This great article on the life and times of Columbia House reminded me of a strange period of time when I was in high school.
Like many people I discovered rock music when I was in high school. Sure, I’d had a few 45 rpm records with some top 40 hit like “Waterloo” by ABBA, and “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace, but that was kid stuff. Before I had a turntable I had an 8-track player. Sometime in the mid 1970’s our family received a strange package in the mail; a Columbia House 8-track player. It was a gift sent to my father from an ex-con that my father had done some legal work for. My father really didn’t listen to music, but my mother did. Our family already had an 8-track player, so the Columbia House machine was extra. For several years the unused machine sat fallow until I rediscovered it.
I got lucky because my friend David Peterman not only had lots of LPs but an 8-track machine that recorded as well. The capacity to record was an unusual feature for 8-track machines. For those not old enough to remember, the music on pre-recorded albums on 8-track would often fade out before the big “Ka-chunk” when one track switched over to another. With home-made 8-tracks the music would switch abruptly, which would seriously harsh one’s mellow. You couldn’t buy blank 8-tracks either, so you had to find junk ones to record over. I remember enjoying Ted Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo this way…
The problem was that the whole standard for 8-tracks was total junk. In an analog tape format, precision alignment between the tape and tape head is critical. The mechanical tolerances needed for genuine high fidelity just weren’t there with this format. The Columbia House machine that I owned was so cheap that I would have to fold up paper and cram it under the plastic cartridge to keep the tape aligned! As much as I enjoyed rock music I grew to hate this machine and realized that I simply HAD to transition to LPs.
The Columbia House machine came to a violent end one night. As with many dramas in life, you never know exactly how your life will impact those around you. Evidently the story I told my friends was resurrected in this hilarious account by David Peterman. David’s memory of my account is remarkably accurate, though I think I used an ax and not a baseball bat…
The term “Lorum ipsum” may be unfamiliar to some. Roughly speaking, it’s nonsense text in Latin used in designing graphics, often for webpages. It’s especially useful when combined with photographs or illustrations, as it enables an overview of the page before the real text is included. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia gives a much more thorough description of lorum ipsum.
In the past Loren Coleman has been taken to task for including stories about unknown animals with images and text about 9-11 on the Cryptomundo blog. Critics, including myself, claim this is done for the simple reason of garnering hits to the Cryptomundo site.
On November 12 of this year Loren Coleman posted a blog entry to Cryptomundo regarding Nittany Lions. Evidently Coleman discovered some sort of association between cryptozoology and child rape, and was willing to publicize his thoughts on the subject. Frankly this was not surprising, as previously Coleman asked whether Osama Bin Laden was as tall as Bigfoot:
In his recent entry on Nittany Lions, Coleman seems aware that others find his actions reprehensible:
One does not need to be an “insensitive skeptic” to test whether Coleman’s musings garner Google rankings. Today I simply entered the term “Nittany Lion” into Google image search. The result is shown:
My result is that the sixth most popular Google search for “Nittany Lion” is for Cryptomundo.
Because Google ranks images as well as text it’s possible to garner hits to a site just by the use of images. Here in Seattle the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a semi-defunct newspaper, often includes photo sets of scantily clad women, ostensibly as “news.” A regular Google web search for the term “Nittany Lion” returns Cryptomundo, but significantly lower than the image search, at least for me. In some cases the text surrounding a photo is less relevant for garnering hits than the photo itself, and thus becomes so much lorum ipsum, or in our case “Loren ipsum.”
No Loren, it’s not the skeptics that are insensitive, it is you and Craig Woolheater who continue to capitalize on human tragedy for the sake of profit and attention.
Easy, just beam up from the Halkan planet during an ion storm and come aboard the “mirror” Enterprise!
Actually there is another way that really works, but the real message here is about examining things that we take for granted during our day-to-day lives. First off, what makes a pair of scissors “handed” in the first place? It’s more than just a molded handle that fits comfortably into a right hand or a left hand. It has to do with the topology of the shears so that they are held together during closing.
Consider how your right hand closes when you cut with a pair of scissors. The handles apply force across a revolute joint which acts as the fulcrum for two levers. But there is more going on than just a simple up and down movement, and this is the key to “handedness.” Your hand is applying a torque or slight twisting force across the fulcrum which helps keep the shears held together. Where does this torque come from? It’s part of the movement your hand makes as you close the scissors.
