Your author is in receipt of an email attachment from two different sources, MARS.pps (413KB), predicting that on August 27 (presumably August, 2010) Mars will appear as big as the moon in the night sky.

This bunk has been going around since 2003 when there actually was a close approach, due to the way Jupiter lined up with the sun, Earth and Mars. The exact wording of the 2003 attachment, which went viral (and now is apparently perennial), follows: "At a modest 75 power magnification (line break and new screen showing the full moon and Mars with approximately equal diameters) MARS WILL LOOK AS BIG AS THE FULL MOON TO THE NAKED EYE."

Okay, I observed the 2003 event, and I did think it was pretty spectacular. Mars was really bright. But I couldn't make out Valles Marineris or a polar cap (or any other surface feature, even a disk!) with my naked eye.

But stop to consider what would happen if Mars did look as big as the moon. Remember high school physics, Newton's inverse-square law? It applies to gravitation as well as light. If the moon were twice as far away as it is, it would appear one-quarter its size (invert 2 and square; you get one- quarter). The same law applies to gravity.

Imagine another gravitational field roughly that of the moon (technically, this field would depend on the mass, therefore the density of Mars with respect to the moon) in Earth's neighborhood. The least that could happen, if Mars were in the 'hood only briefly (that is if the relative orbital velocities of Mars and the earth were greatly different), would be global tidal anomalies. More significantly, the orbits of both planets would be forever altered (if you think about it, the solar system has been evolving for about 5 billion years now, so if things like this were going to happen, they would have happened by now--and indeed they did!).

If the relative velocities of the planets were very low, they could indeed collide (it was an event like this that probably produced the moon in the first place). But if the relative velocities were just right, the planets could orbit each other, at least for a while (the moon being a loose cannon in the middle).

Okay, at least there was some truth in the original email attachment. Also, in this case, the truth will be known if August 27 turns out not to be Doomsday. It's easy to deal with this bunk; it's relatively harmless. But what about "Barack Obama wasn't born in Hawaii" or "There's no scientific evidence for global warming"?

If people can seriously believe the bunk about Mars, what about these there's-just-no-there-there premises? It's hard to debunk the totally groundless. Believers would have to include only those who know nothing about Obama's birth and childhood (as do hundreds of people in Honolulu) or, in the other case, those who know nothing about meteorology and climatology. Just like many who enjoy magician's shows, they want to be fooled.

Exclusive Interview with
JIM MORRISON

"I see the bathroom is clear
I think that somebody's near
I'm sure that someone is following me, oh yeah..."
~"Hyacinth House", from L.A. Woman, The Doors, 1971

It was Friday, Aug. 13 and I was seeking a ghost.

From December of 1970 through January of 1971, an American rock band, The Doors, recorded and mixed their last album, L.A. Woman, in a studio at 8512 Santa Monica Boulevard known as The Doors Workshop, in what is now West Hollywood, in Los Angeles, California. The building still exists, reincarnated as Restaurante México, and it still harbors, according to the current denizens, the spirit of the band's chief lyricist and vocalist, James Douglas Morrison. Specifically, the troubled young genius manifests himself in the exact spot where he sang the now familiar album versions of "Love her Madly" and "Riders on the Storm", a spatial and spiritual locus which is now the restaurant's downstairs unisex bathroom.

Morrison died, allegedly of a heroin overdose in a bathroom, in Paris, the following July. Your author, having no personal paranormal experience (save my seeing a shadowy apparition at the foot of my bed at about four years of age), enlisted the help of Anna, herself a beautiful L.A. woman, who agreed to act as my medium and co-investigator. Anna has experienced several close encounters with phantasms, including at least one prior apparition in a bathroom! It should be pointed out, for the sake of clarity and scientific objectivity, that Anna is not a full-trance medium, but a clairvoyant, interdimensional telepath, and parapsychologist.

