Skeptical Briefs - Committee for Skeptical Inquiry http://www.csicop.org/ en Copyright 2013 2013-04-25T16:36:30+00:00 Grilled-Cheese Madonna Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:19:00 EDT info@csicop.org () http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/grilled-cheese_madonna http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/grilled-cheese_madonna Since it came to light in 2004, it has become the quintessential holy image to appear on an item of food: the face, many say, of the Virgin Mary on a grilled-cheese sandwich. While it has sparked little piety—the Catholic church has not sanctioned it as divine—it has become the subject of controversy and ridicule and has even suffered insinuations of fakery. I once had custody of the curious item, and I was actually able to photograph and examine the image under magnification (figures 1–2). Here are my findings.

Background

The image reportedly appeared ten years earlier in the Hollywood, Florida, home of Gregg and Diana Duyser. Mrs. Duyser, fifty-two, said she had grilled the sandwich without butter or oil and had just taken a bite when she noticed—staring back at her—the image of a woman’s face in the toasting pattern. She perceived it as the face of “The Virgin Mary, Mother of God” and, placing it in a plastic box with cotton balls, kept it enshrined on her night stand.

Duyser was impressed that the sandwich never molded. However, toast and hardened cheese that are kept dry naturally resist molding.

The Duysers received $28,000 when they auctioned the sandwich on the Internet site eBay. The site had initially pulled the item—which supposedly broke its policy of not allowing “Listings that are intended as jokes”—but the couple insisted that the item was neither a joke nor a hoax. Soon the “‘Virgin Mary’ sandwich” was back, attracting bids. It was purchased by an online casino—GoldenPalace.com—whose CEO, Richard Rowe, stated that he intended to use the sandwich to raise funds for charity (“Virgin Mary” 2004).

Simulacra

The image-bearing sandwich received—possibly outdistanced—the notoriety accorded other sacred food icons. They include Maria Rubio’s famous 1977 tortilla that bore the face of Jesus, also in the pattern of skillet burns; a giant forkful of spaghetti pictured on a billboard in which some perceived the likeness of Christ; and the image of Mother Teresa discovered on a cinnamon bun (see Nickell 2004).

Queried by the Asso­ciated Press during the holy-grilled-cheese brouhaha, I explained that such images are nothing more than evidence of the human ability—termed pareidolia—to interpret essentially random patterns, such as ink blots or pictures in clouds, as recognizable images. The most famous example is the face of the Man in the Moon.

Perceived pictures of this type are called simulacra, and many are interpreted as religious images (a female face becoming “Mary,” for example). These are perhaps most often associated with Catholic or Orthodox traditions, wherein there is a special emphasis on icons or other holy images (Nickell 2004; Thompson 2004).

In the wake of the grilled-cheese image came others, one on a fish stick hailed as “the son of Cod” (“It’s” 2004), another a pair of images on a pancake. A woman interpreted the latter duo as Jesus and Mary, while her mother, the actual flapjack flipper, thought it resembled a bedouin and Santa Claus (Nohlgren 2004). The grilled-cheese icon even helped inspire an entire book: called Madonna of the Toast (Poole 2007), it treats both “Secular Sightings” (e.g., Myrtle Young’s famous collection of pictorial potato chips) and “Forms of Faith” (including the previously mentioned Mother Teresa “Nun Bun”—missing since it was stolen in 2005).

A Hoax?

The Duysers’ grilled-cheese Madonna was lampooned on Penn and Teller’s Bullshit! series on the Showtime Network (2006) and elsewhere by other debunkers (Stollznow 2006). Some of them found clever ways to make fake images on toast. One method involved a custom cast-iron skillet molded with Jesus’ face, another a yeast extract used to paint pictures on bread before toasting (Poole 2007, 88–89). A Holy Toast!™ “miracle bread stamper” was even marketed in 2006.

But was the image due to possible trickery, as some implied? The rush to suggest fakery antecedent to inquiry is a most unfortunate approach. It is certainly not the method of a serious, intellectually honest investigation.

