Skeptical Humanities

Yeah, I’ve been out of contact recently, traveling the country, racking up foursquare points (why, I’m not sure), and learning the ways of the iPad. Things have settled back down, and I can take a little time to bring everyone up to speed on the wide, wide world of weird.

In the next few days, I’ll be heading out to Seattle to interview for a job in Mississippi (yeah, it’s easier if you just don’t think about it). I have seized upon the opportunity to make sure that I have a long layover at the Denver International Airport, which is where the bigwigs who are really in charge are going to wait out the end of the world. Or detain gun owners. Or transfer planes. Nobody is too sure about that. Anyway, I’m there. I’ve been trying to contact the artist whose murals have come under suspicion most goofy so that I could meet and interview him during my 4 hours at DIA, but given the weird attention his work has received, he’s hard to get in touch with, as you might imagine. (If anyone has any ideas…the email addy on his website is obsolete.)

• Yes, Ron Paul is a goofball, but guilt by association is not the way to sink his absurd campaign against reality.
• Who’d have thunk that the KKK considered themselves to be “Values Voters”? Not Ron Paul, apparently. (The image everyone is talking about is apparently not faked. I would say that the fact that Paul’s photo was taken with a Klansman does not reflect on Paul. Politicians have their pictures taken with lots of people, and when you are pressing the flesh you don’t get to select the people you pose with. I’m more concerned that he appeared at something billed as a Values Voters event.)
• Have you ever noticed that the only reason totally f-ing insane people don’t get elected to high office is because of a conspiracy? It’s almost diagnostic, it is.
• Of course, Ron Paul is not a racist. Just take it from FederalJack’s Black Friends. Not from Paul himself. (Let’s face it, even Ron Paul does not take it from Ron Paul.) Or, and Shatner-help-me I’m linking to the Weekly Standard, the people who worked with Paul: “Ex-Aide Says Ron Paul Is a 9/11 Truther & Isolationist Who Thinks U.S. Shouldn’t Have Fought Hitler.” But at least the John Birch Society likes and quotes Paul:

• The Atlantic gives extended coverage to the strangeness that is Ron Paul in the context of American conspiracism.
• I dare you to out-Christian this guy. (Also, if you contract the “McGuire Fire” he encourages in his logo, get a shot of penicillin and it should clear right up.)
• Do you want to see the most original Iowa Caucus coverage? “Iowan Republican Voters Subconsciously Sense Gingrich’s Transhuman Identity“
• Get ready for MexiCanadAmerica!
• This headline is a total trainwreck: “Whitley Streiber Interviews Graham Hancock on Coast to Coast AM.”
• Aliens are invading the solar system using the evil power of cylinders! Mercury Cloaking Ship Kerfuffle II, mayhap?
• Blah blah. Mossad did 9/11. Blah blah.
• I’m looking for the phrase “raw milk” in the Constitution but can’t seem to find it.
• Alex Jones. Eugenics. YouTube. ‘Nuff said.
• It really wouldn’t be a week in conspiracy without a mention of Vigilant Citizen, who interprets a Lady Gaga video as representing, what else, MiNd CoNtRoL!
• I feel sort of bad for the Eisenhower family. Laura, who says she was recruited for a Mars mission, is now saying that “unity consciousness will collapse military-industrial complex.” I’m not sure she knows what any of those words means. Also, the following Exopolitics headline should be read in the voice of Hubert Farnsworth: “GOOD NEWS! Universe singularity now emanating pre-wave energy for ‘enlightened unity consciousness’“
• I don’t remember if I wrote about this one, but it’s interesting enough to mention again. The Obamas had a UFO on their Christmas card this year. What are they trying to tell us? (Humorous answers are encouraged in the comments below. Or humourous if you hail from foreign lands.)
• 1,000,000 people visit the 9/11 memorial. (I was one of them.) Truthers leave comments.
• Mike Adams claims that our crops are going to be bombed with agent orange.
• Here’s a funny one: Obama uses Air Force One to fetch his dog from Hawaii for a photo-op. Politico mentions an excellent historical precedent: “It’s worth noting that this bears eerie resemblance to an accusation hurled at Franklin D. Roosevelt: that a military ship was dispatched to rescue his Scottish terrier from an Alaskan island at a cost of millions of dollars to taxpayers.” Lastly, they have a rockin’ quote from FDR: “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala.” Heheh.
• The year in protecting the purity of America’s bodily fluids, according to Natural News:

Mike Adams, Health Stranger

• David Frum runs an article about Ron Paul’s use of racism as a fundraiser/strategy in the past, and he gets the following feedback:

davidfrum (@davidfrum)
12/26/11 1:08 PM
“CNN is run by Jews.” From the comments on my CNN.com Ron Paul column … bit.ly/soURcG

Well played, redneck. Well played. I’m willing to bet that you read Veterans Today, which was also horrible this week.

• Victoria Jackson has jumped the stupid shark. Again. She may in fact be mentally ill at this point, but I can’t say that she’s not just hateful. She says talk show hosts were briefed for 6 hours by the FBI about Islamic extremism in America.
• Also, this week in SNL conspiracy theories, a writer on the Wayne’s World movie killed himself…or did he?!?!?!?
• Speaking of Wayne’s World, Wayne “the French peter” LaPierre (teehee) of the NRA has charged the Obama Administration with secretly planning the destruction of the Second Amendment.
• Mike Adams: “Discover The Doomsday Seed Vault’s Secrets.”

SEEDS?!?!?!?!?!