A pair of scissors is held between the thumb and the fingers when cutting. When the scissors are fully closed the thumb is on the outside of the fingers. Thus the hand is essentially forming a fist, the most fundamental motion of a hand with an opposed thumb.
Imagine a small rod held between the inside of the thumb and the outside of the fingers as you make a fist with your right hand. Which way would it rotate? With a little bit of visualization you can see it would rotate clockwise, as seen from above.
Conversely, the same rod held in the same position of a left hand would rotate anticlockwise, as seen from above.
Now we get to the secret. Notice I qualified the assertion about the rotations with “as seen from above?” That’s because if we see a rotation from the other end, or from below, it is seen to rotate in the opposite direction. Besides the shape of the handles, a right handed scissors is designed for a clockwise torque and a left handed scissors is designed for a counterclockwise torque, as seen from above.
Instead of beaming into the mirror universe of Star Trek, we can “see from below” by turning the shears around! When right handed scissors are held normally in a right hand, the applied torque is clockwise as seen from the revolute joint. When held with the blades facing backwards in the right hand the torque is applied counterclockwise as seen from the revolute joint. The best way to understand these issues is to simply hold a pair of scissors in your hand and feel for yourself the forces involved. Holding a pair of shears backwards is totally goofy for practical purposes, but the goal here is to illustrate what’s really going on.
In 2006 Dr. Jeff Meldrum authored a book entitled Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (ISBN 0-765-31216-7) which puts forth a variety of arguments for the existence of Bigfoot. An entire chapter is devoted to the analysis of a large cast that was quickly dubbed the “Skookum Body Cast.” Meldrum addresses claims that the most likely candidate other than Bigfoot for the creation of this large impression was an elk. Meldrum first offers this line drawing on page 119 which is captioned “Typical posture of a bedding bull elk, with the resulting pattern of impressions. The darkest regions indicate the position of the hooves.”
Contemporaneous with the publication of Meldrum’s book was an analysis by Dr. Anton Wroblewski, a professional geologist with a background in paleontology and ichnology. Wroblewski created a photomontage that cleanly matched the features found in a wallowing elk to those found in the Skookum Body Cast.
As we can see in Wroblewski’s photomontage, the elk’s hooves are beside the elk, not under it as in Meldrum’s drawing. In addition, an informal written analysis was posted to a popular Bigfoot Internet forum, and later reposted to the James Randi Educational Foundation forum. Needless to say, this caused a firestorm in the Bigfoot community, as the credibility of multiple Bigfoot advocates was called into question. A variety of arguments were advanced by Bigfoot advocates that the cast did not represent an elk. One persistent claim has been about how elk leave hoof prints when rising from a wallow. On page 119 Meldrum writes:
“And finally, and perhaps most telling, when an elk rises from a repose it must place its hooves directly under its weight in order to stand, leaving tracks in the centerline of its imprint, Yet there are no elk tracks located in the center of the Skookum imprint, only deep and clear elk imprints skirting the imprint.”
This claim is in direct opposition to Wroblewski’s analysis:
“Significantly, the lack of hoof prints directly within the outline of the main body print is exactly what is seen in deer, elk, and other ungulate lays (see Elbroch, 2003). Hoof prints found outside the main body outline, but related to the forelegs reveal how the animal stood up.”
Here is a set of screen captures taken from an elk hunter’s video. As we can see from the digital time display, the elk bounds out of the wallow very quickly, within a second. First off, we see from the video that “wallowing” is a dynamic activity, and the elk is in different positions at different times. Here is a screen shot that shows the elk on its side, not on its belly, as in Meldrum’s drawing.
The next still image is just after the elk has been hit with an arrow.
From there we see a quick series of positions, none of which show the elk’s hooves positioned in the main body impression. The elk has explosively heaved itself to the side, not placidly stood up in its own body impression. Remember, Meldrum claimed that an elk must place its hooves directly under its weight in order to stand which is an absolute statement. As such, Meldrum’s absolute claim is factually inaccurate.
