Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Science looks for Yeti; Knobby Bigfoot a fake

Science May Start Tracking the Yeti

Kevin Makice (Wired.com)
(What will a yeti look like close up? Something like this Australian square poop dropping wombat). Is the yeti of mythology a surviving tribe of Neandertals?

Maybe science will tell us. As geeks, we are encouraged to suspend disbelief while simultaneously challenging everything we see and hear. We want to believe, but our geek roots [want scientific validation for everything before we allow ourselves to believe, without understanding how "science" actually works as a politically and financially tainted endeavor far from objectivity].

That tension is possibly being resolved on one front. The Russians are establishing a scientific institute on the study of yetis (Buddhist yakshis, ogres), hairy ape-like creatures rumored to inhabit the Himalayas. Yes, Abominable Snow Beings (yetis).

Officials in coal-mining region of Kemerovo Oblast announced plans today to open a Yeti Institute at the Kemerovo State University, a 38-year-old higher education entity in western Siberia. KSU boasts 31,000 students and is best known for reviving regional languages, like Shor. Yeti researcher Igor Burtsev reportedly claimed that 30 Russian scientists are currently studying yetis, and the Institute could allow them to better collaborate.

“We think that the yeti is a separate branch of human evolution. It lives in harmony with nature,” Burtsev was quoted as saying. Burtsev believes there may be a local community of these creatures that are Neandertals who survived extinction. More

Knobby Bigfoot video a fake

(Digital News Report) A [very fake looking] five second video of Bigfoot scurrying across a road in North Carolina has millions of views on YouTube. The user, Knobbylives, claims to have shot the footage on the Golden Valley Church Road, Shelby, NC on Tuesday, March 22, 2011. The creature shuffled across the road and went into the woods, according to the poster.... More

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