Open Thread

Anybody got any good crackpot theories?

I was working on a good one about intelligent alien life and evolution, but I need charts and graphs. Trying to explain it without visual aids is taking too long. So, how about half-baked crackpottery?

First, precognition. Where would you look for that? Well, why muddy the waters by talking to people when you can look at animals? Think of natural selection. Mosquitoes and flies, for example, have been swatted at for millions of years. Wouldn't it follow that the best and easiest to find examples of precognition in the animal kingdom would lie with an insect whose life depends upon getting away at just the right moment? All those years of selective pressure have created the fly and the mosquito... who fly away just before you swat at them. Ever notice that? Right at the instant you decide to take one down, bam. They leave. Typically. That's because they can see into the future.

It might also be that they can read your mind. So you'd have to test whether it's ESP or precognition. But I doubt it's the latter, because that would require a level of intelligence they can't have.

Oh, even more crackpot?

How about aphrodisiacs? From what we know about natural selection, it stands to reason that the most potent aphrodisiac must lie in some property of STD's. Right? Over millennia, one or more STD's must have developed the ability to crank out some protein or chemical that causes people to feel hawny. There has to be something there that would put pills like Viagra and Cialis out of business, something that would work for women too. Has anyone heard of such research?

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posted by rdbrewer at 02:44 PM

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