Figure 2. Close-up photograph reveals spotty, accidental nature of image: a simulacrum. (Click to view larger image; photo by Joe Nickell)

Figure 2. Close-up photograph reveals spotty, accidental nature of image: a simulacrum. (Click to view larger image; photo by Joe Nickell)

As it happens, I was able to examine the grilled cheese in question in 2005. I had custody of it for the better part of a day, January 14, courtesy of its Las Vegas-based owners who loaned it to the Penn and Teller show’s producer who in turn entrusted it to me. I was in Las Vegas to tape segments for that popular program, the timing of which coincided with the James Randi Educational Foundation’s annual conference, The Amaz!ng Meeting 3 (held at the Stardust Resort & Casino). There, I shared the framed pop icon with other skeptics who eagerly posed with it, including Michael Shermer and Steve Shaw (aka the mentalist Bannacek). No one thought the image looked like the Virgin Mary (as her visage is imagined in art); instead some suggested it resembled Gretta Garbo, Marlena Dietrich, or other celebrities.

Eventually I retired to a suite where I could study the controversial sandwich. It was in what appeared to be its original plastic box, surrounded with cotton balls, and set in a deep frame. I placed a forensic centimeter scale thereon and photographed the sandwich using a 35mm camera and close-up lenses (again, see figures 1–2). I also examined it macroscopically, using a 10x Bausch & Lomb illuminated coddington magnifier.

I observed that the surface had a spotty, heat-blistered appearance (again, see figure 2). The spots making up “eyes,” “nose,” and “mouth” are similar to those elsewhere on the toasted bread. There was no apparent difference or incongruity with regard to hue, sheen, form, or indeed other characteristic. That is to say, there were no facial areas that seemed more linear or in any way drawn or added (as by, say, use of a woodburning tool or by any of various other means I considered). Therefore, it is consistent with a genuine (accidentally produced) simulacrum rather than a faked one.

Moreover, a careful close-up look at the “face” reveals it to be far less perfect than it may at first sight appear. (Those who suggest that hoaxing may have been involved, please take notice.) The features really consist only of some squiggles, a fact perhaps best appreciated by turning the picture ninety-degrees. The nostrils are missing, yet the mind—“recognizing” a face—fills them in. Again, there is a pronounced extraneous, curved mark on the lady’s right cheek, yet the mind tends helpfully to filter it out (or perhaps interpret it as, say, a curl of hair). In short, the image seems a rather typical simulacrum.

Nevertheless, Diana Duyser certainly acts as if she believes that the “Virgin Mary” image on the grilled cheese is, as she says, “a miracle.” No longer owning the sandwich, she has had its image tattooed onto one of her ample breasts (pictured in Poole 2007, 86). She thus demonstrates that with simulacra, belief—as well as beauty—is often in the eye of the beholder.

References:

]]> The ‘Chemtrail Conspiracy’ Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:19:00 EDT info@csicop.org () http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/chemtrail_conspiracy http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/chemtrail_conspiracy Why are some people afraid of contrails? Why would the appearance of water vapor in the exhaust of a jet inspire feelings of illness and dread? It all began in the 1990s when “investigative journalists” like William Thomas began describing purported plots by the government to inject poisons into the atmosphere via the exhaust trails of jet planes. Chemtrails are defined on the Web site of Internet pundit Jeff Rense (formerly of the “Sightings” Web radio show, which was connected to the “Sightings” television program produced by Henry Winkler):

Chemtrails (CTs) look like contrails initially, but are much thicker, extend across the sky and are often laid down in varying patterns of Xs, tick-tack-toe grids, cross-hatched and parallel lines. Instead of quickly dissipating, chemtrails expand and drip feathers and mare’s tails. In 30 minutes or less, they open into wispy formations which join together, forming a thin white veil or a ‘fake cirrus-type cloud’ that persists for hours. . . . (Thayer 2000)

“Chemtrails” have been described as either a means of carrying out biological warfare upon the citizenry of the United States or as a method of weather modification, perhaps related to mitigation of global warming. The subject was popularized by late-night radio host Art Bell over a decade ago and is still hyped as a daring and dangerous conspiracy by numerous Web sites.

