Encounter With A Mythological Beast (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

There is a difference in our positions. I have acknowledged the possibility that you saw a white hart but you have not (practically speaking) averred the possibilty of error. But I am also pointing out that you may be suffering from Bodmin Puma syndrome (and, yes, it is a syndrome....does anybody here really deny this?) and I have said that the evidence would appear to lean towards the latter. True, I have used simple tricks-of-the-rhetorician's-trade but this is merely my habitual method for ensuring everything is a little more interesting than mere advocacy usually permits (read the current political discussions if you need further testament on this point).

I think I am the only one here who truly understands that it is a nice judgement and I am also the most likely to change my view as information comes in. And how the information floods in! The pic showing that shorn sheep are practically indistinguishable from white harts fills me with righteous joy. Far better than photos of large black tomcats looking like pumas in the middle distance.

Remember, Chad, when it comes right down to it, you have only your fallible perception rooting for you. And Hatty. A gruesome combination.

PS The photo actually shows a white vicuna (of which there are a great many ferals nowadays in the highlands) but hey what do I know.

[nemesis8]

I am sorry Chad......conclusive proof .....it was a baby camel.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4r6ze_baby-camel_animals

Looks familiar.... doesn't it, admit it, repent. You are not chosen. You are a fraud. Hang your head in shame.

[Ishmael]

[Chad]

Well she certainly looks more like this red deer�



�than she does this vicuna! (Sorry I couldn�t find a white one� they�re rarer than White Harts.)



And although mine isn�t as pretty as the ones Ish found� even my legendary good looks can be less obvious if the light and angle are wrong.

P.S. Mick, I was talking about the highlands of Scotland�not Peru.

(If you really do have a reference to feral vicuna in Scotland I�d love to read up on them.)

[Mick Harper]

Yes, all right, I admit my vicuna suggestion was an experiment -- now the idea has been launched onto the zeitgeist 'sightings' will start coming in later this year. But notice that now we are discussing whether pictures of white harts are white harts. Not quite the same thing as an ageing rou� desperate to recapture the visions of his past.

[Chad]

[Hatty]

[Chad]

This is going too far... I'm sorry Hat, I'm not sure I want you on my side of the argument if you can't distinguish between a sheep and one of these....



...and for god's sake don't compound things by bringing goats into it.

[Mick Harper]

Talking to a Stonehenge expert today he mentioned he'd just been on Exmoor which launched me off on a puma expos�. Anyway I was chortling away about wide-eyed ingenues who are always seeing white harts everywhere when he said a good friend of his had just seen one at Broadwindsor in Dorset and the sighting had been confirmed by a neighbour.

So either we have a mass nationwide outbreak of these creatures or we are back in Bodminbeastland. Remember, the more evidence you adduce, the more likely it is not true!

[Grant]

[Mick Harper]

I know....paradoxical but true. Consider crop circles. When the first one appeared -- it was literally a circle -- then it was considered a natural phenomenon (and examples were looked for in historical accounts). When two, three, four appeared it was explained that now we knew what to look for we would find more of them. When the hundredth appeared it had to be either aliens-from-outer-space or Young Farmers after a night drinking.

Same with the White Hart Pheenom. If one is born in this country every fifty years it will be so reported (or not...). But when two appear at the same time -- one in the highlands and one in Dorset -- then there must be the possibility that at least one sighting is spurious. But now comes the rub (and it's what put paid to crop circles). Once it is established that one sensible witness is capable of error, then all are capable of error. If one crop circle can be made by humans, they all can. So look out for more witnesses in more parts of the country.

[nemesis8]

[quote="Ishmael"]

[Mick Harper]

Some of you may have come to realise the underlying reason for the existence of this syndrome (quite apart from whether the sightings are genuine or not on this occasion). It is a matter of good taste. When a friend tells us something it is not within the bounds of friendship to say, "Sorry, but you are quite mistaken". And especially when we don't know whether they're mistaken or not!

On the contrary we tend to 'own' the story. Indeed we then pass it on. We might even enhance the verisimilitude (cf a 'friend of a friend' with urban myths). Then comes the digging in when challenged because now it is not only our friend's virtue that is in question but our own.

Now I hasten to add that everybody here might easily have seen a white hart; that everybody is behaving with exemplary objectivity and wildlife nous. But as Applied Epistemologists it is our task to bear in mind that it might easily not be so either. And that everybody is in fact seeing shorn sheep (or whatever). The real trick though is to be an Applied Epistemologist after you've been abducted by aliens yourself. After you yourself have seen a living, breathing white deer and lived to deny the tale.

It's one thing questioning the bona fides of total strangers; it's another thing to question the bona fides of friends; but it's the ultimate thing to question the bona fides of oneself.

[Grant]

[Mick Harper]