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Archives for 2016

Christmas Poop & Magic Mushrooms

December 19, 2016 by Bill McCormick

Our holiday helpers are cooler than yours.
Our holiday helpers are cooler than yours.
Back on Christmas Eve, 2012, I tossed up this festive article about holiday traditions. A couple of things happened today to make me dig it out of mothballs and toss it back to the forefront of your mind. First, and by far foremost to me, Slashing Through the Snow: a Christmas Horror Anthology is out in time for the holidays and has the good fortune to count me among its authors. Second, probably more salient to you, is the fact that Edith Carlin, of the Aurora Carlins, asked me to. Since she and all the others who listen to me ramble every Friday on The Big Wake Up Call are why I get to keep doing that, making a listener happy is kind of part of my job. Also, Edith promised to split the dollar she was about to win when I posted this. In our modern economy you just don’t turn down big money like that without cause. And I couldn’t come up with any. So here you go, a fun look back at how we got to where we’re at with this season.

Well, at least one interpretation of same anyway.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Merry Christmas everyone. It’s time, once again, for us to take a look at the glorious traditions that surround this odd holiday. We have already discussed the Krampus, that lovely little fellow who either casts your children into hell or eats them, depending on what part of Austria you hang out in. But, we neglected his female cousin Perchta: The Belly Slitter. Because nothing says HAPPY HOLIDAYS like eviscerated children. Have I mentioned that Austria was the home for the beginning of two world wars? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. When people tell you that they think the Japanese are insane for making Colonel Sanders the symbol of Christmas, feel free to point out Austria. At least in Japan they use the holiday to get laid. That’s an acceptable use of any holiday as far as I’m concerned. In fact I think it should be the point of almost every holiday, but that may just be me.

Another holiday tradition I seem to have missed happens in Spain, the home of great Christian traditions such as the footprint of Jesus, the tour of Mary Magdalene and her servant Veronica and, of course, the Caganer. The caganer represents a lovely tradition of displaying the Nativity scene, the usual array of farm animals, the Star of Bethlehem and a random peasant taking a dump. Yes, you read that right. And it’s not just implied. All statues come with a steaming pile so you can make no mistake as to what the caganer is doing. Granted, seen from a strictly logical viewpoint it makes sense. Someone had to be taking a dump when Christ was born. We all have bowels and those bowels need to move from time to time.

Still, it seems a touch odd, even by Spanish standards.

But all of the above pales when compared to the article my friend Suzy Solar sent to me. According to Live Science, we may owe a big debt of holiday gratitude to magic mushrooms.

This Christmas, like many before it and many yet to come, the story of Santa and his flying reindeer will be told, including how the “jolly old elf” flies on his sleigh throughout the entire world in one night, giving gifts to all the good children.

But according to one theory, the story of Santa and his flying reindeer can be traced to an unlikely source: hallucinogenic or “magic” mushrooms.

“Santa is a modern counterpart of a shaman, who consumed mind-altering plants and fungi to commune with the spirit world,” said John Rush, an anthropologist and instructor at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif.

According to the theory, the legend of Santa derives from shamans in the Siberian and Arctic regions who dropped into locals’ teepeelike homes with a bag full of hallucinatory mushrooms as presents in late December, Rush said.

“As the story goes, up until a few hundred years ago these practicing shamans or priests connected to the older traditions would collect Amanita muscaria (the Holy Mushroom), dry them, and then give them as gifts on the winter solstice,” Rush told LiveScience. “Because snow is usually blocking doors, there was an opening in the roof through which people entered and exited, thus the chimney story.”

But that’s just the beginning of the symbolic connections between the Amanita muscaria mushroom and the iconography of Christmas, according to several historians and ethnomycologists, or people who study the influence fungi has had on human societies. Of course, not all scientists agree that the Santa story is tied to a hallucinogen.

Presents under the tree

In his book “Mushrooms and Mankind” (The Book Tree, 2003) the late author James Arthur points out that Amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric, lives throughout the Northern Hemisphere under conifers and birch trees, with which the fungi —which is deep red with white flecks — has a symbiotic relationship. This partially explains the practice of the Christmas tree, and the placement of bright red-and-white presents underneath, which look like Amanita mushrooms, he wrote.