In 1999, the New Mexico Attorney General’s office contacted New Mexicans for Science and Reason (NMSR) member Kim Johnson to help answer questions from constituents regarding the alleged dangers of “chemtrails.” After his investigation, John­son told the Attorney General,

I have viewed a number of photos purporting to be of aircraft spraying the chemical or biological material into the atmosphere. I have also discussed these letters with another scientist familiar with upper atmospheric phenomena from Sandia National Laboratory and a retired general and fighter pilot who is an Air Force Hall of Fame Member. . . . In summary, there is no evidence that these “chemtrails” are other than expected, normal contrails from jet aircraft that vary in their shapes, duration, and general presentation based on prevailing weather conditions. That is not to say that there could not be an occasional, purposeful experimental release of, say, high altitude barium for standard wind tracking experiments. There could also be other related experiments that occur from time-to-time which release agents into the atmosphere. However, not one single picture that was presented as evidence indicates other than normal contrail formation. . . .

“Chemtrails” are said to last much longer than normal contrails from before 1995, but proponents are curiously oblivious of photographs of long-lasting contrails from as far back as World War II. The supposedly ominous “grid patterns” of contrails are easily explained as the expected effect of wind movement across frequently used east/west and north/south aircraft travel lanes. And one of the defining characteristics of “chemtrails”—gaps in the trails, supposedly caused by turning the “sprayers” on and off—is quite simply explained as normal humidity variations in the atmosphere. The sky often displays varying levels of humidity with spotty clouds, and the same conditions apply to the clouds condensing from jet trails. And, as far as attacking the populace with biotoxins, what dispersal vehicle could be less effective than a craft spraying indiscriminately at 35,000 feet? A low-altitude crop duster or a land truck spraying for mosquitoes would be far better at such a task.

One of the most strident promoters of “chemtrails” is Santa Fe’s Clifford Carni­com, who maintains the “Aerosol Operation Crimes and Cover-Up” Web site (Carni­com). His site is a frantic hodgepodge of pictures of alleged spray attacks, appeals to media and government officials to take the issue seriously, and detailed “analyses” of metals like barium in the “trails.” While Carnicom bemoans the fact that the media won’t give him his due, he turned down a 1999 invitation to speak to NMSR, which could have attracted some of the media attention he was demanding so shrilly. Incensed that NMSR had published a joke linking “chemtrails” to the threat of “Dihydrogen Monoxide” (i.e., H2O), Carn­icom refused to even acknowledge the invitation. Anyone who doesn’t buy into the conspiracy theory is treated as an active member of that conspiracy. Conversely, anyone who signs on to “chemtrails” is em­braced as a fellow traveler, no matter what their other beliefs. And so, Carnicom has formed a mutual admiration society with “Naturopathic Doctor” Gwen Scott, who writes on Carnicom’s site,

My interest is, primarily, finding natural medicines that can help ALL people mitigate the devastating effects of a multi-leveled assault on human health. Mr. Carni­com has provided immeasurable help in identifying contents so that I may design some natural medicine protocols around them . . . it is important that you understand one of the founding principles of natural medicine . . . Herring’s Law of Cure. This law presents that your body will rid itself of anything unwanted (diseases, etc.) from top to bottom, from the inside to the outside, and in the reverse order in which it entered your system. As you will see, much of the work on my own body follows this law exactly. . . . (Scott 2008)

(Whew! I’m glad she cleared that up for us!)

Since NMSR hosts some skeptical articles on chemtrails (Thomas), I often get e-mails from angered readers. One person demanded that I watch a YouTube video of a November 9, 2007, “Chemtrails” report by Louisiana station KSLA, in which investigative reporter Jeff Ferrell discussed tests the station had conducted on supposed “chemtrail residue” collected in a bowl by a farmer outside his house. Ferrell said, “KSLA News 12 had the sample tested at a lab. The results: A high level of barium, 6.8 parts per million, (ppm). That’s more than three times the toxic level set by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.” I had to inform my angry correspondent of a problem—the actual video clearly shows 68.8 µg/L (micrograms per liter), or equivalently, 68.8 ppb (parts per billion). The reporter overestimated by a factor of one hundred, because he read the “68.8” as “6.8,” and also confused million with billion. The measured levels were far less than EPA limits. When I asked my correspondent why I should be convinced by such poor reporting, he just repeated his insistence that I take down my “stupid website.”

