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This week on The Gralien Report Podcast, how much of what the media is telling you is worth hearing? Furthermore, how does what you hear influence you in ways other than what logic should dictate? Are the “science” stories you read each day actually reflective of the current state of modern science, or do they yield to other forces?
In hour two, we continue our survey of what information we have available to us, and how we can access it, looking to reports of “sea monsters” as evidence of… what? Is there proof in historical data that we should be looking at more closely? What might the late Carl Sagan have to say about this, and would we agree? All this and more on this week’s Gralien Report Podcast.
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Listening to this podcast I was thrust, Proustian style, back to a summer I spent at Lake Tahoe (82/83?)
My Gran, Aunt and myself took an open top boat cruise across the lake one afternoon. I remember very clearly the sound of metal/folding chairs all scooting back at once from the 20 or so people who had previously been relaxed and sitting, all jumping up at once. My Grandmother shook me saying “The Lock Ness Monster!” I looked up to see what appeared to be a massive head sink into the water. I remember thinking the big brown/black eye looked like a big plate and whatever it was must have been heavy the way the waves pulled and curled down over it. I kept telling my family it was a submarine or something kids built. The next day in the local Tahoe City paper there were reports from others who saw the creature, including two off duty policemen who were water skiing.
It’s weird that I’ve only thought of this event a few times through the years, but asked my Aunt recently if she remembered this and she said “yes! It was big and very scary!”
What do I think it was? No freaking idea 🙂
It occurs to me that whatever took the tracking device didn’t need to have swallowed the entire great white shark. If the tracker was attached to its fin, all it needed to do was to bite off that part of the fin. The great white has natural enemies (Orcas spring readily to mind) and there are many more smaller animals who wouldn’t think twice about taking a bite out of someone they felt was threatening them.