…And we’re back. I am writing this at a Whole Foods, where I am surrounded by hippies, feeling a little like Cartman.
But not even wafting clouds of caustic patchouli could keep me from rounding up the worst of the web! I’m going to have to keep this one short, however, as I am gearing up for a pretty big job interview. This is the one, people.
Ah, it’s the end of the world. Again. This time, it’s skyquakes, and should my spell check ever accept that as a word, I shall promptly jump into a canyon. They are caused, sez this dude, by a “destabilizing core,” whatever that is. He might as well say it is caused by trolls. Visit that link only if you want to experience an intricate vacuity.
From the Most Irritating Man in the World comes, “Nicola Tesla–Superhero!” Stay goofy, my friends.
Orly Taitz won a court motion in Georgia this week and, after consulting my ass and the sky, monkeys are not flying out of my butt and pigs still cannot fly.
From a horrid little site comes, “Did the Jews Kill General Patton?” They somehow, against all odds, managed to fail to arrive at “No.”
The conspiracy to keep Ron Paul from ever winning anything at the national level continues in South Carolina.
Baby dies of disease she was probably not vaccinated against. BLAME THE VACCINES! There are lots of causes of meningitis, and she was vaccinated against the bacterium, Haemophilus influenzae, which used to be the prime cause. But there are other bacteria that cause meningitis, like, Streptococcuspneumoniae, which now causes most cases of bacterial meningitis. This poor girl’s first diagnosis was “slight chest infection.” By the way, take a gander at this woman’s CV. Her warped view of vaccines has led her to write a book suggesting that baby-shaking baby killers are falsely accused. Wow.
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.)
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.)
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 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
“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!
Kylie and Bob. Richard Saunders is sitting on my shoulder whispering evil thoughts: "Try the marmite..."
Go over and visit Kylie Sturgess at The Token Skeptic. She posted my conspiracy theory panel at Dragon*Con 2011. It features Kylie, Ben Radford, my colleague Tom Lolis, and yours truly discussing all things conspiratorial. Of course, we all thank Mark Ditsler for his work recording and producing the audio and Derek Colanduno for, you know, just the whole Skeptic Track.
Howdy. We may be blasting Burzynski mercilessly, but we’re still constantly collecting stories for the week in conspiracy. If you come across any good ones, please let me know!
Here’s a good one. Scientists decoded a message from the Space Brothers just before 9/11. Using the binary glyphs language that were sent along on the Voyager missions, we received a message that said: “Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but still time. BELIEVE. There is GOOD out there. We oppose DECEPTION. Conduit CLOSING.” I like the little “over and out.” Also, WHAT THE HELL KIND OF WARNING IS THAT!?!?! This is an old one, but it just appeared on my radar.
ZOMG! Text message proves that UA 175 was in the air after it was supposed to have hit the WTC.
Are you on this list? If not, you can’t get into the Builderberg meeting! (Also, what nefarious deeds is the CEO of Nestle up to. Coco-y goodness based warfare?)
“Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other person who is captured or arrested in the United States.”
That’s all you’re going to get out of me this week. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some important Mystery Science Theater 3000s to watch.
David Duke was arrested in Germany, where Holocaust denial is illegal. His supporters compare him to Jesse Jackson. Do you know what Schadenfreude is, David? Ask your cellmate. Better yet, you guys can use that as your safe word. (My favorite comment was from reddit: “Why isn’t the media covering this? This is the feel-good story of the year!”)
Popeye interviewed psychiatric case Susan Lindauer. Again. At what point do you just leave the woman alone instead of preying on her mental illness to fuel your own?
I think that we should parachute Joe Nickell in to investigate!
Anyway, as we plow into the last weeks of the semester, I’m working on a fun (for me) little series about my favorite rock album. Those should start coming out soon.
It was a crazily jam-packed weekend for those of us at Skeptical Humanities, so this is a little late and a little short. On Saturday, Eve and I put on our thinking helmets (sometimes you just need the extra protection) and attended an event by paranormal enthusiasts. One of us will be writing about it soon, I’m sure. We were so tired at the end of the day, I think we missed our first skeptics in the pub event since…ever.
This morning, we were out again. I had been invited by the Alabama Freethought Association to talk about conspiracy theories. About 20 people showed up, and Lake Hypatia seems to be a sort of Mecca for southern atheists.
Speaking of Mecca, when we got there, an hour early (stupid time change), in one of the sitting areas on the lovely campus, we found a Koran under the bench. We pointed it out when our hosts arrived, and they brought it inside because someone might think that leaving it outside would be a desecration. That’s class, people. Learn from them.
Onto the week that was weak!
I don’t understand Godlike Productions. The quality of what ends up there is so uneven. Take this guy, who is scared of the Illuminati, for instance. He is instantly batted down. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of batty stuff on there as well, like this one, “U.S. Justice Department Wants To Criminalize Uploading You Tube Videos“. Me no gets.
