cat is in your PC, stealing your RAMZ.

IBM and Stanford University have reportedly modeled the complete cerebral cortex of a cat using the Blue Gene supercomputer.

No word yet on whether the computer gets upset and pees in front of your door if you don’t spend enough time playing solitaire with it.

So…  I guess I really have to admit that the Thursday blog has turned into an Every-Other-Friday blog as of late. I had a good friend who used to say “a bad excuse is better than no excuse.” Right now, though, my only excuse is “I’ve been crazy busy and preoccupied.”

Lame, I know. But an excuse, nonetheless.

So for this edition of the links of the week I only bring you one; a story of widows in the Indian state of Jharkhand beaten, dragged through the streets, and forced to eat human excrement for being “witches”. The grand irony, of course, is that “spirits” supposedly possessed other women in the village, alerting them to the practice of witchcraft in their midst. But this somehow isn’t considered a form of sorcery or witchcraft in and of itself.

It’s very odd, the way the human animal does these things. It strikes me as especially odd considering a conversation that I was having last night with an online gaming friend. An ethnic Hmong, he comes from a very different background, spiritually, than the charismatic Pentecostal Christian family I was raised in. But despite these differences, we were able to find a great deal of spiritual common ground when the conversation turned in that direction.

It was refreshing, in that way that only spirited conversation can be, to see that there was still some spark of that youthful hope I once held that all problems could be solved if we only spent enough time talking, seeking common ground, and truly trying to understand one another. Of course, now that I’m old and cynical, I know that that is not usually the case. These recent, and many older, incidents of violence against witches (or Jews, or Christians, or Buddhists, or Sunni, or Shiite, or adherents of the Baha’i faith, or “insert group of your choice”) prove that. But it was as nice to have that small spark reignited as it was repugnant to watch the video of these women being degraded.

Humanity has an immense capacity for both love and hate, cruelty and kindness. Which will you choose in your day-to-day?

"And in this frame, if we blow it up enough, we can clearly see all the way to the coast and this blip here, this is Patty's brother, out on the ocean, jumping the shark."

This Thursday, I’m just wondering… is MK Davis the Andy Kaufman of the Bigfoot world? Is the Bluff Creek Massacre story his slow-burn version of wrestling Freddie Blassie?

I really hope so. I’d love to be able to actually sit back and comfortably chuckle at the strangeness of it all.

I mean, personally, I see the same twisted logic in the “Why doesn’t John Green just tell us what is on his back if not a camera?” argument from Davis supporter David Paulides that I see in the Gilbert Gottfried inspired  “Did Glen Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?” meme.

For those not familiar, the joke originated with a celebrity roast of Bob Saget where Gottfried asked why Saget never denied rumors that he had raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. A rumor that never existed until Godfrey created it, and that the comedian quickly followed with a proclamation that, while he himself didn’t believe it was true, it was curious that Saget never denied it.

The creative mind behind the Glenn Beck riff on this joke is skewering a tactic Beck often employs himself. That is, blind siding a guest with a ridiculous charge that he claims not to believe; but that he wants the guest to refute.

It would be great if Davis and friends were doing the same. Simply skewering the Bigfoot world’s sacred cows and inserting some levity in a field that sometimes takes itself too seriously, instead of jumping the shark after doing some undeniably worthwhile work stabilizing the PG footage.

Laughter is, after all, the best medicine.

But methinks the truth may be that MK needs something just a little bit stronger.

Photo from Yahoo images, Henry Ray Abrams, AFP

I have been remiss in my Thursday duties of late. I realize this and I’m sorry. I’ll say only that “real life” (i.e. the stuff you have to do to pay those pesky bills) has been very busy of late and beg your pardon for my slacking.

But I’m here, a day late and a dollar short as my dad would say, and I’ve got some interesting links. And by interesting I mean disturbing, sad, disgusting, and amusing.

Let’s start with the disturbing (sad and disgusting would also work here), and my requisite call for the tightening of rules relating to stun gun use, as two California police officers taser a legless double amputee.

Next we have the sad tale of Sticky the kitten, found wrapped in duct tape in North Philadelphia. Apparently brotherly love doesn’t extend to our four legged brethren.

On the disgusting front we have the story of a New Jersey police officer acquitted of animal cruelty charges related to his molestation of a number of cows (evidence of which was uncovered during a probe of sexual misconduct with minors). Between this and the tasering, makes you wonder if maybe our kitten wasn’t the work of some bored off-duty cops looking for a laugh.

Finally, Snohomish County, Washington cops aren’t making any new friends among the sorts of guys who like to eat at strip club buffets because “it’s a good value.” Police there have arrested five “bikini baristas” accused of exposing their breasts and buttocks to patrons of the Grab-n-Go Espresso looking for a little more than the standard morning pick-me-up.

