Okay, a lot of people have emailed me about the “Mars Bigfoot” (also under a variety of different names). I haven’t covered it thus far because I think there’s already way too much hype over it (it was a headline on most network news in Australia for crying out loud…”Is this proof of life on Mars?”). If you want to say it’s someone on Mars, go for it…but really, it’s just a rock. Reading more into it than that just debases some of the real mysteries that are worth investigating (but which will never, ever, make the network news). As Mac Tonnies said yesterday on Posthuman Blues: “The ‘alien’ has been dismissed by the ‘scientific blogosphere’ because it deserves to be dismissed.”
I would be far more open to the suggestion that it might be a sculpture or carving of some sort (not that I believe that) – it would be a far more plausible scenario than a humanoid figure only inches in height that doesn’t move for days on end, even when an interplanetary robot comes rollicking up to it. Goes to show that people aren’t thinking too much about it all, really.
Interestingly, two other things I stumbled across (without looking for them) this morning are quite topical: “The Stone Face“, and Fortean Times’s Simulacra photo section. Probably enough to answer those news reports on their own…