I’ve also been e-mailed photographs of the interior of planes filled with large containers connected by tubes, accompanied by the exclamation that “This is the spraying equipment!” But these photographs turned out to be pictures of ballast tanks used in flight testing of new airliner designs; the tubes simply allow water to be pumped from tank to tank, simulating passenger motion in the cabin for the aircraft test. Kennedy assassination and 9/11 conspiracy theorists are mere pikers compared to “chemtrail” buffs. You will rarely find a more virulently self-deluded group, anywhere.

References:

]]> Charles Fort: Purveyor of the Unprobed Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:19:00 EDT info@csicop.org () http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/charles_fort_purveyor_of_the_unprobed http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/charles_fort_purveyor_of_the_unprobed Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural. By Jim Steinmeyer. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, New York, 2008. ISBN: 978-1-58542-640-9. 352 pp. Hardcover, $24.95.

Charles Fort delighted in taunting “orthodox” scientists with things they seemed unable, or unwilling, to explain—for example, rains of frogs or fish (Fort 1974). Today’s paranormal mystery mongerers—the tireless touters of “the unexplained” who are typically merely cynical writers and broadcasters of the uninvestigated—are following in the deeply imprinted footsteps of Charles Fort.

Now, magic historian Jim Steinmeyer has conjured forth a stimulating—if perhaps overly sympathetic—recounting of the life of Fort. Following his previous brilliant successes Hiding the Elephant (a history of illusionists and their secrets) and The Glorious Deception (the story of Billy Robinson who transformed himself into a famous “Chinese” magician), Stein­meyer examines the strange world of a very different type of master mystifier. Although his subtitle labels Fort The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, he is much more correct in saying (given the usual definitions of the terms involved) that “What Fort invented was our modern view of the paranormal” (Stein­meyer 2008, xv). (The paranormal includes not only all of the supernatural but such other things as extraterrestrials and Bigfoot, which—if they exist—might be entirely natural entities. Damon Knight [1970] was on target when he dubbed Fort “Prophet of the Unexplained.”)

Charles Hoy Fort (1874–1932) was born in Albany, New York, the first of three sons of a “vain” little grocer and his wife—the latter dying when Charles was four. In his twenties, Charles Fort recorded some autobiographical “perceptions” that were “written with an odd, childish literary swagger” (19). He referred to himself as “we,” his brothers as “the Other Kid” and “the Little Kid,” and his father as “They”; their housekeeper and others were given fictitious names. These anecdotal writings reveal a troubled child who bullied others for attention:

We taking a sleigh away from a little girl, just to be acquainted. Trouble. Pushing another little girl into a snow pile; perhaps she’d speak to us. More trouble. Knocking a little boy’s hat off; that might lead to acquaintance. Little boy beating us fearfully. Oh, we’d just have to go away and be a hermit somewhere. (75)

Fort fell behind in school then dropped out entirely, meanwhile beginning to do newspaper work and to pen some little tales set in a newspaper office. The stories’ narrator sounds like Fort himself: asked to do a review, “we would not bother to go to a performance, but would just make a list of the participants and write our criticisms at home” (51). With a little money left by his grandfather, Fort spent two years traveling the world—at least part of it—and concluded grandiosely:

I had thirty-thousand, many colored, vividly diversified miles hoarded; experiences, impressions, hundreds of characters, the world’s scenery. Noth­ing more to see; everything in life known; only twenty-one years old, but now for the work of a master! (67)

Curiously, Fort kept no travel journal—apparently, says Steinmeyer (60), in­tend­ing to allow his experiences “to mix and mingle in his imagination to form vivid memories.”

