Off-Topic Lovecraftian Horrors: Adventures of the Squamous and Rugose

Here are two marginally related videos that I could not resist sharing:

First, we have the adventures of Lil' Cthulhu. It's a new day and the stars are right. It's time to play. Wake up Lil' Cthulhu!



This is an excellent video for those who want their children to be inducted into the ceremonies and blasphemous, mind-shattering secrets of the Great Old Ones from a young age. Starting early is important!

And following this, we have Heartache Over Innsmouth. This is a moving romantic song, about a man who has fallen in love with a girl who joins the cult of Dagon.



As far as I am aware, Dagon is the only deity in Lovecraft which actually appears in the Bible. Dagon was a common Semitic agricultural deity. For many centuries, commentators(such as Rashi) noted the similarity between Dagon and the Hebrew word for fish, dag. This lead them to believe that Dagon was some sort of oceanic or fish deity. Laboring under this belief, Lovecraft chose Dagon as the name of the horrific creature under the ocean which rules over the Deep Ones. Some later writers have attempted to retcon this discrepancy by suggesting that Dagon was not that horrific being's name but rather was a name given to it by the cultists as they needed a name. They thus chose that name due to their own mistaken belief that Dagon in the Bible was a fish deity.

Barack Obama, the Turing-Lovecraft Theorem and Horcruxes

One nice thing about a blog is that you can see how people arrived at your blog. Many hits come from Google searches. Some of those Google searches are phrased explicitly as questions while in other cases what the individual is searching for is obvious. This blog entry will examine some of the more common search strings and questions which blog entries here do not already answer.

Search string: "Is Barack Obama a clone?" Number of searches: At least 15 counting all variations.

People searching for this question or some variation thereof normally find my entry on Barack Obama's position on cloning. So is Barack Obama a clone? No. Of course not. That's even stupider than thinking that Obama's parents deliberately faked a birth certificate so he could run for President 40 years later. That's even stupider than thinking that 9/11 was an inside job. That's even dumber than thinking that scientists invented evolution to undermine belief in God. Cloning is a really difficult technology. We've had trouble until recently even cloning mammals. The idea we could clone people 40 years ago is absurd. And there's no coherent aim to cloning Obama.

On second thought, maybe it isn't so unreasonable. It would explain a great deal such as why he's been so uncooperative about giving a long-form birth certificate for the birthers to examine. And it explains why he is so charismatic. Someone tell Orly Taitz! Obama wasn't born in Hawaii or Kenya or anywhere else! Maybe he was never born but cloned in a vat by the Illuminati! Sadly, this hypothesis contradicts the preexisting conspiracy theory that Obama is a reptilian infiltrator. Maybe he is a cloned reptilian hybrid?

Search strings: "Turing-Lovecraft Theorem" and "proof of Turing-Lovecraft theorem" and others. Number of searches: Around 10.

According to Charlie Stross's "The Atrocity Archives," (discussed in this blog entry) Alan Turing did not commit suicide but rather was killed by the British government because he discovered a very dangerous theorem. This theorem that disproves the Church-Turing thesis and if thought about the wrong way could summon Lovecraftian horrors. This theorem's exact statement and proof are not included in the book. The book is fiction. As in, not real. As in, no such theorem exists. Just as H.P. Lovecraft wrote fiction. As in, not real. As in, his monstrosities came from his imagination, not from horrific realms beyond the understanding of mortals.

Or maybe that's just what they want you to think. Don't you find it interesting that not only has Barack Obama never denied being a reptilian clone but he's also never denied that the Turing-Lovecraft theorem is real?

Search string: "How do I make a Horcrux in real life." Number of searches: Too many to count. I get this search or some variation almost every single day. The total number of searches is easily in the hundreds.

This search and very similar search turn people to the blog entry arguing that it is acceptable under halacha (Orthodox Jewish law) to make a Horcrux if one had the ability to do so. Fortunately, horcruxes are not real. They are fictional. They are from the Harry Potter books. The Harry Potter books are fictional. Again, fictional means not real. You cannot split your soul into pieces using a magic wand. Sorry. But no.