It’s possible that Meldrum could have avoided making fundamentally flawed arguments like this if he had first consulted professional ichnologists. As Dr. Wroblewski put it:
“Mark Elbroch, whose book I used as a conveneient, (sic) authoritative, and recent reference in the hopes that BFers would actually take the time to investigate how “real” trackers work, has weighed in and agrees with my interpetation (sic) as well. There is no controversy as to the identity of this particular cast. Anyone with one working eye and an ounce of common sense can see that it’s an elk or large deer trace.”
For further reading, here is another account of Wroblewski’s analysis by Daniel Perez.
When Cryptomundo appeared on the Internet several years ago, I was quite interested, as it seemed like a worthwhile resource for news about cryptid animals. As the years went by, things changed. I started noticing lots more ads, in particular audio “pop-up” ads. One onerous message announced “congratulations, you’ve won” automatically when one logged onto Cryptomundo. At that time, I still hoped that this could be fixed and I sent Loren Coleman an e-mail asking that the audio pop-up ads be turned off. I received a response to the effect that “I just work here, you need to talk to the owner.”
For a time several years ago I posted on a crypto message board also moderated by Coleman. I remember writing a long post comparing John Green’s advocacy of a particular trackway to Ivan Sanderson’s advocacy of 15 foot penguins. Coleman refused to publish this entry. I suspect, but don’t know, that it was refused because calling out Sanderson as a crackpot is a no-no for those promoting Cryptozoology as serious science.
As the years went by, the dual themes of pathological advertizing and Coleman’s repetitive censorship would become apparent to many others besides myself. In addition, Cryptomundo began to really go over the edge into the land of bad taste by linking Cryptozoology to 9-11, and repeatedly posting photos of sexy women. What in the hell does 9-11 or sexy women have to do with unknown animals? It was obvious to me this was a shameless attempt to game the search engine rankings of Cryptomundo, and I’m not the only one who believed this.
Coleman’s reputation took a big hit in 2002 regarding the means in which he obtained photographs from Bigfooter Peter Byrne in the late 1990’s. The damning account was published in 2002 in a Northwest newsletter called the Track Record. Similar accounts were published by Daniel Perez in his newsletter Bigfoot Times in the October-November 2005 issue. But now it’s 2011, and these days Coleman doesn’t have to physically obtain photographs to publish them. He simply finds them on the Internet, claims “fair use” then throws them up on Cryptomundo. I’ve had two photographs of mine “scraped” this way. Note that I’ve included screen grabs of Cryptomundo, as Coleman is fond of historical revisionism, either by editing or redacting information.
Coleman’s “fair use” claim is amusing in light of his own claims of copyright on photos he obtained of what is called the Myakka Skunk Ape:
Coleman’s use of my photographs is galling because Cryptomundo is not just a labor of love, but a for-profit business. One that now regularly functions in a morally onerous way. At one point Cryptomundo even published a topless photo of Natasha Henstridge in an article about the Chupacabra! As is Cryptomundo’s style, the photo was quickly redacted. Then came the chronic begging, or as it’s sometimes known on the Internet “bleging.” If Coleman had lost his leg in ‘Nam, I would have some sympathy, but I really have no idea why he does this.
Today we had another little kerfuffle, though it seems that Coleman has redacted his entry once again! As we see in the Cryptomundo caption in my photo, Coleman likes to label his opponents. Today he lashed out at Sharon Hill as a “scoftic.” What makes this incident rather bizarre is that Cryptomundo linked to an obviously satirical blog entry. Coleman is not stupid by any means, so I find it inconceivable that he wouldn’t notice that it was a parody site. Why would he press on, as if it was a genuine thing? Again, I think it all comes down to SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Here is a screen capture from the yet-to-be-redacted Cryptomundo feed of Bigfoot Forums:
As you can see, we have a large photo of Sharon Hill. I suspect, but cannot prove, that it’s all in the search engine optimization of the photo tags. Here is the result of a simple test I performed today. I entered the term “bigfoot sexy” into the Google Image search. Lo and behold the photo of the sexy woman in the black swimsuit is from Cryptomundo!
How else can one explain why Coleman chose to publish such an asinine blog entry? I’d like to propose that the text around scraped photos of sexy women that appear on Cryptomundo is just so much Loren ipsum…
Coleman has put himself in an untenable position; he wants to be respected and taken seriously as a “Cryptozoology expert” yet at the same time he engages in repetitively pathological moral behavior.
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