“Why do people bring pine trees into their houses at the Winter Solstice, placing brightly colored (red and white) packages under their boughs, as gifts to show their love for each other … ?” he wrote. “It is because, underneath the pine bough is the exact location where one would find this ‘Most Sacred’ substance, the Amanita muscaria, in the wild.”

Reindeer are common in Siberia, and seek out these hallucinogenic fungi, as the area’s human inhabitants have been known to do. Donald Pfister, a biologist who studies fungi at Harvard University, suggests that Siberian tribesmen who ingested fly agaric may have hallucinated into thinking that reindeer were flying.

“Flying” reindeer

“At first glance, one thinks it’s ridiculous, but it’s not,” said Carl Ruck, a professor of classics at Boston University. “Whoever heard of reindeer flying? I think it’s becoming general knowledge that Santa is taking a ‘trip’ with his reindeer,” Ruck said.

“Amongst the Siberian shamans, you have an animal spirit you can journey with in your vision quest,” Ruck continued. ” And reindeer are common and familiar to people in eastern Siberia. They also have a tradition of dressing up like the [mushroom] … they dress up in red suits with white spots.”

Ornaments shaped like Amanita mushrooms and other depictions of the fungi are also prevalent in Christmas decorations throughout the world, particularly in Scandinavia and northern Europe, Pfister points out. That said, Pfister made it clear that the connection between modern-day Christmas and the ancestral practice of eating mushrooms is a coincidence, and he doesn’t know about any direct link.

Many of these traditions were merged or projected upon Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century saint who was known for his generosity, as the story goes.

The Santa connection

There is little debate about the consumption of mushrooms by Arctic and Siberian tribes’ people and shamans, but the connection to Christmas traditions is more tenuous, or “mysterious,” as Ruck put it.

Many of the modern details of the modern-day American Santa Claus come from “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which later became famous as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”), an 1823 poem credited to Clement Clarke Moore, an aristocratic academic who lived in New York City.

The origins of Moore’s vision are unclear, although Arthur, Rush and Ruck all think he probably drew from northern Europe motifs that derive from Siberian or Arctic shamanic traditions. At the very least, Arthur wrote, Santa’s sleigh and reindeer are references back to various related Northern European mythology. For example, the Norse god Thor (known in German as “Donner”) flew in a chariot drawn by two goats, which have been replaced in the modern retelling by Santa’s reindeer, Arthur wrote.

Ruck points to Rudolf as another example of the mushroom imagery resurfacing: his nose looks exactly like a red mushroom, he said. “It’s amazing that a reindeer with a red-mushroom nose is at the head, leading the others.”

Some doubt

Other historians were unaware of a connection between Santa and shamans or magic mushrooms, including Stephen Nissenbaum, who wrote a book about the origins of Christmas traditions, and Penne Restad, at the University of Texas.

One historian, Ronald Hutton, told NPR that the theory of a mushroom-Santa connection is off-base. “If you look at the evidence of Siberian shamanism, which I’ve done,” Hutton said, “you find that shamans didn’t travel by sleigh, didn’t usually deal with reindeer spirits, very rarely took the mushrooms to get trances, didn’t have red-and-white clothes.” But Rush and Ruck say these statements are incorrect; shamans did deal with reindeer spirits, and the depiction of their clothes’ coloring has more to do with the colors of the mushroom than the shamans’ actual garb. As for sleighs, the point isn’t the exact mode of travel, but that the “trip” involves transportation to a different, celestial realm, Rush said.

“People who know about shamanism accept this story,” Ruck said. “Is there any other reason that Santa lives in the North Pole? It is a tradition that can be traced back to Siberia.”

I have already noted how Clement Clark Moore didn’t want his poem published. He was a serious author and thought that children’s literature was beneath him. His friends and family disagreed and we have a little epic that gets read every year.

As to Santa, trying to pin one origin story on him has proved impossible. And that is because the story has evolved so much over the centuries. From the skinny and dour Sinterklaas to the jolly elf we all know today, Santa’s taken many forms.

But they all have one thing in common, they love you and want you to be your best.

That’s not such a bad thing.

From all of us here at the World News Center to all of you where ever you are, have a very merry and safe Christmas.


Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Filed Under: News

Your Holiday Shopping Guide

November 29, 2016 by Bill McCormick

Unwrapping locally sourced gifts has never been more fun.