Again. This may just be what Barack Obama wants you to think. That way, if the public does ever find out about his reptilian clone heritage and tries to kill him, they won't realize that he'll be unstoppable unless his Horcrux is destroyed. What would his Horcrux be? Remember, that if he is a reptilian clone, he obviously enjoys laughing at us while he and his reptilian compatriots slowly take over the world. So he might leave clues about his intentions. Isn't it a bit suspicious that Harry Potter, who turns out to be an accidental Horcrux for Voldemort, sees the shape of an acorn in his tea leaves in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and yet Obama was elected with the help of an organization called... ACORN?! All the pieces are coming together!

Sadly, there were two common hits from Google that don't seem to fit this. Indeed, they seem to be questions from people who don't have a problem distinguishing fact from fiction. I'll try to put together serious blog entries about those topics when I have time.

And apologies to Glenn Beck.

Alan Turing, Apologies, and Cthulhu

The British Government has finally apologized for its treatment of Alan Turing. Turing was one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. He was responsible for founding computer science and he lead the effort to crack the Enigma encryption used by the Germans during World War II. This work saved many Allied lives and according to some historians proved crucial to the victory over the Axis forces. Without Turing's work, our world would look very different. However, Turing was gay. In 1952, Turing was convicted for engaging in homosexual acts. He was forced to undergo hormone therapy which lead to weight gain and other problems. Turing's security clearance was revoked. At the time, homosexuals were considered a security risk because of the potential of blackmail. The fact that the entire risk of blackmail was because they were considered a security risk apparently did not matter. Nor did it matter that since Turing was publicly gay, there was no possible risk of blackmail. Turing's ongoing consulting work with the government was terminated. Turing's life took a steady downhill side. In 1954, he committed suicide.

I am ambivalent about this apology. On the one hand, it is good to acknowledge how horribly Britain treated one of the saviors of civilization. On the other hand, apologies to the long dead always strike me as hollow. The living always face more than enough issues that are of far more practical importance than assuaging the feelings of the long-deceased.

Rather than discuss the pros and cons of such apologies, I am instead going to suggest three pieces of further reading.

First, Wikipedia has an excellent biography of Turing which explains his accomplishments and his mistreatment in far more detail than one can easily do in a short blog entry.

Second, Greg Egan, an excellent science fiction writer, has written a short story imagining a world in which Turing's life went slightly differently. In this case, "slightly differently" means had the assistance of a time-traveling robot. The story is more serious than one might think from that summary. The story looks at Turing's interactions with C.S. Lewis. I'm not sure the story is completely fair to Lewis overall, but it is very well-written and is an amusing what-if. Like most of Egan's writing, there's just enough plausibly correct mathematics to make it interesting.

Third, Charles Stross has written an amusing novel The Atrocity Archives in which Turing figures in the background. The essential premise is that Turing did not commit suicide but was assassinated by the British government to cover up far scarier discoveries he made (so presumably the Brits still owe Turing an apology in that universe). In that novel, mathematics is deeply connected to magic and thinking about certain theorems can accidentally lead to summonings of Cthulhu and other eldritch horrors. Turing was killed for discovering a series of powerful theorems including a proof that P=NP which if invoked improperly could destroy our universe. Unlike the Egan story, this is not a story I can claim has much in the way of serious merit. But it is very fun. By most accounts, Turing was a man with a sense of humor about things. I'd like to think that he'd smile to know that fifty years after he was dead, Great Britain would be apologizing to him at the same time that people were reading novels which linked him to Lovecraftian horrors.