They are also being charged with prostitution for allowing patrons to grope them for tips (hey, GRAB-n-GO… it’s right there in the name!) While they might have been violating some health codes with their whipped cream shows (this is why I bring a thermos of coffee to work with me), the prostitution charge seems more than a bit harsh for capitalizing on the kind of objectification that has occurred since the first barmaid tied on an apron.

So, that’s it for this day late and dollar short Thursday feature. Miles and I will be in Tyler, TX this weekend for the TBRC’s Texas Bigfoot Conference. This year’s line-up includes such luminaries as Loren Coleman, Peter Matthiesen, Esteban Sarmiento, John Bindernagel, John Mioncynzski, and Bill Dranginis, among others.

So instead go check out this new MMO under development by Funcom (the folks who brought us the Age of Conan MMO). Set in the modern world, it’s based on the premise that, besides the everyday world we all know, a Secret World of demons, monsters,  and shadowy secret societies and conspiracies exists and exerts a very real influence on the “real” world.

You can read more about it, from folks who know more about it than I do, at Kotaku here, here, and here.

south end of the Argillite, KY train tunnel, photo from Wikipedia

So, not much to share this Thursday. I’ll spend most of the day on airplanes today until I land in Columbus, OH, jump in my mom’s van, and head south toward Kentucky.

I’ll be in the Ohio River Valley for the extended weekend with my family. The same “neck of the woods” that’s home to Mothman, the Serpent Mound,  the Tremper Mound effigy pipes, Moonville Tunnel, and, since we’re on trains anyway for Moonville, this recent incident mentioned on Loren Coleman’s “other blog”.

I generally try and avoid anything train related. I lost a favorite uncle to a train accident at a young age, and my father and grandfather are both retired railroaders (from the N&W/NS railway), dad maintenance of way and papa an engineer working those same coalfield runs mentioned in the article,  who told me ten times more train related horror stories than a kid ever needs to hear.

Usually I try to avoid trains; but between Loren’s article, talking with my old friend and bandmate Todd Martin, who penned the tune “Moonville Tunnel” for his band Mothman while I was percussionist for the group, and seeing a series of photos of iron blast furnaces and remnants of the associated Eastern Kentucky Railway on a friend’s Facebook, it seemed like the trains wanted to be talked about. Or at least they wanted links posted. And I promise to be back next week with some neat hillbilly ghost stories and photos.

Some of my favorite news stories come out of sub-Saharan Africa. When looking at African newspapers (or news sites in our modern digital world) it isn’t uncommon to see a story on the development of environmentally friendly technology solutions like solar powered laptops and cooking stoves that run on recycled paper pellets sharing space with reports of monsters, witches, and hexes.

Recently I saw this report of a mysterious beast tormenting the goats of Namibians living in Onheleiwa and Oikango villages. While reminiscent of the chupacabras in their preferred choice of prey, whatever is attacking the Namibian kraals has a taste for more than blood. While some animals have been found with only the soft, internal organs eaten, in other cases all that remained of the goats were hooves, heads, and horns. While following up on this story at the Namibian New Era Newspaper website I decided to trying searching for the word “witch” just to see what I could find. I’ve recently been reading various 19th century travel diaries and articles on the spiritual beliefs and superstitions of south African tribal people, and was curious to see if tales of witchcraft would still be as common as belief in night-stalking monsters. The results were interesting, to say the least.  Here now, in chronological order, are four random headlines chosen from that search for your Thursday reading pleasure.

Villager Punished for Violating Grave — December 2008

Relates the story of a villager fined $400 (Namibian dollars) and six-head of cattle by the Masubia chief for employing the services of a Zambian witchdoctor for personal gain. According to wtinesses and the confessions of the accused, Jackson Timothy Siyeta, the events that unfolded near Caprivi, Namibia included a cow giving birth to a humanoid baby that Siyeta buried over the grave of his recently deceased son. While Siyeta initially claimed he was performing a ritual to protect his family, under questioning before the tribal khuta he admitted that the ritual was meant to multiply the size of his cattle herd.

Hundreds Kidnapped in Gambian Witch Hunts — March 2009

Gambians Reveal Horrors of “Witchcraft” Purge — March 2009

In these two related stories Gambian victims of government sanctioned witch hunts tell of being rounded up and fed hallucinogens before being raped and victimized by supporters of Gambian president Yahya Jemmah, who blames witchcraft for the death of a beloved aunt earlier this year. Despite cries by organizations such as Amnesty International condemning the actions, this case of superstition fueled torture on a grand scale somehow flew under the news radar in nations obsessing over Susan Boyle and Wall Street bail-outs.