After he married, Fort began to crank out stories, sitting at the kitchen table. One of his wry tales, “A Cattleship Mystery Solved,” presents a case in which cattle were inexplicably spooked on occasion with “bullocks gored and . . . leaping and crazy scrambling.” Then, with a twist ending, all is revealed: one cowhand had brought aboard a bright red shirt. Fort’s narrator concludes, “For a red shirt ain’t no article wanted on no cattleship.”

However, for someone who loved to disparage the “scientific” explanations of others and allegedly worked his way to England aboard a cattle ship (61, 83), Fort was misinformed: cattle are in fact color-blind; the notion that they (mostly bulls) are provoked by the color red comes mainly from the fact that matadors traditionally use capes of that color. It is actually the movement of the cape that attracts the bulls, not its hue (“Bullfight” 1960; “Beef Cattle” 2008), as has been shown by experiment (Stratton 1923). Fort’s carelessness here (not noted by Steinmeyer) foreshadows more to come.

Fort went on to write books and to engage in research to that end. A further inheritance permitted him to sit comfortably in the New York Public Library and indulge himself. He spent the remainder of his life scouring old newspapers and other periodicals for reports of mysterious occurrences. This was the limit of his investigations, a deficiency that magnified his bruised ego and bullying temperament.

Fort had soon completed two book manuscripts, known as X and Y. The first set forth his concept of an external force, X, that controlled society from its residence on the planet Mars. Unfortunately, Fort’s friend, famed novelist and occult dabbler Theodore Dreiser, sent the manuscript off to Popular Science Monthly, whose editor replied, “A vast amount of reading has been done which has not been correctly applied,” and again to Scientific American, which found it utterly nonsensical (147, 154). Y, a treatise on a supposed civilization at the North Pole, was similarly dismissed and too went unpublished.

Fort wisely destroyed both manuscripts, except for portions he would recycle, and reinvented his approach. Instead of advocating crank ideas that could make him a laughingstock, Fort would instead try to turn the tables on the laughers, putting “Dogmatic Science” on the defensive. He began by writing The Book of the Damned, explaining in the introduction, “By the damned, I mean the excluded.” He promised, “We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.” Pub­lished at the end of 1919, it bore on its dust jacket a blurb by Dreiser: “In this amazing book—the result of twelve years of patient research—the author presents a mass of evidence that has hitherto been ignored or distorted by scientists. . . . Things that [seem] incredible support the author’s argument, which he develops with strong touches of sardonic humor and flashes of sheer poetic insight.”

As evidence of Fort’s approach, consider the case that he saved for the final chapter of The Book of the Damned. Now known as “the devil’s footprints,” it is a mystery that transpired overnight in early February 1855 in Devonshire, England. Peculiar tracks reportedly led for a hundred miles through snowy countryside in an unwavering line that even crossed haystacks and roofs. As the occurrence was eagerly discussed in the newspaper, residents and outside biologists attempted to explain the tracks as those, if not of the devil, then perhaps of a badger or even a creature escaped from a traveling menagerie. From his armchair, looking over dubious and conflicting published accounts, Fort wrote satirically, “My own acceptance is that not less than a thousand one-legged kangaroos, each shod with a very small horseshoe, could have marked that snow of Devonshire” (Fort 1974, 307).

Of course, Fort had done no real investigating, and instead of attempting to resolve conflicting evidence, he had simply re­sponded in his juvenile, jack-in-the-box manner. In fact, we know that the trail in question was only straight in relatively short lengths and actually zig-zagged wildly as shown by lines plotted on a map that connect the reporting villages. The best evidence clearly demonstrates that multiple creatures were involved. In one village, for instance, the tracks proved to be merely those of cats, expanded and distorted by the snow having melted and refrozen (Nickell 2001, 10–17).

Fort followed The Book of the Damned with others: New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). In the latter, Fort reports on a “mystery of many deaths of human beings and cattle” in Trinidad in 1931. Although a local scientist had attributed the deaths to vampire bats with “a new form of insidious hydrophobia,” Fort challenges the solution—not with counter scientific opinion, not with his own on-site or in-depth research, but by merely stating without a single reference that “the existence of hydrophobia is so questionable, or of such rare occurrence, even in dogs, that the story of the ‘mad bats of Trinidad’ looks like some more of the sensationalism in science that is so obtrusive today . . .” (1974, 931). Never mind the froth on the bats’ bloody mouths that is symptomatic of rabies.

