Name an animal that doesn't have the letter 'A' in it. I bet you can't.

Well, actually, no, I don't. It really isn't that hard, if you think about it for eight seconds. No, really. Go ahead. Try it. What's the first animal that comes to mind?

No, 'cat' has an 'A' in it. How about 'dog'? Or 'cow'? Or 'horse'? Or 'rhinoceros'? 'Tiger'? 'Lion'? What about 'Demon Stingerfish'? Or 'Proboscis Monkey', also commonly known as the 'Long Nosed Monkey' - neither of those names have an 'A' in them.

OK, so I'm belabouring the point. Why? Well, if it's so childishly easy to think of an animal without an 'A' in its name, why are there so many Facebook posts claiming you can't do it?

You've all seen it, or one of its myriad variations. You think about it for eight seconds, or maybe even shorter, and realize you CAN think of one. "Me smart," you think to yourself. "Me show them how smart me is." You click on the picture, and type, D-O-G in the comment box, and hit 'enter.' Only then do you scan through the other comments and notice that eight hundred and seventy six other people have already typed 'dog' or 'cow' or 'red-tufted lemur'. And you suddenly realize that you didn't think of it because you're a zoological genius, but because it isn't even remotely difficult to do so.

So now you're thinking that the person who originally posted the 'challenge' is an idiot. But they aren't. In fact, they're the smart ones.

Here's another common one I'm sure you've all seen: There's an interesting looking picture posted. It may even have one of those little arrows in the center of it, denoting that it's a video. There's some superlative comment, like, "Amazing!" And it tells you to 'like' the picture, then type a specific word or number in as a comment and something awesome will happen. You've done it, haven't you? Yes, you. Don't look away. Did anything awesome happen? Did anything happen at all? I didn't think so.

So, if thinking of an animal without an 'A' in its name is child's play, and if absolutely nothing at all happens when you follow the instructions and type the prescribed comment, why do all these posts keep appearing on Facebook?

People are buying your eyes.

Every business or corporation has a Facebook page these days. Those pages are, let's face it, advertising. They are most effective if they are seen by a large number of eyes. Facebook has algorithms that choose what posts and pages you see in your newsfeed, based, in part, on how popular those pages are. They decide how popular those pages are by counting up how many people have liked or commented on status updates on those pages. The more activity a page has, the more likely Facebook is to show that page's status updates to a wider audience. So, new pages starting out want to convince a lot of people to like and comment on a lot of their posts right away. Some more ethical businesses might run contests, or simply generate a lot of interesting and on-topic content for the page. Less scrupulous businesses might look for easier ways to get a lot of clicks quickly. And some, at the extreme lazy end of the spectrum, would be perfectly amenable to buying an existing page that already has an excellent 'visibility' in Facebook's algorithms, and renaming it for their own business.

Have you ever seen a post from 'Joe's Meats and Auto Repairs' - or whatever - and thought, "that's funny, I don't remember ever 'liking' that page before"? Well, Joe just bought that page with an existing fan base of tens of thousands of geniuses who figured out that 'cow' doesn't have an 'A' in it, and renamed it.

And you thought you were the smart one.

So you want to play mind games...

A couple of years ago I happened across the blog of one Denyse O'Leary. One of many, actually - she maintains about fourteen, it seems, and spends most of her time contriving to link from each to all the others in an attempt to create some kind of meta black hole. Mixed in between the links to her other blogs, and the further links to her Amazon page where she hawks her books, she manages to cram in some confused, rambling anti-"Darwinist" screeds, and Intelligent Design apologetics.

I don't remember the exact matter in question, but I left a comment on one of Ms. O'Leary's posts asking what I thought was a perfectly reasonable question. The comment was deleted in extremely short order. I emailed Ms. O'Leary, asking her why she had deleted the comment, to which she replied that she only allowed comments that were truthful, or factual, or some similar descriptor. Funny, that. I had thought the point I raised was factual. What Denyse really meant was that she only allowed comments that agreed with her world view and personal opinion.

I guess those weren't all that common, as her blogs no longer accept any comments at all.

That kind of reaction, censorship in order to protect oneself against uncomfortable and inconvenient realities, is all too common in the world of "Woo." Whether it is religion, or alternative medicine, or conspiracy theory, woo-meisters will always choose to end a dialogue when presented with actual facts that are difficult for them to rebut. On another occasion, I wrote a blog post about a local Homeopath in which I discussed some of the claims she made on her public website. Rather than address my criticism of her claims, she chose to complain to my ISP, and they chose to delete my blog entry with no warning, no explanation, and no recourse.