I understand the allure of shopping at big box joints. You know what you’re getting, you know the price will be cheap, and you’re not all that concerned about quality. You also end up in long lines, have the exact same product everyone else has, and, when all is said and done, have purchased a thing that will have no meaning beyond the immediate gratification. Kind of like fast food, but with slightly more health benefits. Today I’d like to offer you an alternative to that. You won’t even need to get out of your Barca Lounger. You can support independent artists simply by having an internet connection. And, bonus, you’ll look smarter, and be cooler, than all your neighbors when you’re done.

This Might Hurt a Bit – Steve Silver
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Steve since before God lost his tennis shoes. Folks have been hectoring him to write his many stories out in a book and now he has. While, ostensibly, a book about being a bouncer, it is far more than that. He tells the story of what it was like growing up poor, living with a divorced mom when such a thing was still a scandal, and how he came through it all knowing how to knock your fucking teeth out or give you a hug, depending on the situation. Steve’s style is as raw as the stories. Absolutely worth your time.

Paintings by Graham Elvis
Besides being a founding member of, internationally renowned pop icons, The Elvis Brothers, Graham is also a visual artist worthy of your attention. Vibrant pop-scapes layered with meaning are a fine addition to any home.

Hybrid Zero by Cyril Brown
Called the “last web comic you’ll ever need,” Hybrid Zero is an eye popping blast into the future you always feared, but secretly hoped, could exist. Rude, raunchy, and beautiful, this is exactly the kind of artistic product the internet was built for.

Clarity Girl by Chris Thomasma
Yes, I wrote some of the stories attached to this comic book series, but those are a small part of the universe Chris is creating. Clarity Girl is a wonderful way to introduce younger readers to an exciting adventure built around diverse characters who love, and respect, each other. Plus, it’s got giant robots. What more could you ask for?

Apparel by Crixtopher Edwin Uregbu
Crixtopher is a young, South African, artist who has combined his talents with a keen, commercial, instinct. His work is both eye catching and meaningful. He is using the money he earns to put his way through college, just like that stripper your dad likes but for real this time, and manages to highlight social issues along the way without being preachy. You’ll be the best dressed person this holiday if you grab one of his shirts. and, I guarantee you, no one else will even try to out-cool you.

Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery – Neil Steinberg & Sara Bader
Addiction takes many forms and is often relegated to some dirty secret families are loathe to discuss. Steinberg, a popular columnist at the Chicago Sun Times, and Bader, creator of Quotenik.com and an editor for the Princeton Architectural Press, craft a book woven with stories and quotes from those who’ve been through it. Most notably Steinberg himself. If you, or someone you know, is working through recovery this book can help you on the journey with a combination of laughter, honest insights, and gut punching clarity.

Isle Squared Comics
This company, founded by Chuck Amadori, is dedicated to sexy, surreal, comics. I’ve reviewed Pale Dark, Bang Bang Lucita, Tether, and Empress and have only scratched the surface. With taut writing, and art that more resembles paintings than comics, there isn’t a bad issue here. If you like your titillation both visual and visceral, this is the place for you.

Art by Shay Jones
A popular, and widely sought, vocalist, Shay has also made a name for herself creating sculpted paintings and other works of art. Her personal creations tend to be expressions of her deep faith and are the kinds of things which make you feel better about being a human no matter your beliefs. She also accepts custom commission requests.

Delinquent Records
Goth and Glam never died. They just went to Alabama to spark an underground revolution. Delinquent has been pushing edges since 1986 and shows no signs of letting up. Pretty much any band with long hair and lipstick has made its way onto their roster at one point or another. With a deep catalog, and continuing new releases, they can satisfy all those urges you never knew you had.

Bloodshot Records
Home to a style of music where punk, country, soul, pop, bluegrass, blues and rock n roll mix and mingle and mutate (their words), Bloodshot has been the place to go if you’re looking for innovative music created by amazing musicians. Impress your friends, quash your enemies, and enjoy some of the coolest shit around.

EZYWRK Music Group
If you’re like me, although the odds are you aren’t, you’re tired of boring hip hop. The nice people at EZYWRK agree. I first discovered them a couple of years back when they began working with, Chicago’s very own, Kidd Bode, and have been stalking everything they do ever since. From hardcore rap to pop influenced hip hop, they bring a breath of fresh air to every release. If you want to be a fan of rap again click their link.

