My typical approach to videos on Spooky Geology topics - where geology intersects with paranormal and eerie topics - was as a passive, non-reading version of the blog post.
Hi Sharon, Love your stuff going back to the Skeptical Inquirer. My wife and I camped at Devil's Tower last year and I had no idea about the giant tree myth. I wish that I'd known about it at the time, so that I could have explained, with a straight face, to my loving non-geologist wife that the tower is, in fact, a giant tree stump. That would have lasted for a few minutes until she noticed my inability to hide an evil grin. Well worth a retaliatory slug in the arm and decrease in credibility. On a more serious note, at 2:52 in the video you say that "Satire is dangerous when people can't think critically." I fully appreciate and understand your intent, but the sentence could be twisted around to imply that since people (as a generalization) don't think critically, satire is dangerous. This sets off my freedom-of-speech alarm. Being a huge fan of satire, I'm admittedly hyper-sensitive but I also abhor ignorance. Yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre is illegal - and rightfully so. But satire? One could argue that if satire hurts people (which it could), it should be banned. It's a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" dilemma because satire can also serve as a tool for implicitly ridiculing stupidity. Think of James Randi swallowing a bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills at the start of his lecture. To me, that was a form of ridicule bordering on satire. This food-for-thought is my backhanded way of saying "thank you" for your Spooky Geology. Keep up the fine work. - Jim.
Hi Sharon, Love your stuff going back to the Skeptical Inquirer. My wife and I camped at Devil's Tower last year and I had no idea about the giant tree myth. I wish that I'd known about it at the time, so that I could have explained, with a straight face, to my loving non-geologist wife that the tower is, in fact, a giant tree stump. That would have lasted for a few minutes until she noticed my inability to hide an evil grin. Well worth a retaliatory slug in the arm and decrease in credibility. On a more serious note, at 2:52 in the video you say that "Satire is dangerous when people can't think critically." I fully appreciate and understand your intent, but the sentence could be twisted around to imply that since people (as a generalization) don't think critically, satire is dangerous. This sets off my freedom-of-speech alarm. Being a huge fan of satire, I'm admittedly hyper-sensitive but I also abhor ignorance. Yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre is illegal - and rightfully so. But satire? One could argue that if satire hurts people (which it could), it should be banned. It's a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" dilemma because satire can also serve as a tool for implicitly ridiculing stupidity. Think of James Randi swallowing a bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills at the start of his lecture. To me, that was a form of ridicule bordering on satire. This food-for-thought is my backhanded way of saying "thank you" for your Spooky Geology. Keep up the fine work. - Jim.