Why Team Skeptic Is Made Of Awesome "From Abracadabra to Zombies"

Look man, I'm a know it all skeptic (just like you guys), I'm smarter than the average nonskeptic (by a million gazillion miles), I'm better looking, my hair is more luminescent and fragrant and yeah, that six pack thing. Any who...When I do not know the answer to something, I just tell the truth-"I don't know the answer." Revoke my skeptics card if you must, but I have never heard of the Nasca Lines of Peru.

"The Nazca lines are geoglyphs and geometric line clearings in the Peruvian desert. They were made by the Nazca people, who flourished between 200 BCE and 600 CE along rivers and streams that flow from the Andes...Dark red surface stones and soil have been cleared away, exposing the lighter-colored subsoil, creating the "lines"... From the air, the "lines" include not only lines and geometric shapes, but also depictions of animals and plants in stylized forms. Some of the forms, including images of humans, grace the steep hillsides at the edge of the desert...it is unlikely spacecraft could have landed in the area without disturbing some of the artwork or the soil. There is no evidence of such disturbance."

The last line is the best because it implies that aliens were in on it. There have also been people that have theorized that is has something to do with Astrology of the time, which as ancient and not as smart as us people they certainly were capable of that-that was their "religion" per say. Others have said that it is a massive track where they had running races-as indicated by the "curvy" nature of the tracks (prob. not); while others have theorized that it is a massive aqueduct system, because after all, they do live in the desert. While anything can be possible, as skeptics we have to ask...is it probable.

Hey aliens, touch my monkey.

First of all, could these early Peruvians have used the lame technology of their day (did they even have shovels), using countless generations of workers (and for all intensive purposes, they were slaves-right(?)) over hundreds and hundreds of years time to build elaborate designs into the hard rock desert landscape. Yes, absolutely. Whether the workers did so voluntarily or by the encouragement of the whip, that remains to be seen.
Did they build it for running races. Mmmm, I don't think so. Could it have been a way to capture the precious water that is so, errr, precious, in the desert climate. Yyyyyeeeeeaaaaaaa, I guess, but the civil engineer that came up with the idea is totally stupid by ancient or modern standards (Why not make a lake, right), so I don't think so.
Lastly, is it a landing strip for those aliens that weirdoes keep talking about, even tho there is no evidence for aliens ever ever, and there probably will never ever ever be evidence. It seems highly unlikely to me. Just like the Loc Ness monster or Bigfoot, dontcha think that after the 100's of years looking for these things that we would have seen them by now. Didn't Carl Sagan send a message to aliens in, like, the 70's. If there were aliens dontcha think they would give a shout out to Carl "The Man" Sagan. I think so, dude was so epic.
This is the beauty os skepticism and even the scientific method. If you don't know something, that is know it with evidence and reason, hypothesis and testing, then just say that you don't know the answer. We don't have a Gawd to put in the gaps-we have to find a real answer. If anything, instead of making shit up why don't we find out together. If rather do that than say "Aliens" and offer no proof, rhyme or reason. In fact we can quote the character Jeff Spicoli for the 80's documentary Fast Times At Ridgemount High when famously answer the question from Mr Hand by saying...

Bringing it all Back Home-Bullying

When I promised a summation of conclusions about bullying behavior based on ponderings and experiences described in those recent other posts, I didn’t grasp what I was setting myself up for.  Every direction I took in my thinking led to unsettling places I couldn’t trust without backing up and thinking it through from other directions.

Okay, all that prefacing and cowardly side-step-waffling out-of-the-way, here’s what eventually I found myself inescapably glued to as a conclusion:

Bullying is so much a part of life on this planet we don’t even notice it.  It’s the glue holding every community together, every species, cross-species, inter-species.  It’s the determinant governing community behavior of every description.  We just don’t recognize it as bullying unless it falls into a class of activities we happen to disapprove in our matrix of human-cum-societal judgements.

That’s if ‘bullying’ is defined as a behavior, as opposed to being anchored to a larger concept:  the source from which the power being exerted is derived.  Building a concept bounded by ‘legitimacy’ and protocols does allow what we usually label bullying to be cut out of the herd and isolated in a pen of repudiation.  But by doing so we’d be forced to accept an equally unpalatable conclusion:

If the ‘bullying’ behavior subtracted from the bullying definition is legitimate because it derives power from approved sources of authority is an important piece of what holds things together, we’re stuck with it.  Lock, stock and banana-peel.  As an example, that 5th grade teacher of mine who liked to beat-hell out of me and other kids who weren’t in a ‘protected’ mode, wasn’t bullying us at all.  Reason being that his power derived from his position as a designated tool of the power of legitimate authority.

Similarly, all that Jew-baiting that went on in the 3rd Reich and elsewhere in the world.  The pervasive use of police forces to beat hell out of union strikers in the late 1800s and early 20th Century.  The iron fist used constantly after the Indian wars in the western US to keep tribal members on the REZ and out of the hair of the ‘legitimate’ citizenry far into the 20th Century.  The removal of the tribes east of the Mississippi, to designated places west of the Mississippi, even though doing so was a clear violation of previous treaties and agreements.  National Guardsmen shooting students at Kent State.