I’m not going to list individual bands since that would take years and I’d still end up missing someone. Instead the labels I’ve posted have deep, indy, roots and solid connections to Chicago’s music scene. You can’t go wrong by supporting them or any of the other creators I’ve listed above.

Oh well, as long as you’re still here, I may as well throw my hat into the ring. In 2015 I made the conscious decision to be more than a blogger, and occasional article dude, and delve, full time, into writing. Why not? I’d lost my job, my home, and pretty much everything else I could think of. It seemed like a good time to try something new. Obviously something old wasn’t working. So I jumped into the deep end and managed to stay afloat. Along the way I’ve managed to write everything from a children’s story to some of the most disturbing sci-fi around.

And there’s more on the way. Personal bonus? I found a girlfriend by impressing her with my throbbing brain. Much to my surprise life is pretty damn good. In other words, you can now wander over to Bill McSciFi, yes – that’s really the name of my site, and read short stories for free, buy other stuff I hope you’ll like, and get to know a little bit more about my literary side.

So there you go. A great way to support independent artists of all stripes without having to put on pants. If even that much effort is too much for you, just send me your credit card and I’ll take care of the rest.

I’m kidding. Don’t send me your fucking card. I’d just use it for stupid shit like food and you wouldn’t have the gifts you so sorely need.

Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah Ya’ll!

Photo from the shoot that brought us Rudy Ray Moore’s This ain’t No White Christmas.


https://vimeo.com/33441787
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Filed Under: Reviews

President Trump

November 9, 2016 by Bill McCormick

President Trump

You have to say it several times before it sinks in. Donald J. Trump is the president of the United States. To tackle how this came to be I’ll fall back on the old axiom, write about what you know. Much has been made of his connections with the alt-right movement. Think of them as Nazi-Lite. They have all the cool gear with none of the actual drive. One thing they do have, however, is a dedication to particular forms of fantasies. I’m not talking about porn, although God knows that’s got a solid base in red states, but about the stuff they think can happen in the real world. You or I watch a film and think, “Cool, that was a fun way to kill a couple of hours.” Maybe we fantasize about the upcoming love scene between Gal Gadot and Halle Berry. But, at the end of the day, we know it’s all fiction. A fantasy designed for our entertainment.

Since I write I thought I’d take a look at what they read.

The same separation I mentioned above is not true for the alt-right. If you pop over to GoodReads, a nifty site that promotes my fiction stuff from time to time, you will find an entire section designed for alt-right readers. And it is a fascinating list. Almost exclusively political, most of it centers on how “others” think and how to build on what they have done but use it for the alt-right advantage. The titles often seem scholarly, and are in some cases, but they all perpetuate the idea of “them” being different than “us.”

Over at Reddit the list is even more blunt. They are laden with blame for whoever is causing the alt-right problems.

Hint; if you pick Muslims or Jews you win an alt-right prize.

Following those suggestions will lead you, upon recommendations, to a list where things get interesting, Revenge Porn. They all follow a similar script; one lone dude, it’s never a chick, against the world and it always involves said lone dude killing the shit out of people who cross him. They are violent, reductive, and possess a narrow world view. Some, like The Preacher, happen to be excellent pieces of literature. But I’d never try and live my life like him. Many on the alt-right do. Minus the vampires and stuff.

The action genre is big there too. Clive Cussler is, by far, the most popular. Tom Clancy, pre video game books, is up there too but he’s considered too cerebral by many. After all, he understands nuance as well as paranoia. Nuance isn’t big on the alt-right.

Basically, a lone individual, or small group, works outside of government parameters to make “bad guys” go away. More often than not the putative bad guys find themselves eating a bullet or two. If violent explosions can be worked in for no reason whatsoever, the better for all.

To be fair, Cussler is not an alt-right kind of guy. He writes terse stories, pimps NUMA, which I must laud, manages to add himself as a character, something I loathe, and blows stuff up good. Nothing wrong with that unless you read it and think that’s how the world should work.

On the female side of the equation we get 50 Shades of Gray. And modern Harlequin Romances. Or, to be blunt here, rape porn. There is no consent, there is only a strong man dominating a weak woman. Over and over again.

Those two points of view dovetail, in terrifying ways, with each other.

Now take those points of view and add in Donald Trump.

Misogyny? You mean he knows how to keep a woman in her place? Hell yeah, he’s my kind of guy.

Bigotry? You mean he knows how to keep a lesser human in their place? Hell yeah, he’s my kind of guy. He’s just protecting his interests when he keeps those people out.