In fact, Fort was obviously unaware that vampire bats are common carriers of the rabies virus, which annually causes the deaths of many humans and farm animals in Trinidad and other tropical and subtropical climes (“Vampire bat” 2008). And so the “rabid vampires” theory may at least deserve less laughter than does Fort’s own inept opinings.

Fort does little better with other cases in his books. His brief mystifications about poltergeists, spontaneous human combustion, Bermuda-Triangle type vanishings, and similar reputed phenomena have largely been overshadowed by much more comprehensive, specialized efforts (e.g., Rogo 1979; Arnold 1995; Berlitz 1974), and they in turn have been generally trumped by investigative works (e.g., Christopher 1970, 142–163; Nickell 2001, 28–36; Kusche 1975).

Yet Fort was a major figure in establishing the genre of the “unexplained.” To the question of whether he was a genius or a crank, Steinmeyer (298) lets Fort have the last word:

Why this everlasting attempt to solve something? Whereas it is our acceptance that all problems are soluble-insoluble. Or that most of the problems we have were at one time conceived of as solutions of preceding problems. That every Moses leads his people out of Egypt into perhaps a damn sight worse: Promised Lands of watered milk and much adulterated honey.

So why these attempts to solve something?

There, I think, Fort reveals his major failing. Explains Martin Gardner (1957, 49):

Fort doubted everything—including his own speculations. When his more astute admirers insist that he was not the arch-enemy of science he was reputed to be, but only the enemy of scientists who forget the ephemeral character of all knowledge, they are emphasizing the sound and healthy aspect of Forteanism. It is true that no scientific theory is above doubt. It is true that all scientific “facts” are subject to endless revision as new “data” are uncovered. No scientist worthy of the name thinks otherwise. But it is also true that scientific theories can be given high or low degrees of confirmation. Fort was blind to this elementary fact—or pretended to be blind to it—and it is this blindness which is the spurious and unhealthy side of Forteanism. If a Baker Street Irregular began to think Sherlock Holmes actually did exist, all the good clean fun would vanish. Similarly, when a Fortean seriously believes that all scientific theories are equally absurd, all the rich humor of the Society gives way to an ignorant sneer.

Fort never got far beyond mystery mongering and whimsical fantasizing. Only on the rare occasion did he pursue an enigma with a letter seeking more information. Like many of today’s Forteans, while decrying debunking by others, Fort was himself a would-be debunker of any explanation that could be called mundane that did not stimulate his childlike imagination.

In short, Fort was not an investigator—that is, one who seeks neither to foster nor dismiss mysteries but attempts to solve them. The power of science is its unmatched ability to provide explanations, and indeed the progress of civilization can be seen as a series of solved mysteries, a concept Charles Fort could scarcely comprehend.

References:

  • Arnold, Larry E. 1995. Ablaze! The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion. New York: M. Evans and Company.
  • Berlitz, Charles, with J. Manson Valentine. 1974. The Bermuda Triangle. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
  • Beef Cattle Production Information. 2008. Available online at www.beef-cattle.com/beef-cattle-biology-and-terminology.htm; accessed April 9, 2008.
  • Bullfight. 1960. Encyclopedia Britannica.
  • Christopher, Milbourne. 1970. ESP Seers and Psychics. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.
  • Fort, Charles. 1974. The Complete Books of Charles Fort. New York: Dover.
  • Gardner, Martin. 1957. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover.
  • Knight, Damon. 1970. Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
  • Kusche, Lawrence David. 1975. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved. New York: Warner Books.
  • Nickell, Joe. 2001. Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.
  • Rogo, D. Scot. 1979. The Poltergeist Experience. New York: Penguin.
  • Stratton, G.M. 1923. The color red, and the anger of cattle. Psychological Review 30:4 (July), 321–325.
  • Vampire bat. 2008. Wikipedia. Available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bat; accessed April 11, 2008.
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