Wow. Exopolitics just keeps delivering week after week, doesn’t it? It just might be the goofiest site out there. (Step aside, Vigilant Citizen! There’s a new playa in town!) The real controllers of the world are interdimensional beings; some are reptillian, but others are like little floaty embryo things, and they are called Archons. Actually, if you look at the image that they say shows the “Archon,” you will see what is basically a “ghost orb.” The hole in the center of the blob means that the camera is out of focus, and the light illuminating the background (underwater?) is also reflecting off of a particle in the foreground. That crazy relative of Dwight Eisenhower, who I think claims she’s been to Mars, is in on this. Thank god she’s not in the military.
The Marlowe-was-Shakespeare conspiracy theory is also moronic, just in case you were wondering. You also have to wonder if the author of the article is a freshman in high school, when he ends the article: “Who was the real Shakespeare? It is doubtful that we will ever know the truth.” STFU and read a book. Also, word that Shakespeare was Shakespeare has reached even Australia. Was Oxford also Jane Austen, or did he just poison her?
HOT DAMN! Seattle skeptic and newlywed Paul Case stomped on a 9/11 Truther. Way to go, Case! Yer famous! Unfortunately, the Truther loser did not pay the $1000 he promised for the lesson.
I’m in partial agreement with Tony Sobrado’s assessment of conspiracy theories as postmodern. But only partially. I need to think a little more about them. I suspect that the postmodernists only caught up with the wacky linguistic games that conspiracists had been playing for generations.
That’s all for now, m’laddies. I’ve got lots more, but not a lot of time at the moment. So, keep your eyes open for more from this week in next week’s edition.
I was recently interviewed on David Leonard’s Alive at Five radio show out of Yankton, SD. It’s a fun show that covers a lot of topics that I find interesting. The interview was a hoot, and thanks to David for inviting me to talk about 9/11 Truthers.
Well, I’ve done it again. I spent another week in the trenches, occasionally poking my head over the parapet, and taunting the forces of conspiracy theory.
Bob
On with the pain!
So this week we saw the date 11/11/11, which only occurs once a century. Just like every other combination. So, the oddly-minded jumped on it. Take what happened at the pyramids at Giza, which had to be shut down because of lunacy. or the Internet, where finally the Illuminati revealed themselves.
Former Senator Mike Gravel declared early this year that he wants another investigation. He cites the work of Architects and Engineers for 9/11. I’m not sure why people would think that this is important because he has no expertise.
Oh, I’m probably on the radio right now in South Dakota. I was interviewed for the show Alive at 5 about 9/11 Trutherism. They identify me as working with the CSI, which is flattering but inaccurate. Oh, well. They let me prattle on for about 30 min. I’ll post a link if one goes up.
That’s it folks. Keep it crazy. I’m off next week to do some field work on Saturday, and then I’ll be going to Alabama to give a talk about conspiracy theories to a group of freethinkers there. Yay!
(Did you notice that Anonymous completely dropped off the map this week? It’s now known as Ignominious!)
We survived CSICon, and the audience survived my epic spiel (which was never certain). I met some pretty fab folks and enjoyed myself mightily. Eve did too. But just because we played hooky for a few days doesn’t mean that I could help but see the crazy stuff that streamed in on my mail, twitter, and reader feeds.
Let get it on.
This Week in I Made More as a Graduate Student than Anonymous Has Pulled In
I’m pretty sure that Anonymous is losing money hand over fist in the American market. This is as it should be.
Why are so many free energy patents denied? Because they are submitted by cranks, perhaps? Go ahead and build the damned things and get your Nobel Prize and you can tell the Patent Office to jam it.
This came from the @poopy_poo, who is the soul of the age: “@davidicke I hope all your 13,000 followers will be attending wembley next year mr Icke, very excited to be coming :-)”
Hello, hello from the city where pants are optional, New Orleans. I gave my talk about anti-Jesuit and anti-Catholic conspiracy theories yesterday, and then we bopped along Canal Street to the Smarti Gras party.
I know that when I need medical advice, I go to a strung-out, obviously intoxicated rapper. I mean, not me, Vigilant Citizen:
How one person decided to let go of reason and embrace the space brothers. I suspect that there is a very good chance that any story that starts, “I was a skeptic,” is being told by someone who wasn’t. Especially when it includes: “The last documentary I watched was a lecture by Linda Moulton-Howe on cattle mutilations. I could not believe what I was seeing. The question in my mind very quickly became not whether UFOs existed – they clearly did – but what they were.” You and skepticism are not even nodding acquaintances.
Artsy NYT writer doesn’t care who wrote Shakespeare. Which is fine. The reason I fuss about it because adopting the conspiracy theory is to reject evidence freely available to anyone with a library card. When you toss out the evidence, you can say whatever you like, and Oxfordian nutters do. But you can’t call that learning or time well spent.
“In London, the Flat Earth Society explains that we live on a giant disk. In Petersburg, Ky., the Creation Museum shows cave men and dinosaurs frolicking together. And in a movie theater near you, “Anonymous,” which opened Friday, reveals how the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays.”
Posted by Bob 
Skeptical Humanities 