Ripping off business partners? Hell, not everything works out, that’s just the way things are in business.

Bullying? Quit being a wuss. Be a man. My daddy whupped the tar outta me and I turned out fine.

Memo from the real world: no, no you didn’t.

I could go on but you get the point. What the left viewed as egregious insults, the alt-right took to be compliments. He was, and is, one of them. He gets them. And, let’s be fair here as well, they haven’t exactly been loved by anyone else. Nor have they been given the option to gather a wider world view. They are the direct result of isolationism and reduced education.

Now I, no more than anyone else, have any idea how a Trump presidency will play out. I fear the worst but he could easily betray those who got him there just as quickly as he has everyone else in his life. Just ask his first two wives or the thousands of contractors who have taken him to court. They weren’t doing that because they missed him.

One thing’s for certain, the next four years are going to be unlike anything this country has ever seen before.


Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Filed Under: News

Let’s Chat About Race

October 29, 2016 by Bill McCormick

Squad goals.
Squad goals.
I know, I know, you’ve been waiting your whole life to have a, middle aged, white guy explain race relations to you. I mean, how the hell would you know what to think if you’re not told what to think by one such as me? And, in all honesty, I wouldn’t do this in a million years but someone I consider a friend admitted that she’s scared of white people. And that saddened me to the core. Especially since I can’t blame her. I see the same things going on in our world you do, and she does. And they scare me too. But if we’re going to have this discussion we can’t have one of those horrid PBS things where everyone talks in dulcet tones and dances around the truth. The truth is simple, racism exists. There are whites who hate, or fear, blacks. There are blacks who hate, or fear, whites. There are people of every color who hate, or fear, those who are not like them. This is true. And any conversation must start there. So that’s where I’ll begin.

First, a little about me. I was raised in a conservative, Catholic, home by my grandparents. The reason I was raised by them was due to the fact that, in those days, illegitimate babies born to Irish mothers, like I was, were often shunted to Catholic orphanages where they could be raped, used as sex slaves, or sold into child labor. Families knew this even if the world at large did not.

My grandmother was one of the more liberal members of our family. For example, there was an Italian family who was having visa problems. My grandmother would take them, twice a week, from our home in Melrose Park to the Loop, so they could deal with them. They didn’t speak any English so a neighbor of theirs, who spoke both Italian and English, would make sure my granny had all the paperwork so she could guide them to the offices they needed to attend.

She would proudly talk about this with her sisters. Often mentioning how the family were all “good Dagos.”

It wasn’t until I was fifteen, when I met a man named Ron who worked with me at the Riviera Bowling Alley, that I was disabused of the concept that nigger was an adjective. You have to understand I was raised knowing a man named Nigger Joe, with the knowledge that a Cadillac was a Nigger Mobile, wide collared shirts were Nigger Clothes, the black janitors at Ford, where my grandfather worked, were Good Niggers, and so on. I hope you can better comprehend my confusion.

I should add my mother’s last husband was a ranking member of the Klan. So it isn’t like the Age of Aquarius enlightened everyone.

Now you know a little about me.

And, if you know me at all from previous blogs or personal experience, you will not be surprised in the slightest to find out the next part of this story takes place in a liquor store.

By now, I’m fifty-five if you’re curious, I thought I’d put the racism bugaboo well behind me. I have a diverse, and wonderful, collection of friends and acquaintances, who make my life better. I have worked with, and dated, pretty much every race on Earth and never put much thought into the amount of melanin they brought to the conversation.

It turns out I was wrong.

On July 2nd of this year I moved to South Chicago. On July Fourth I went to the local liquor store to buy liquor. It seemed like a logical idea. While there a black man, about my age, asked me if I was voting for Trump. When I said no he said “I figgered all you honkies were voting for him.” The vehemence of my response caught me off guard. The conversation, quickly joined by a Chinese man, a Mexican man, and the Indian store owner, escalated rapidly.

At one point I was unsure if this was going to end with me being stabbed or hugged. Either way, there was nothing to do but see it through to the end.

I finally realized the little boy who thought nigger was an adjective still clung to the darker reaches of my soul. So I reached in, yanked him out, and told them what I told you. I explained how I was raised. All of it.

