Image: Dreamstime
A lot of things happened in 2012, including scientific breakthroughs, a presidential re-election, and a tragic school shooting. But a lot of things didn't happen this past year.
We realize it's a little strange to discuss things that never occurred — after all, countless things didn't happen in 2012, from an asteroid hitting Earth, to Justin Bieber marrying a supermodel, to Abraham Lincoln climbing out of his grave to praise Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" as being more historically accurate than "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."
But there were a handful of stories that made the news, often with a splash, promising big news, and turned out to be non-stories, non-events. Here are a few.
Eagle Snatches Baby in Canadian Park
It was a bizarre, terrifying sight seen by millions of people: A large bird videotaped in the skies above a Canadian park suddenly swooping down and snatching a baby. The bird drops the child a few seconds later, flying away and leaving shocked bystanders. A day after the video went viral, students at an animation school, Centre NAD, admitted that they had created the hoaxed video. A statement issued by the school credited (or blamed) three of its students and explained, "both the eagle and the kid were created in 3D animation and integrated in to the film afterwards." As interesting — and scary — as the event was, it turned out to be a non-story.
According to many, Dec. 21, 2012, was to be the end of times. Or the beginning of the best of times, depending on who you talked to. 2012-inspired folks tended to fall into one of two categories: The gloom-and-doomers expected global cataclysm involving death, fire, planetary collapse, pole shifting, and other unspecified natural (or even supernatural) disasters. The second kind were more optimistic, expecting Dec. 21 to usher in a new age of cosmic peace, harmony, and global enlightenment. Scholars patiently explained that despite dramatic claims to the contrary, the Mayans didn't actually hold much significance for the date, and they certainly didn't think the world would end on that date. Their calendar did not, as many assumed, "end" on that day; it was simply the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.
Much of the hype and concern over the date originated not from ancient nor modern Mayas, but instead New Agers. Neither doomsday nor world peace broke out, leaving some people relieved, others confused, and many amused. [Oops! 11 Failed Doomsday Predictions]
Bigfoot Proven Through DNA
This was also to be the year that genetic testing confirmed the existence of Bigfoot. According to a press release issued by a company called DNA Diagnostics detailing research by a Texas veterinarian, "A team of scientists ... confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called 'Bigfoot' or 'Sasquatch,' living in North America," the release reads.
Not only that, but Bigfoot is a half-human hybrid that had sex with human women approximately 15,000 years ago — or so the theory goes. If it all sounds a little dubious, it should: there was no evidence offered at all. The evidence, which has allegedly taken five years to collect and analyze, has yet to be published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. Until and unless scientists are allowed to examine the evidence, Bigfoot DNA will remain a non-story.
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5 Comments
Add CommentSilly season again. I was a teenager in the first flying saucer era, post WWII. Like so many sci-fi fans I was a believer until one night, at age 22, flying low in a Navy light plane up the California coast, we caught up with and passed a whole squadron of distinct saucers in V-formation moving through the sky just above us. The pilot laughed and said there was a new shopping mall below, advertising itself after dusk with a bank of huge lights pointed into the sky, reflecting off an inversion layer in the lower atmosphere. I was a Naval officer stationed at a Naval Air Station and had only days earlier seen the "saucer" of a reflected high altitude weather balloon. After that week I took the alien-invader debunkers seriously and gradually became skeptical of the other fictions peddled by Cold War hysterics, wannabee saints and naive anarchists, until I'd managed to clear my mind of attic junk and make room for reality. But, in general, the True Believer tendency has increased among Americans. It's been swallowed and regurgitated by New Agers, "Rapture" Fundamentalists, Faux "News", Ayn Rand Libertarians, etc., on their website soapboxes. Isn't it more rational to face and actively protest probable realities? I don't want my grandchildren to inherit today's massive pollution, unaddressed global climate change, spread of firearms, bigotry, and all the other short-sighted, blind-faith partisanships that have played into the hands of multinational oligarchs--and which, in the U.S., have resulted in wars for greed and the gradual demolition of unions, jobs, Constitutional and human rights, public services, civilized discourse and culture. It's willful denial of reality that creates a "1984".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust the name "Bigfoot" is a hint that such an animal may be real, as those animals seem living in high latitudes, snow may be present for a long part of their year, and big feet help as snowshoeing. Local legends speak about the danger for women of being kidnapped for sexual purposes by these living things, and legends most times contain actual facts. Weindigo will be the next confirmed being, or this is just for Ghostbusters?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the most nonstory of the year was the near constant articles of pending apocalypse due to man-made global warming(AGW). Scientific American is guilty of this as well as many other literary venues!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am *not* studying for my Ph.D.! I'm reading Scientific American Magazine. There *IS* a difference.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe drawing connected to this article, showing an artist's view of Bigfoot, looks very close to the famous "Minnesota's man in an ice block", purportedly seen again in 1968. A TV program by a California based team specializing in searching for the truth inside misterious facts, published images, captured in Siberian Woods, of footprints on snow by something walking on two legs like us, but with a foot size more than twice ours'. These people showed also images of a DNA research lab having studied the genes in a hair sample coming from an Asian lamasery, that the monks say is hair from Yeti, the woman in lab said the DNA in this hair doesn't match any known anthropoid, and that they have no idea on to what the DNA belongs. Capturing or killing one of these beings would be criminal and exterminating an species, and taking into account how ethnic human groups have behaved against other tribes as of today, for sure these living things, (terrible things too?), have learned since hundreds of thousand of years, that coming close to humans is extremely dangerous, they just won't show, and nobody has an estimate of how many of them may exist, if any.
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