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zappaman

zappaman's Journal
zappaman's Journal
December 1, 2013

It's stunning how some people can believe the most ridiculous things.

"I seen it on the video!'


No, Mermaids Do Not Exist



This week, Animal Planet aired two fake documentaries claiming to show scientific evidence of mermaids. I say “fake documentaries” because that’s exactly what The Body Found and The New Evidence are. The “scientists” interviewed in the show are actors, and there’s a brief disclaimer during the end credits. However, the Twitter conversation surrounding the show (#Mermaids) reveals that many viewers are unaware that the show isn’t real. (Sample Tweets: “After watching the documentary #Mermaids the body found … I believe there are mermaids!!!” and “90% of the ocean is unexplored and you’re telling me #mermaids don’t exist”—which has been retweeted more than 800 times.) It is, after all, airing on a network that claims to focus on educating viewers about the natural world. “The Body Found” was rightfully described “the rotting carcass of science television,” and I was shocked to see Animal Planet air a sequel.

As a marine biologist, I can tell you unequivocally that despite millennia of humans exploring the ocean, no credible evidence of the existence of mermaids has ever been found. Some claim that manatees are the source of the legend, but you’d have to be at sea an awfully long time to think that a manatee is a beautiful woman. Sure, new species are discovered all the time, but while a new species of bird or insect is fascinating, it doesn’t mean “anything is possible,” and it is certainly not equivalent to finding a group of talking, thinking humanoids with fish tails covering half of their bodies. The confusion generated by “The Body Found” got to be so significant that the United States government issued an official statement on the matter.

When I started angrily posting about this on Facebook and Twitter, many of my nonscientist friends asked me why it matters if people believe in mermaids. It matters because the ocean is extremely important. It provides jobs for tens of millions of people and food for billions. However, many marine resources are being overexploited and mismanaged, leaving us in serious danger of losing them forever. Policy solutions can help, but if you are so ignorant about what is really happening in the ocean that you believe that there are organisms that are half human and half fish, you're almost certainly unaware of the important problems, much less how to solve them. Even if you don’t believe in mythical creatures, you may be unaware of the severity of the crises facing our oceans. Now that we’ve established that mermaids aren’t real, here are 5 other important things about the ocean that everyone should know...


http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/mermaids_aren_t_real_animal_planet_s_fake_documentaries_misrepresent_ocean.html

November 24, 2013

He was right about George Bush.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder is a 2008 book by former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. It argues that George W. Bush took the United States into the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses and should be tried for murder for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. The book sold over 130,000 copies within its first three months of release.

I agree with him.

November 22, 2013

Good catch!

November 21, 2013

Mark Lane: The Original Shyster

Judging from website reports, Lane’s supporters are unaware of his previous shenanigans which stretch back to December 1963; yes, Lane was present at the creation. In 1966, Lane’s first book, Rush to Judgment, was persuasive with the mainstream media who were taken in by Lane’s lawyerly tricks and silver tongue as he debated supporters of the Warren Commission around the world. As Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler observed, Lane’s antics during these debates reminded him of “an old legend about frogs jumping from the mouth of a perfidious man every time he speaks . . . . If (Lane) talks for five minutes, it takes an hour to straighten out the record.” Even the counter-culture Rolling Stone magazine characterized Lane as a “huckster” and “hearse chaser.” Bugliosi describes Lane as having “infidelity to the truth” . . . a person who commits “outright fabrications” . . . “a fraud in his preachments about the known assassin” . . . and that he had “deliberately distorted the evidence” and repeatedly omitted “evidence damaging to his side.”[6]

In Rush to Judgment, Lane abused the Warren Commission testimony of Jack Ruby, Oswald’s killer, and others like Charles Brehm, an alleged “grassy knoll” witness, who said Lane took his statements out of context and added a different meaning to them. Lane also omitted the statements of key witnesses like Johnny C Brewer, who observed a nervous Oswald avoid police patrols after the shooting of Officer Tippit.[7]

But Lane has a long history of playing fast and loose with the facts. In the early 1970s he used unreliable testimony to accuse American soldiers of multiple atrocities during the Vietnam War, according to New York Times correspondent Neil Sheehan, a prominent critic of US involvement in the Vietnam War. Sheehan investigated the accounts in Lane’s book, Conversations with Americans Testimony from 32 Vietnam Veterans, and found most of them to be bogus.[8]


Whole article is worth a read about this sad lying man

http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2012/05/lane.html



November 20, 2013

Fuck Dubya!

And fuck Sea World and fuck Ron Paul!

November 15, 2013

well...

November 14, 2013

Still trying to prove Oswald was a hero, Octafish?

How's that going?

"As for Oswald, I don't know if he was a hero in all this or not."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2232672

June 4, 2013

Take Lincoln off the penny and throw the fucker on it!

Pennies are pretty much worthless so it would make sense for dickhead to be on it!

January 17, 2013

I should be flattered you googled me!

Bush is a big stinky man and so are his offspring....particularly Jeb, Dubya, and Neil.
Happy now?

So, tell me...are you accusing Gerald Ford as being an accessory to the assassination of JFK?

Or will you just evade the question as usual?

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