Aug 7, 2019 03:42 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 7, 2019 07:23 AM by C C.)
Habitat degradation leading to pythons eating humans? (Nah, just recorded more often than in the past)
https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/sna...umans.html
EXCERPT: . . . It is not clear when an alarm was raised regarding Salubiro’s disappearance. [...] They did not find him, but they did find a boot, a farming tool, and scattered palm oil at the plantation. Nearby Salubiro’s remaining boot and tool, villagers noticed the presence of a 23-foot engorged reticulated python in a ditch, struggling to move. One villager noticed shoe-shaped indentations visible in the distended body of the snake. Hoping to be wrong, the group got together and killed the python. By this time, it was late Tuesday night. There is a gruesome video posted by the local police where, in just under six blood-curdling minutes, witnesses watch as one man wielding an 18-inch-long knife cuts open the belly of the snake. [...] The snake’s belly is cut open, further and further. Minute by minute, you see the presence of two fully clothed, lifeless human legs. Then a torso, shirted. By the time they get to the top of the torso, it’s very clear what you’re looking at.
[...] Just the next year ... a 54-year-old woman named Wa Tiba went out to check on her cornfield ... The next day, her children realized she hadn’t returned. ... Then they found, within 50 yards of her belongings, an enormous, bloated snake. ... Expecting the worst, they killed the snake ... cut it open and found Tiba, fully clothed, swallowed headfirst by the snake. Like Salubiro, Tiba was killed by a 23-foot reticulated python.
[...] The elimination of ecosystems, species, and forests causes changes in animal behavior. After all, survival is the primary instinct. Both of the 23-foot now-deceased pythons most likely slithered their way out of their forest homes because they couldn’t find anything else to eat. Snakes don’t need to feed often. Large snakes don’t need to feed for months on end and usually are satisfied by smaller rodents, dogs, pigs, or cows. Maybe the pythons were desperate and had no other option but to leave their usual hunting grounds to take on a riskier, bigger, bipedal kind of prey. We’ll never know for sure. (MORE - details)
REVIEW: “American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology”
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-qu...echnology/
EXCERPT: . . . First, this book is published by Oxford University Press, one of the oldest, most respected academic presses; it went through a rigorous peer-review process and stands as an excellent work of scholarship. This is not some self-published conspiracy theory: it is top-notch thinking and research. What’s more, D. W. Pasulka, the author, is a tenured professor of religion and an outstanding writer, and her book reads more like a novel in most places than a plodding treatise that might be inflicted on undergrads. A mature and respected scholar, she has done exactly what scholars are supposed to do: help us better understand ourselves and the world.
Second, American Cosmic is not about whether UFOs are “really out there,” but it will probably change how you think about that question. Rather, it is a profound and original exploration of how UFO culture can usefully be thought of as religion — one centered on science and technology, though. These may seem unconnected, as Pasulka realizes, but she makes a compelling case for the interconnections of religious modes of life and technology. In the case of UFOs, she notes, the relation is deeper: “[T]he UFO is considered by believers to be advanced technology.” As a result, “technology itself is a sacred medium, as well as the sacred object, of this new religiosity.”
Third, and perhaps most important, the people Pasulka studies and writes about are an unusual group in that they probably could not care less what most of us think about them. Her focus is the “Invisible College” (a term coined by J. Allen Hynek, scientist and ufologist): “[A] group of scientists, academics, and others who will never make their work public, or at least not for a long time, although the results of their investigations impact society in many ways.” This group has something that has always been rare: a thirst for truth at all costs, even if it means being regarded as odd or crazy, and a willingness to seek truth as the horizon of their lives’ meaning. In order to think about these people and UFOs seriously, it’s worth briefly considering our relationship to truth.
[...] Anyone considering reading American Cosmic should be ready for what the truth can do, and I would be remiss, as a reviewer, if I did not say that serious scholarly study of strange things can have strange effects. This fact may be because, as an ancient adage puts it, we become what we behold. The study of UFOs is the study of contemporary humanity’s upward gaze to the heavens in shock, awe, terror, and, for some, reverence and piety. The believer’s gaze is directed toward phenomena that seems as real as our cars and planes, but far greater. The oddest thing about UFOs — and this is a fact of which we, no matter how skeptical, most remind ourselves — concerns their physicality: these phenomena are captured on radar and can be photographed. Whatever they are, they cannot be dismissed as immaterial phantasy.
The old religions supposedly made meaning something we seek beyond the world: an immaterial, invisible, heaven full of bored harp players. The religion of UFOs is different precisely because of its technological focus. Instead of heaven, think the Holy Grail: a physical object, somewhere, somehow, accessible, though unreliably and mysteriously, in our very space-time world. If found, its very existence would confirm the hope and faith of those questing for the Grail, and that is not to speak of its famous powers. The Grail, if genuine, would be material, made of real stuff, yet somehow unlike anything in this world.
