Thoughts: 09-July-2009

I watched the premiere of SyFy's Warehouse 13 via DVR last night. The reviews for this show have been pretty bad, I don't know I have seen worst. The premise is that the US government has a secret warehouse where items that have strange powers can be safely put away. Same sort of premise as the Librarian series on TBS and Friday the 13th series where each episode they track down an objected cursed by the Devil and put it away for safe keeping.

The producers spent some bucks to get CCH Pounder (so great in The Shield, but really wasted in this role) and Saul Rubinek (who is the best thing about the series). I am not impressed with the two actors cast as Secret Service agents, Bruce Campbell would have been really good in the part. Right now kind of a so-so series which given SyFy's poor track record for original series is not a good sign.

Then I watched MonsterQuest (History Channel) which was about critical evidence for Bigfoot. Almost no skeptic commentary at all, and the evidence was presented as indisputable. A quick search on Google find plenty of rebuttal and plenty of people who could have added some perspective to the show.

The evidence, in no particular order.

1. Freeman video. This was shot by a park ranger who also was a Bigfoot enthusiast. While recording footprints, he hears a noise and records footage of a Bigfoot. The ranger service did an internal investigation of him and found nothing indicative of a hoax. Freeman is reported to be a nice guy. The video looks like a guy in a cheap costume and was not convincing at all. Not too much time was spent on this critical "evidence".

2. Density of sightings. They mapped out all the Bigfoot sightings in the USA. Highest concentration was the Pacific Northwest, and then they correlated this with rainfall and discovered that high levels of rainfall matched the areas where Bigfoot has been seen the most. This supports the idea that a population may exist. It was noted briefly that there were a lot more sightings in the Northeast than expected. Two points, I would love to see a plotting of black bear sightings made and then a correlation analysis between the two sets of sightings preformed. I bet that there would be a high correlation, i.e. Bigfoot tends to be seen in areas with lots of black bears. I also thought it was interesting how they did not touch on the fact that the second highest density of sightings was northeast Ohio. I lived there for four years and never heard anything about Bigfoot. Not too impressed with this "critical evidence".

3. Tarso Metatarsal Joint. This is a joint in the foot of primates that humans do not have. Humans tend to use their toes to balance and make footsteps. Primates have this joint that bisects across their foot. Analysis of a 3-D image of one of the Bigfoot footprints seems to indicate that Bigfoot has this joint and thus not human. Again this "critical evidence" was hurried over and the scientist did not discuss how many of the Bigfoot footprints has evidence of this joint or how common this is seen. They did not go into this at all, and on a website (www.bermuda-triangle.org) there was a interesting bit about the evolution of the Bigfoot footprints that went from very distinctive shapes over time with no comment as to why by the investigators.

4. Cripplefoot. This is a set of footprints from a Bigfoot who injured one of his feet and developed a club foot. Lots of folks have cited that this is proof positive and on the show, we were told that nobody could fake this. Back to the website that I cited above, we discover lots of doubt about the authenticity of this footprint and I have to say that con artists and hoaxers are some of the cleverest people around. Do not underestimate the intelligence of someone determined to get a hoax off.

5. The Patterson film. The best critical evidence was the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlen film. This has been so debunked that you can find several citations on Wikipedia for this. They had a special effects guy who creates primate exhibits analyse the film, he claimed it was real. Rick Baker, Oscar winning effects artist, among others say the opposite. Read Wikipedia and check the reference for the book about the guy who came forward saying he wore the costume for 1000 bucks.

Real critical evidence would be a body, until then History Channel and MonsterQuest, your show belongs on Penn and Teller's Bullshit! (Showtime).

Oh well.