And they shared their stories. And they were fucking brutal. The conversation was about as profane as you could imagine. Every variation of the word fuck we could conjugate was used. Every racial epithet, and there are many, was tossed into the ring. But we were talking. We were bringing our darker demons out to let them die, hopefully, in the light.

An hour or so later, neither hugged nor stabbed, I left having made some new friends, or fewer enemies anyway, and with a lot to think about.

That’s where we’re at. I believe this is the conversation we need to have. Not the gentle hand wringing. Not the one loaded with Power Point slides and pious pontification. No, we need to have the one filled with vitriol and spite. We need to honestly look inside and drop our souls on the table. We need to understand, truly and fully, why we hate. Why we fear. How we got to where we’re at. We need to look each other in the eye and never flinch, not even when we have good reasons to do so.

And we can’t do it on a national scale. That’s too much, too easy to hide behind. No, it must start like mine started, one to one. Eye to eye. Fear to fear.

I can’t tell you this conversation cured me. That would be disingenuous. But I can tell you I know where that little bastard is hiding in my soul, and I have my eye out for him now.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.


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Filed Under: News

Check 1, 2-3-4

October 27, 2016 by Bill McCormick

Our galaxy is sexier than your galaxy.
Our galaxy is sexier than your galaxy.

(1) In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth (2) And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. – Genesis (KJV). That’s not a bad allegory for the Big Bang Theory, all things considered. From nothing came something. I can hear scientists from numerous branches lighting torches and sharpening pitchforks. I hope they’ll bear with me since this isn’t for them. This is, instead, for the nice folks at home who come here for introductory level stuff so they can grasp the initial concept before dumpster diving into the minutae. It’s also a nice place to bring people up to date on discoveries thus far. Today we’re going to talk about the fun we can have chatting with aliens. Or, if you’re a believer in God, our galactic cousins who were brought forth into the firmament by Him. See, if He created everything, then he created them. That’s how “everything” works.

Two months ago I wrote about a team of Russian scientists who claimed to have discovered an alien signal. They later claimed that the signal came from a cloaked Russian satellite that was launched in the 60’s. Or, maybe, later. Since, if Kruchev and pals had that kind of tech in the 60’s, it would mean we’d all be speaking Russian today and, obviously tovarich, we’re not, I feel safe in setting that particular excuse aside for now. I should also note that other scientists, this time in Italy, requested additional research be done for a myriad of reasons. Mostly because they thought the initial claim, and not the satellite one, was valid. Or, at least, credible.

So time is being spent hunting that bugger down. As of that writing it was the second signal discovered which warranted attention. The first being the famous WOW Signal from 1977.

But the times, they are a changin’.

Shannon Hall, over at New Scientist, reports that two Canadian scientists are claiming they have found not one, not two, not three, but two hundred and thirty four alien signals. That’s out of about ten billion solar systems they tested.

Before we go any further I’ll let Shannon tell you the rest.

It’s a bold claim. Two astronomers think they have spotted messages from not just one extraterrestrial civilisation, but 234 of them. The news has sparked a lively debate in the field as other astronomers think the claim is premature and are working fast to get to the bottom of the signals.

In 2012, Ermanno Borra at Laval University in Quebec suggested that an extraterrestrial civilisation might use a laser as a means of interstellar communication. If the little green men simply flashed a laser toward the Earth like a strobe light, we would see periodic bursts of light hidden in the spectrum of their host star. They would be incredibly faint and rapid, but a mathematical analysis could uncover them.

“The kind of energy needed to generate this signal is not crazy,” says Borra. In fact, Borra showed that technology we have on Earth today – specifically the Helios laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – could generate that kind of signal, should we want to reveal ourselves to the cosmos.

With this in mind, Borra’s graduate student Eric Trottier combed through 2.5 million stars recorded by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in search of such a signal. He found it, down to the exact shape, in 234 stars.

The overwhelming majority of those stars are in the same spectral class as the sun, which Borra says supports his hypothesis that this signature must be the result of extraterrestrial intelligent life. And with the data in hand, he thinks that 234 distinct civilisations are beaming pulses of the same periodicity (roughly 1.65 picoseconds) toward the Earth.

Borra and Trottier ruled out other possible explanations for the pattern, like rapid pulsations in the atmospheres of the stars themselves and rotational transitions in molecules. “We have to follow a scientific approach, not an emotional one,” says Borra. “But intuitively – my emotion speaks now – I strongly suspect that it’s an ETI signal.”