These events are brought to mind by a couple of similar experiences I have recently had, although not with people who traditionally fall into the category of "woo." At least people who do not, at first look, appear to fall into that category...


The first instance occurred last week, when I was directed to a web forum for audiophiles. Now, audiophilia is generally not grouped in with other "woo" because it really does no harm to individuals - unless you count to the wallets of those who fall under its sway. However, the claims made by audiophiles, and by the companies that make and sell the products they buy, are equally as specious as those of any homeopath, astrologer, or Catholic Priest. On this occasion, I read a forum thread talking about accessory power cables available for high end audio equipment. Never mind the miles of questionable wire the power flows through to get to one's house, apparently changing a three foot power cable from the wall to one's amp can result in remarkable improvemments in sound.

The person who directed me to the discussion - a Grammy winning sound engineer - had spoken up to say that he had done careful listening tests and was unable to hear a difference between different power cables - or any reasonable quality speaker or interconnect cables for that matter. He was looking for some support from some reasonable and skeptical people, so I registered for the forum, and posted a reply.

I did not criticise any of the posters. I did not accuse them of lying, or of being deluded, or of being stupid. I wrote one simple, factual sentence. I said, "if you can successfully tell the difference between different cables in a controlled listening test, you can win one million dollars." That was all.

Being a brand new member, my post was not published immediately, rather directed to the moderation queue, so I determined to come back later to see if there were any replies. Later, I was unable to login to the forum. It appears that the forum moderators/administrators deleted my first and only post, and immediately IP banned me from the forum. For making a simple statement of fact.


The second thing happened just this past weekend. Have you seen the NHL commercials currently airing in which famous plays are "rewound"? The first one I saw was the one that asks, "what if Orr didn't fly," and shows Bobby's iconic goal being "unscored", and Orr flying backwards through the air to land on his feet and retreat from the net. The ads end with the line, "history will be made." I believe the suggestion is that, even if the NHL's most famous plays had never happened, new history will be made, starting in this year's playoffs.

The ads have become popular fodder for YouTube spoofs, with video creators picking out all their favourite imfamous plays, and asking, "what if..." They are being reposted all over the internet. One of my Facebook "friends" posted one to her profile showing the contentious triple overtime goal by Brett Hull that won the Stanley Cup for Dallas over Buffalo in 1999. This spoof asks the question, "what if Brett didn't cheat?" Of course, this "friend" is a Buffalo fan.

I commented on her link, pointing out that Brett did not, in fact, "cheat;" that the goal, though hotly contested by the Buffalo team, was completely legal. She promptly responded that I didn't know what I was talking about, that she was a huge hockey fan, and had been all her life, therefore she knew the goal was illegal, and that "they" had changed the rule right after that game (the inisinuation was that the NHL had somehow tried to post-legitimize Hull's goal).

Well! Anyone who knows me knows that attempting to present me with "facts" based on ideology rather than information is just begging to be schooled. I did the research. I scoured YouTube for every replay of that goal I could find so I could refresh my memory of exactly how it had unfolded. I looked up the rule in question - the crease crashing rule that was in force for only that one year - and read it carefully. I compared the details clearly visible in the replays to the rule. I then returned to comment again. I quoted the exact language of the rule that pertained to Hull's goal, and pointed out where and why in the replay it was evident that the goal was legal. I also explained that the rule wasn't changed in order to validate Hull's goal, but because it was a poorly thought out rule to start with. The rule did, in fact, do what was intended, that is, reduce the instances of players crashing the net in order to distract and impede the goaltender. Unfortunately, it also resulted in dozens of goals being called back that should not have been; goals on which there had been no goaltender interference or distraction, either intentional or inadvertent.

The response to my reply? She "unfriended" me. It was more important to her to preserve her illusions about the perceived massive NHL conspiracy against the Buffalo Sabres, than to engage in honest dialogue about the actual facts of the matter. She was just like the audiophiles, or the Homeopath, or Denyse O'Leary, all of whom chose to avoid dialogue rather than confront reality; to surround themselves with sycophants and toadies and yes-men who were willing to join them in drinking the woo kool-aid.

Me, I choose to live in the world of fact, and deal with uncomfortable realities as they present themselves.