We set out for Hollywood equipped with the usual spectral recording equipment, an Ouija board, and our specially-designed experimental "jimbometer". Your investigators had no intention to trivialize Morrison's persona or the memory of this brilliant artist; indeed we are fans. But J.D.'s predisposition for whiskey (especially of the Bourbon genre) is well-known. In fact, there's a cocktail recipe for a "Jim Morrison" consisting of equal parts Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Old Crow, and Wild Turkey (mix with crushed ice and serve with a mint-leaf garnish).

The jimbometer, simple but elegant, consists of a bottle of Jim Beam (a sort of spectral "attractor") and a measuring tape, to quantify any psychokinetic effect on the fluid level within the bottle.

We arrived at the former Doors Workshop early on the afternoon of Friday, the thirteenth, keyed with anticipation. The restaurant hadn’t really opened yet, but we persuaded Manny, the bartender, to help us with our research. Lotus, the server, contributed the observation that occult ceremonies had occurred in the building (an apparent reference to Jim’s paramour Patricia Kennealy, a practitioner of Celtic Paganism). Lotus commented that one night, after hours, while the kitchen was being cleaned, the overhead light went out…for no reason!
Mel, one of the building’s current owners, told of an incident on December 9 (the morning after Jim’s birthday). Three photographic portraits of the singer had been arranged in the haunted bathroom (which, I should point out, is really a restroom, without proper bathing facilities). The busboy, having gone in to clean, called Mel to the room and she discovered that one of the portraits had fallen and there was a shot of Jack Daniels on the urinal!

Are you getting chills yet? Well, your author made the point in the very first posting that Millennium House is dedicated to the Truth. So, I maintained a scientific skepticism; how, after all, did she know that it was Jack Daniels and not, for example, Old Grand-Dad, Rebel Yell, or Pappy Van Winkle bourbon in that shot glass? But now, after having observed Mel in the bar, I can assure you, dear reader, that Mel knows her spirits.

As we prepared to enter the sanctorum of the BR, we set out the Ouija and began our research in earnest. In answer to the question, “Who is here?” we came up with this: R (maybe an S), B, D, G, Q, T, E, H. I couldn’t believe my eyes! But there it was on the notepad: Ernest Hemmingway! At first, it made no sense to me, but then I saw the relationship: Jim and Ernest both lived in Florida and Paris, they were both writers and musicians--restless spirits who each had caused his own demise. Most importantly, they were both vulnerable to our psychic attractor, the whisky.

It was time to enter the nexus of the ethereal vortex, the aural bathroom itself. With some trepidation (Jim was a little reckless in life, I could only imagine how he might be now!), we entered the nidus of paranormal activity. It was a fairly ordinary-looking institutional facility, distinguished only by commendable cleanliness, and, of course, the three portraits on the wall. We locked the door (so our research would not be interrupted), and we got set up the Ouija.

Anna began channeling. At that moment, the door handle shook! Ouija gave us an "E". The telekinesis-detector (Jimbometer) indicated a presence; we both checked it. The level of whiskey in the bottle went down a full two inches! In the midst of the psychic turbulence, Anna and I both experienced a feeling of extreme warmth in our throats and in the pits of our stomachs. Fluid began to ooze ectoplasm-like down three pictures of J.D. which hung on the wall! I unlocked the door and jerked it open. NO ONE WAS THERE!
Weeks later, as I write this post and I recall the astral experience, my psyche relives this encounter with the psionic and ethereal plane and, involuntarily, I shudder. And yet, the encounter, as it happened, left me with a warm and pleasant glow which I cannot forget. That aura recurs when I listen to (and harmonize with) Jim, unlike most rockers (puny tenors), a rich, full baritone.

Who could put it better than the lyricist of Love Street himself when he said: “Catacombs, nursery bones, winter women growing stones, carrying babies to the river”?

"I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps, "Oh look at that!" Then whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again--and they won't be able to forget me, ever." ~James Douglas Morrison

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Millennium House Art Center