• Oklahoma City–false flag operation? Why not?
• If this article is correct, and we have undone the Declaration of Independence, does that mean that we are now subjects of the Crown again?
• Well, here’s the best book review of all time, remarks on The Dulce Wars: Underground Alien Bases and the Battle for Planet Earth penned by a veritable Dr. Johnson:

I enjoyed this book, because of some of the insider information that he brings out. I liked the insights into the invisible world, for example, how certain aliens are working with Satan the Devil, how Satan looks like a reptilian, including his hosts.

• Kids, stay in school or you will end up posting about UFOs as mind-control on the Internet.
• Congress prays to Lucifer. Heheh.
• Kenneth Feder recently re-sunk Atlantis on the National Geographic Channel. It was quite excellent of the producers to give him the final word. I’ll be reviewing one of his books on this site soon. NatGeo, I like you so much more than the History Channel.
• I have no idea what to make of this, you know, except fun: “History of Islam: Identical Doctrines and Deeds of Satan’s Roman Jesuit Papacy.”
• This one goes out to Rebecca Watson: the Skyrim Conspiracy.
• If truth is treason, as their website says, then these guys are patriots.
• The Birthers have yet another lawsuit thrown out of court. I think that litigants should be “thrown out of court” literally when this happens. Give that badass bailiff on Judge Judy something entertaining to do besides glower.
• The optimistic folks at Gulag Bound are fretting over the deployment of acoustic triangulation devices (or as they call them, “sniper detectors”) in the heartland. FederalJack linked to this story and I really enjoyed his novelty tags.
• George Harrison’s will exposes the truth about Paul McCartney’s death.
• Oh noes! Fukishima radiation is eating American babies! Omnomnomnom. Oh, IntelHub, I hope you remain this enthusiastic and youthful for years to come.
• You can keep your stinkin’ double helix DNA. I’m totally rockin’ the 12-strand human DNA, baby!
• When the machines take over, people will become pets. My pets have it pretty good, actually. So, uh, rub my belly, Terminator!
• Finally, someone has figured out why the word “pseudonym” is misspelled at the Georgia Guidestones. It is misspelled for anagrammatical reasons. Sure, the anagram makes no sense, but that’s of secondary importance.
• Take a bite out of the American Fascist Sandwich. And as a condiment on the fascist sandwich, may I suggest the US Army is now openly advertising for FEMA camp guards?
• America is a fascist state. And by fascist, they mean communist, and by communist they mean fascist. Get it? Neither do they.
• There’s a new book coming out on the prestigious Internet. It’s a “thriller” called Vaccine Nation. The first chapter is up for your perusal and constructive criticism. I’m rooting for vaccines, personally.
• NASA put the hurt on some 2012 doomsday theories.
• IntelHub says the stage is set for false flag nuclear terrorism. When it doesn’t happen, will they apologize for scaring the sh*t out of their readers?
• The truth is out there. No really! Out there on Main Street!
• Hugo Chavez says that the US gave him cancer. Sharon Hill blogged this one for Skeptic.com.

Conspiracy theories of the last few weeks:

• Nobody works harder at being weird than Exopolitics.com. Really. Take this headline: “Andromeda Council: Comet 17P Holmes as prelude to 4th dimensional Earth.” What not convinced? What about this quote:

“And, therefore planet Earth, as a female cosmic body with its newer, progressively greater level of 4th dimensional energy emanating from her – from Earth’s core – she is finally ready to be ‘fertilized’, and is attracting, pulling, drawing to her… the transformative cosmic 4th dimensional vibratory ‘male’ energy from the new crystal blue star (that was comet Holmes).”

Told you.

Dishonorable mention:

• IntelHub gives exopolitics a run for its money, though, and this one blew me away with the goof. OK. Try to keep up. The Intel Hub, whose logo appropriately suggests something stinks over there, sez: “Chemtrail-like Substance Could Be Used in Blue Beam Type Operation.” Blue Beam is a continuation of the Philadelphia (boat teleportation) and Montauk (dead raccoons) Projects. Blue Beam is designed, according to this guy on the Internet, “to create a world-wide light show with accompanying electronically driven wave patterns.” Also, WTF does that even mean? Anyway, the pulse of energy is supposed to make people think that God is talking to them. Totally f-in’ superfluous, since people already think that God is talking to them! This is really an elaborate one that assumes earthquake-making, archaeological forgeries, telepathy, messiah-arriving, faked one-world religion, and staged UFO invasions. But this is the real problem: the IntelHub is setting itself up to believe this unfathomably vast pile of whale poop: “The Intel Hub has also received similar reports from various locations in the CONUS (Continental United States) and is requesting additional information/sightings to be sent to us (tips@theintelhub.com).” No matter how much contradictory information can be brought to bear on the questions raised by the Blue Beam video (like all of physics, meteorology, aerospace and electrical engineering, and psychology), they are completely and explicitly uninterested in that evidence. So, if, for instance, an airline pilot wrote in saying, “Hey, I need to take into account all the mass on my airplane to calculate how much fuel I have, including the ‘magic fairy chemtrail dust,’ so it’s impossible that I would be able to spray and not know about it. Now tell me I’m poisoning people to my face, suckafoo,” Intelhub will hear none of it. Here’s a tip: Grow. Up.

Week’s Best Headline:

Not strictly related to conspiracy theory in…any way I can think of, but this headline needs to be read aloud to orphans every Christmas: “Victoria’s Secret: Busted for Undies With an Ugly Past”.

Thanks for an excellent year, folks! We had over 100,000 hits, many of which were not my mother. We’ll see you on the other side of the New Year!

RJB

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 10:02 pm and is filed under conspiracy theory, critical thinking, mass media, politics, psychology, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.