Just when you thought humanity’s desperation for meaning had scraped the bottom of the barrel, someone lifted the barrel and found an even slimier layer underneath: pet psychics. These are self-proclaimed “animal communicators” who, for a modest fee — usually something insultingly close to your grocery budget — will “channel” your pet’s thoughts, emotions, and … Read more
If there’s one thing more enduring than human stupidity, it’s the deep, desperate hope that someone, somewhere, has figured out how to escape it — preferably by building a machine out of junkyard parts and disappearing into the swirling folds of time. Enter time travel: the grand, glittering promise that somewhere out there, beyond the … Read more
You haven’t truly plumbed the depths of human gullibility until you’ve stood ankle-deep in dust, surrounded by plywood storefronts, being lectured by a seventeen-year-old wearing a fake sheriff’s badge about the “tragic spectral echoes” of men who allegedly died mining fool’s gold with fool’s tools for fool’s wages. Welcome to Silver Flats, Colorado — once … Read more
There is, in this endlessly gullible world of ours, no shortage of ways to make yourself look like a prize fool, but none—none—compares to the unique spectacle of a grown adult stumbling around a field, clutching two bent pieces of wire like they’re about to divine the very secrets of the universe. Dowsing, for the … Read more
There are few things on this planet more impressive than Stonehenge. And there are even fewer things more embarrassing than the way people talk about it. A prehistoric ring of gigantic stones? Amazing. A feat of prehistoric engineering? Absolutely. Proof of extraterrestrial intervention, ancient power grids, or secret portals to other dimensions? Please. If anything, … Read more