Witchcraft Claim in Farm Eviciton — July 2009

Finally we have an example of Namibians reacting much in the way Americans would if more of us believed in witchcraft; by protesting and casting allegations of racism at a white landlord accused of using witchcraft to unfairly evict a tenant.

So, there you go; a nice cross section of witch stories coming out of one country over the past year. Do you have any others you’d like to share? What’s your favorite Fortean news story from Africa? Comment here, or visit the Anomaly Forums, and let us know.

The latest paranoia drenched half-truth to emerge in an apparent GOP race to the bottom is a doozy. A guest on former Senator Fred Thompson’s radio show, Betsy McCaughey, stirs up the scare factor by claiming that on page 425 of the massive HR 3200 is a provision requiring seniors to go through “mandatory” counseling that encourages them to end their life or demonstrate why they should be allowed to live every five years.

Curious as to what in the world could be misinterpreted in such a way, I looked up the resolution, scrolled down to page 425, then back up a page to 424, where content begins so that I could get a greater scope of context. Read out of context, the content still seems fairly benign (for example, counseling about establishign power-of-attorney for your children or loved ones in case of debiliating condition or accidents, and setting up a living will so that your family has a road map of what your decisions would be regarding life support, is a far cry from government mandated suicide), but I wanted to understand more fully what this applied to. When you go back to page 424 however you learn that the content is an addition to the existing Social Security Act. Specifically, it calls for the addition of new content under section 1861 paragraph (s)(2), which defines procedures covered under Social Security. While I’m not a lawyer, it seems to me that, rather than “mandatory suicide”, what page 425 and on does is define additional services, to include hospice care and end of life counseling for terminally ill patients, that shall be covered by Social Security and sets recommendations for regularly counseling patients on their various options as their conditions change.

In fact Page 427, lines 13 through 17, specifically spell out that doctors have the power to “sign orders for life sustaining treatment.”

13   ‘‘(II) distributes or makes accessible such

14   orders to physicians and other health profes

15   sionals that (acting within the scope of the pro

16   fessional’s authority under State law) may sign

17   orders for life sustaining treatment;

Now, we need the constitutional lawyers to weigh in on this, someone with more authority on these sorts of things than myself. However from my time in newspapers, as well as my time unraveling various state laws for training manuals, I’m pretty sure that my reading of this is valid.

It’s all about context folks. There is weird stuff going on out there. Our government is most definitely involved in various shadowy programs we know little or nothing about.

A conspiracy to kill off the baby-boomers, however, is not one of them.

In Latvia, folks desperate to pay their rent and other mounting costs aren’t quite selling their souls, yet; but they are mortgaging them according to a story from Reuters.

(My apologies as well. I meant to post this yesterday, but work got kind of busy. I hope no one got too bored without their Thursday fix and sold their soul on a whim.)

Randomness, randomness, randomness is the order of the day today.

So, random ramblings and links.

CNN is reporting that Microsoft has announced they are giving a limited number of American consumers a limited opportunity to obtain cheap upgrade copies of Windows 7. After that date American consumers will have to pay full price for the OS that Vista should have been. As per usual, there will be a slight price break for those upgrading from the previous OS, and it looks as though they are extending this pricebreak to those who decided not to downgrade from the perfectly usable XP to the broken Vista. However holdouts using older versions of Microsofts Windows OS will need to pony up a little extra for the full version. Unless of course they are in Europe where, in order to comply with anti-monopoly statutes, Microsoft will provide browser free versions of the full software for the upgrade price.

Thanks for screwing your countrymen over during a recession Bill! We appreciate that! I mean, first you let us have Vista before its ready (at a princely sum, natch…) and now you’re gonna let us subsidize the bonus cash your losing for being forced to provide Europeans upgrades at a fair price. Thanks AGAIN! Capitalism rocks!

In other news, Michael Jackson may or may not be dead. TMZ (a source nearly as reliable as Vista is stable) has been reporting the King of Pop passed away last night after suffering a heart attack. Other news outlets refuse to confirm his death, but seem to have no problem leading off with headlines that read “Jackson Dead: according to unverified reports”.

We here at Anomaly won’t believe he is dead until we see the death certificate in news sources with just a touch more legitimacy than TMZ. But if it turns out reports are true, we are expecting a trend where Jackson death deniers claim he wanted to escape fame for obscurity, a la the King of Rock, and faked his death to that end. We’ll also expect reports of Jackson sightings to start pouring in from Las Vegas before the end of the month, (hopefully sharing fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches with the other King.)

*Update, CNN has confirmed that Jackson has indeed passed away. Our thoughts are with his family and children at this time.

Time now to go home, pull out the vinyl, put on “Off the Wall” and try to forget the controversies of the last two decades while the sheer unadulterated talent washes over us.