Pasulka’s journey to understand the culture of UFO believers takes her on a kind of Grail quest by proxy, living among the remarkable people she gets to know, observe, and learn from. (MORE - details)
https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/sna...umans.html
EXCERPT: . . . It is not clear when an alarm was raised regarding Salubiro’s disappearance. [...] They did not find him, but they did find a boot, a farming tool, and scattered palm oil at the plantation. Nearby Salubiro’s remaining boot and tool, villagers noticed the presence of a 23-foot engorged reticulated python in a ditch, struggling to move. One villager noticed shoe-shaped indentations visible in the distended body of the snake. Hoping to be wrong, the group got together and killed the python. By this time, it was late Tuesday night. There is a gruesome video posted by the local police where, in just under six blood-curdling minutes, witnesses watch as one man wielding an 18-inch-long knife cuts open the belly of the snake. [...] The snake’s belly is cut open, further and further. Minute by minute, you see the presence of two fully clothed, lifeless human legs. Then a torso, shirted. By the time they get to the top of the torso, it’s very clear what you’re looking at.
[...] Just the next year ... a 54-year-old woman named Wa Tiba went out to check on her cornfield ... The next day, her children realized she hadn’t returned. ... Then they found, within 50 yards of her belongings, an enormous, bloated snake. ... Expecting the worst, they killed the snake ... cut it open and found Tiba, fully clothed, swallowed headfirst by the snake. Like Salubiro, Tiba was killed by a 23-foot reticulated python.
[...] The elimination of ecosystems, species, and forests causes changes in animal behavior. After all, survival is the primary instinct. Both of the 23-foot now-deceased pythons most likely slithered their way out of their forest homes because they couldn’t find anything else to eat. Snakes don’t need to feed often. Large snakes don’t need to feed for months on end and usually are satisfied by smaller rodents, dogs, pigs, or cows. Maybe the pythons were desperate and had no other option but to leave their usual hunting grounds to take on a riskier, bigger, bipedal kind of prey. We’ll never know for sure. (MORE - details)
REVIEW: “American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology”
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-qu...echnology/
EXCERPT: . . . First, this book is published by Oxford University Press, one of the oldest, most respected academic presses; it went through a rigorous peer-review process and stands as an excellent work of scholarship. This is not some self-published conspiracy theory: it is top-notch thinking and research. What’s more, D. W. Pasulka, the author, is a tenured professor of religion and an outstanding writer, and her book reads more like a novel in most places than a plodding treatise that might be inflicted on undergrads. A mature and respected scholar, she has done exactly what scholars are supposed to do: help us better understand ourselves and the world.
Second, American Cosmic is not about whether UFOs are “really out there,” but it will probably change how you think about that question. Rather, it is a profound and original exploration of how UFO culture can usefully be thought of as religion — one centered on science and technology, though. These may seem unconnected, as Pasulka realizes, but she makes a compelling case for the interconnections of religious modes of life and technology. In the case of UFOs, she notes, the relation is deeper: “[T]he UFO is considered by believers to be advanced technology.” As a result, “technology itself is a sacred medium, as well as the sacred object, of this new religiosity.”
Third, and perhaps most important, the people Pasulka studies and writes about are an unusual group in that they probably could not care less what most of us think about them. Her focus is the “Invisible College” (a term coined by J. Allen Hynek, scientist and ufologist): “[A] group of scientists, academics, and others who will never make their work public, or at least not for a long time, although the results of their investigations impact society in many ways.” This group has something that has always been rare: a thirst for truth at all costs, even if it means being regarded as odd or crazy, and a willingness to seek truth as the horizon of their lives’ meaning. In order to think about these people and UFOs seriously, it’s worth briefly considering our relationship to truth.
[...] Anyone considering reading American Cosmic should be ready for what the truth can do, and I would be remiss, as a reviewer, if I did not say that serious scholarly study of strange things can have strange effects. This fact may be because, as an ancient adage puts it, we become what we behold. The study of UFOs is the study of contemporary humanity’s upward gaze to the heavens in shock, awe, terror, and, for some, reverence and piety. The believer’s gaze is directed toward phenomena that seems as real as our cars and planes, but far greater. The oddest thing about UFOs — and this is a fact of which we, no matter how skeptical, most remind ourselves — concerns their physicality: these phenomena are captured on radar and can be photographed. Whatever they are, they cannot be dismissed as immaterial phantasy.
The old religions supposedly made meaning something we seek beyond the world: an immaterial, invisible, heaven full of bored harp players. The religion of UFOs is different precisely because of its technological focus. Instead of heaven, think the Holy Grail: a physical object, somewhere, somehow, accessible, though unreliably and mysteriously, in our very space-time world. If found, its very existence would confirm the hope and faith of those questing for the Grail, and that is not to speak of its famous powers. The Grail, if genuine, would be material, made of real stuff, yet somehow unlike anything in this world.
Pasulka’s journey to understand the culture of UFO believers takes her on a kind of Grail quest by proxy, living among the remarkable people she gets to know, observe, and learn from. (MORE - details)