Extraordinary claims

Other astronomers think that Borra’s intuition might have run away with him.

“They don’t consider every natural possibility and jump prematurely to the supernatural – so to speak – conclusion,” says Peter Plavchan at Missouri State University in Springfield. “I think it’s way too premature to do that.”

“There is perhaps no bolder claim that one could make in observational astrophysics than the discovery of intelligent life beyond the Earth,” says Andrew Siemion, the director of the SETI Research Centre at the University of California Berkeley. “It’s an incredibly profound subject—and of course that’s why many of us devote our lives to the field and put so much energy into trying to answer these questions. But you can’t make such definitive statements about detections unless you’ve exhausted every possible means of follow-up.”

So that’s exactly what the Breakthrough Listen Initiative—a project headed by Siemion that searches for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth—will do. The team plans to observe several stars from Borra’s sample with the 2.4-meter Automated Planet Finder telescope at the Lick Observatory in California.

Borra is excited to see that others are taking the reins. “At this stage, the signal is so strange, that although our detailed analysis seems to indicate that it is a real signal, it has to be validated with more work,” he says.

Still, the Breakthrough Listen team doesn’t share Borra’s enthusiasm. According to a statement, they have rated the detection as a zero to 1 on the Rio Scale for SETI observations, meaning that it is insignificant.

In fact, Siemion thinks the spectral patterns were likely caused by errors in calibration or data analysis. And Plavchan agrees. He points to several steps in the team’s data analysis that “scared him” because they didn’t consider how those steps might affect their results—a red flag in any scientific claim. At the end of the day, the signal probably comes down to a human error, he says.

“It’s not a bad idea to look for a signal, it’s just that they didn’t do their homework,” says Plavchan.

Journal reference:  Borra Trottier Paper

The skepticism held by the two scientists noted, and by many others, is exactly what this type of research needs. When supposition replaces fact we end up in bad places. Or, if you prefer, Dark Ages.

That said, the paper from Borra and Trottier adds to a growing pile of data that is starting to weigh on the side of the teeter totter that says “here there be aliens.”

Part of that data is the is the century old study of Tabby’s Star a/k/a KIC 8462852. It was named after Tabetha Boyajian, the woman who led the team that discovered its behavior . The numeric thing is just a catalog number but you can use it to win bets at nerd parties if you wish.

Back to the star.

Stars. They start out gassy, like your Uncle Elroy after a burrito as big as his head, then they form, attain their maximum level of brightness, begin to wane, and then die. Sometimes spectacularly – like novas, sometimes not. What they do not do, unless they’re pulsars, which Tabby’s Star is not, is oscillate. There are no galactic discos which require a strobe light. Nor do they begin to dim in the prime of their lives. Especially not in a definable band. Stars don’t grow rings.

Obvious reasons, such as an exploding planet or a ring of comets caught in its gravity, don’t account for the steady dimming viewed since the late 1890’s. If any of those reasons were valid the star would appear dimmer and stay at the same, reduced, luminosity. That is not what’s happening here. Each year it gets a little dimmer in a certain band. Just as if someone was building a structure around it to harness its energy. Here on Earth we call such things Dyson Spheres. I have no idea what the aliens call them. Or if they name things at all.

Naming, after all, is a human convention. Nothing in the universe demands names.

When I first wrote about this in January of this year I had this to say;

Just for giggles, I posted on a NASA blog what I thought it could be. A ringworld. I expected to get laughed out of the room. Larry Niven’s flight of fancy, a single structure to replace all the planets in a system, has very little practical value.

Except …. it kind of fits. If you were building something like that there would be periods of massive dimming and periods of increased brightness. Also, since the structure would only be capturing solar energy, there would be no transmissions to track. Plus, once completed the dimming would be constant. So my stupid suggestion got added to the list of possibilities. I’ll keep you posted.

While no one is saying this thing is really an alien structure, fewer are dismissing the concept out of hand. As one scientist said to me, after a few adult libations and sandwich, “We know more and more what that fucker ain’t. But ain’t no one gonna sit on that thin limb and say what it is.”

Yes, drunk scientists are fun.

However, at some point  we’re going to run out of options. Then what? Put it on our “to do” list for when we develop interstellar travel?

For now, let’s not say “we have proof” one way or the other. Instead, let’s say, damn, that looks interesting, let’s check it out.


Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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