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FT356

Shady

Shady

DEATHS Kitty
Joined
Apr 24, 2011
Messages
8,809
Just got this, doesnt look too bad Project Five Percent looks interesting, all about Unsolved UFO cases re-examined

Front cover is the Cottingley Fairies, never been much interested in those
 
How the hell did the mice utopia article get printed? FT has had some bad articles in its time (like the infamous gangstalking one), but this has been the first one that has genuinely made me angry.

We've got pseudo-science like left handedness being a mutation (no it's not; stone age humans had a roughly 50/50 split, so according to the author's logic right handedness is mutation accumulation), autism being a modern thing (no, we're just better at diagnosing it), intelligence is positively selected for because of survival rates (author obviously has never heard of R and K selection) rich people are rich because they're smart (therefore poor people are stupid), liberal beliefs are the sign of decay, and intelligent women need to get back in the kitchen and pop out babies, because women having the right to choose will bring about the downfall of civilisation.

Ho-lee shit. I've noticed FT seems to be leaning towards the right as of late, but this article was insane. It was one step short of calling for eugenics. Usually I just roll my eyes at this sort of thing, but having it printed in FT (and mentioned on the cover!) is outrageous.
 
Urvogel said:
Ho-lee shit. I've noticed FT seems to be leaning towards the right as of late, but this article was insane. It was one step short of calling for eugenics. Usually I just roll my eyes at this sort of thing, but having it printed in FT (and mentioned on the cover!) is outrageous.
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Wow Urvogel - on the basis of what you have said, I do not like that article. I shall have to get hold of a copy soon. I look forward to the fairies cover story - that's good Fortean stuff. I like historical articles, and mysterious things.
 
There's something that I strongly disagreed with on a factual basis - i.e. it's plain wrong - but as the magazine is down the garden in the shed and I can't remember what it was I'll have to leave the ranting off for a bit.
 
Curses, I had to go and retrieve the magazine. And do some weeding. And sweep up the mud from the patio. And straighten the garden chairs. The garden chairs... Sun's out, I may have to pop out again soon with a brew.

Anyway... the item is on page 10 in the Sidelines, about how travellers used to cook hedgehogs. It says that the hedgehogs were dead when they were cooked.

However, as a kid in the '60s I sometimes played with traveller children when their families camped on nearby waste ground. They told me lots about their lives, including how to prepare and cook a hedgehog. The animals certainly were not killed before cooking.

The animal would be caught. It would roll up into a ball and then be coated in mud, the more clayey the better (as is the case in my area) and then placed into the fire. I asked, was it still alive? and was told 'yeah, course! But it couldn't run away because of the mud.'
When the ball of mud was taken out of the fire, it would be cracked open and the hedgehog's spines would be embedded in the dried mud and and would drag its skin off when it was removed.

What did it taste like? 'Dunno. Chicken?'

It has just occurred to me that the hedgehogs probably died quickly from suffocation rather than burning. I hope so as the thought of them burning to death troubled me for many years.
 
You lot've just brought my childhood nightmares.
 
Cannot wait for my copy to arrive to see what all the fuss is about. Then I will get angry!:pitch:
 
My copy is here but I've not read it yet. I'm already fucking furious though!
 
There are problems with the mouse utopia article, to be sure, some of which are more implied than stated, and some of which are easily inferred. I hope it will promote lively debate on the letters pages. The thrust of the article is whether the selective pressures society places on human evolution put us on a positive trajectory, something about which I've thought often, and I don't think it can be easily dismissed. Nor do I think talk of political partisanism or eugenics is particularly helpful in discussing the article, emotive though the subject may be.
:hide:
 
escargot1 said:
I'm not angry, I'm triggered.
Always wanted to say that.
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Is that a euphemism for being pulled? :cooll:

Or am I off-target?

And...
PeteByrdie said:
The thrust of the article is whether the selective pressures society places on human evolution put us on a positive trajectory, something about which I've thought often, and I don't think it can be easily dismissed
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Precisely. And it's not really viable to disagree with the outcomes/conclusions from an experiment, if they are substantially-inarguable. We can all be unhappy about anything, but that reaction in itself is personal and irrelevant to the facts.

Take the infamous Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment. I feel decidedly-disturbed by the conclusions that can be drawn from it. But that cannot entitle me to claim the conclusions were politically-biased, or wrong.
:truce:
 
Of course any of us can submit an article to FT, it might even be printed, one of the beauties of it, even to a rabid old Trot like me.
 
loved the article about Mouse Utopia... vouldn't help relating it to the current agonising concerning falling sperm counts and what it means for the future of the human race. Err... explicable in comparision to the fate of the mice, perhaps? which means we're in Condition C and moving into the terminal state D....
 
A good issue, I loved the ghostwatch article, but I doubt everybody will say the paranormalality of the cases has been proved beyond doubt, and I am still laughing at the women getting fanny nipped by the crab . But officer we where just sucking out the poison! Honest!
 
I read the Mouse Utopia article and have to agree with Urvogel. It's bad science at best and specious nonsense at worst. Intelligent women, the left handed and vegetarians are responsible for the decline of the christian west and falling sperm counts. FFS! How did this garbage get published in FT? The guy expresses a wish for a return to the dark ages when 'the natural order' (whatever that is) can reassert itself and that the advances of the industrial revolution (i.e. In lowering child mortality) were a bad thing! Unbelievable. I bet he still thinks The Walking Dead is cool.
 
I love the sidelines but a couple of the sentences didn't seem right.

Stunned golfer looked on while a 13ft (4m) python slithered onto the 17th hole of Paradise Palms Golf Course...

Shouldn't it be 'A stunned golfer looked on...' or 'Stunned golfer Joe Bloggs looked on...'

Also

A rod-shaped called bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator thrives...

Shouldn't that be 'A rod-shaped bacterium called...' or even at a push 'A rod-shape called bacterium...'

Is it just me?

(I'm sorry if I've made any mistakes. My excuse being I'm not putting them into a magazine to be sold)
 
Thanks to the nice lady, mine's has arrived! Only I'm scared to open it past the contents page because I notice there's a tree people article. Not fair on the afflicted, but they scare me.
 
GNC said:
Thanks to the nice lady, mine's has arrived! Only I'm scared to open it past the contents page because I notice there's a tree people article. Not fair on the afflicted, but they scare me.
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How so?
 
I suppose it's the "there but for the grace of God" angle, someone posted a while back about how spontaneous human combustion terrified them so much they couldn't mention it, so images of tree people set my mind racing to disturbing places. Just my mind, I suppose. It's not the people that scare me, it's the affliction, really.
 
GNC said:
I suppose it's the "there but for the grace of God" angle, someone posted a while back about how spontaneous human combustion terrified them so much they couldn't mention it, so images of tree people set my mind racing to disturbing places. Just my mind, I suppose. It's not the people that scare me, it's the affliction, really.
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I haven't seen this issue, so I'm not clear...do you mean people living in trees, or people like Dede the Treeman?
 
Mythopoeika said:
I haven't seen this issue, so I'm not clear...do you mean people living in trees, or people like Dede the Treeman?
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The latter. I don't think he lived in an actual tree. Unless he had a specific sense of humour.
 
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