Skepticism Is Not an Excuse for Sloppiness

While browsing a local bookstore a few days ago, I ran across a copy of James Randi's "The Supernatural A-Z: The Truth and The Lies." Randi is a professional magician and has been at the forefront of the skeptical movement for some time. The book is an encyclopedia of supernatural and fringe claims described from a skeptical perspective. Randi is a witty and clever writer. I therefore bought the book and looked forward to an entertaining learning experience.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. Browsing through the book, I found that it contains many errors and misleading statements. And these were only those detected by me from the (small) set of entries of which I had some prior knowledge.

One of the most glaring series of errors occurs in the entry Tetragrammatron. The entry reads (with internal formatting suppressed):

In the kabalah, this is the term for the four-letter name of God. In effect, it is the name of a Name. It varies from text to text. Some versions are JHVH, IHVH, JHWH, YHVH and YHWH. Since these are too sacred to be spoken outloud, the word `Adoni' is used when the name is spoken. This has led to a serious misunderstanding, since in Hebrew texts only the vowels of Adoni (or of `Elohim' - this makes it more confusing) are printed. Thus are produced the reconstructions Yahweh, Jehova, etc.

There's so much wrong with this entry that I'm not sure where to start. I'm going to refrain from pointing out the many minor errors, such as that the term "tetragrammatron" isn't actually connected to kabalah. There's no circumstance where only the vowels are printed. I'm not completely sure where Randi got this idea or what statement that this was based on. The most obvious is that in Hebrew generally only consonants are printed. It is possible that somewhere Randi got vowels confused with consonants and then thought it was something which applied only to the four letter name. The other likely possibility is that Randi was confused by the practice that, on the occasions when something is printed with vowels (such as prayer books and certain religious texts), sometimes the four letter name is printed with the correct consonants but using the vowels from Adoni. However, this practice is not the root of the vowelization in either "Yahweh" or "Jehovah."

This is not the only severe error. The entry for the Necronomicon reads:

Several additions of this grimoire have appeared. Said to have been first published in about AD 730, in Arabic, as Al Azif, by Abdul Alhazred, an English translation is attributed to John Dee. It relates powerful formulas for calling up dangerous demigods and demons who are dedicated to destroying mankind.

It is a bit surprising that a nominally skeptical work would discuss the Necronomicon without mentioning that it is a completely fictional work. The Necronomicon was originally written about by H.P. Lovecraft in his horror writing in the 1920s and 30s. It is in his explicitly fictional universe that all the details above are correct. Since Lovecraft, various hoax Necronomicons have been written, but those are all very much modern creations. While this is an error primarily of omission rather than commission it is a massive mistake which makes one wonder how much attention Randi has paid to the subject.

These are not the only entries with errors. There are misleading statements about the doctrines of Christian Science, and there are claims that are so wrong that two-minutes of fact checking would find them. For example, Randi claims that Cotton Mather presided over the Salem Witch Trials.

All these errors I found from browsing through the book for about an hour. There are many entries about which I know little or nothing and I have made no effort to check the accuracy of these entries.

There are serious pragmatic and ethical concerns with this sort of sloppiness. Pragmatically, there are three major issues: First, a moderately credulous individual might pick up this book, read through it and react against skepticism as a result of seeing such a major spokesperson of skepticism engaging in such intellectual laziness. Second, a skeptic might read the book, and rely on the incorrect information for later use and thus be caught out in a debate or discussion. Third, it is common for members of fringe groups to accuse skeptics of not taking the time to understand what they are analyzing. This gives unfortunate weight to that charge.

There are three ethical problems: Most seriously, readers expect when they buy a book by James Randi to buy a book that is accurate and has been subject to minimal fact-checking. It does a disservice to readers to sell them such poorly researched material. Second, Randi and the skeptical movement as a whole have repeatedly and correctly criticized various fringe groups for engaging in poor research and outright sloppiness. It is thus the height of hypocrisy to engage in the same behavior. Third, it is in general unethical to promote falsehoods and misunderstandings.

I'm also disturbed that I can find little discussion on the internet about the flaws in this book. The skeptical movement cannot be skeptical of others and then turn a blind eye to the flaws of their own. That's not skepticism. That's tribalism.