Skeptical Humanities

This Week in Conspiracy (11 February 2012)

February 13, 2012

In the beginning, it was a dark and stormy night, so you can call me Ishmael. Or Al. Doesn’t matter.

Lemme tell you, as I start this post, it’s unpleasant in Atlanta, kids. The wind was pretty impressive this evening, as was, not coincidentally, the amount a certain tree near my apartment can bend without breaking and my sudden desire to purchase renter’s insurance. But not even 2 tons of wood accelerating at 9.8 m/s/s through my roommate’s bedroom would stop me from bringing you the week in conspiracy.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.

So, let’s get some of the goofier stuff out of the way. Apparently, UFOs are dropping “ominous” care packages to earthlings. At least, that’s the takeaway from this BIN post. Oddly, according to BIN’s online polls, fewer people think that the boxes washing up on shore is likely to be true than those who believe the pyramids at Giza are beaming energy to a strange space cloud. I don’t understand you earthlings.
Now, let’s visit the Amateur Geology Corner. This week, conspiracists revisited the Japanese earthquake. First, in a post by some guy on the Internet that will scandalize “Big Geology” into squirting milk from its nose comes the hypothesis that there was no 9.0 earthquake in Japan last year. At the same time, the conspiracy theory-o-sphere reported that the number of large earthquakes in 2000 is 10 times less than those in the last year. If their data is correct, I don’t know if the spike represents better data 10 years on or the fact that most of the increased activity surrounds one of the greatest releases of energy on the planet in recorded memory (which, of course, never happened). Of course, you should never have a sample size of “two non-continuous years.”
The GOP and CPAC yielded their own rather fetid load of donkey’s kidneys this week. Let’s start with Rick Santorum’s assertion that global warming is a “hoax.” The suspiciously French-sounding Wayne LaPierre, President of the NRA, tried to scare the crap out of his supporters (again) by asserting that Obama was out to destroy the Second Amendment. Of course gun control legislation hasn’t been on the President’s radar, so nobody would take that seriously, right?…”Obama Vows to Outlaw Guns if Reelected.” Now, the funniest/scariest thing to come out of the CPAC was Iowa Rep. King’s contention, to use Prairie Weather’s epic headline: “Weird Lightbulbs in Republican Offices on Capitol Hill Were Put There by Communist German Janitors.” I mean, wow.
Lastly, Ron Paul is going to speak to Sovereign Citizens, the scariest sumbitches I know of. In fact they are one of the groups the FBI is most concerned about. I know that Crooks and Liars is biased, so I check up on the conference, and, yep, t hey are out there. I notice that they are hosting Susan Lindauer, who was brought up on charges of espionage for Iraq, but was found to be so delusional as to be incapable of contributing to her own defense. Here’s the indictment. From the trial summary: “Dr. Goldstein, the defense psychiatrist, was somewhat less tentative, dismissing as ‘classic examples of the grandiose variety’ her claims that she was ‘a preeminent government operative who was not sufficiently appreciated’ and had contact with high-level government figures, and was possessed of psychic powers. (Goldstein Report 5/20/06 at 3) He reported also that ‘many of Ms. Lindauer’s delusions are classic examples of the persecutory type.’ (Id.)” Ron Paul will fit right in.
How does the left help goofiness on the right spread?
I’ve been beating up on the right. Here’s one about the left being batty. Monsanto does not allow its employees to eat GMOs.
From Natural News, the worst site in the universe, comes the headline “Arrogant scientists say NY students’ neurological symptoms caused by mass hysteria, not chemicals”. If by “scientists” they mean “neurologists who have examined the girls directly and know what poisoning looks like and decided this ain’t it,” then why “arrogant”? It’s their job to make these decisions. Epidemiologists would likely tell you that if it were poisoning from the environment (like the superfund site hypothesis I’ve heard lately), we wouldn’t expect a sudden spike in twitchy teenagers; instead the teens in that area (and probably not just the girls) would have always been more twitchy. So, yeah, this is an outbreak of contagious mental illness. My favorite mass psychogenic illness outbreak was in 1962 in Africa, when a laughing epidemic broke out. Although the meowing nuns come close. I love my job. Have I mentioned that?
Here’s a video of the entrance to the hollow earth. The guy who posts it says that if it’s real it’s “some crazy shit.” I’d say it continues to be “some crazy shit” if it is not real.
Wow. Veterans Today. Wow.
The ever-classy Alex Jones opines about Whitney Houston’s death. For more expert analysis, see Mark Dice’s video. He’s this week’s worst person ever. (He’s made it on here twice now. Hm.) And not to be left in the playpen all alone, Vigilant Citizen comes out with the shocking–shocking!–revelation that Houston’s death confirms everything that he has ever believed about the music industry. Twit of Ages Mike Adams finds that Houston is a victim of the pharmaceutical industry, not you know, a lifetime of alcoholism and drug dependency. Thanks for waiting for the coroner’s report, you ghoul. Jason Bermas, of 9/11 Truth’s Loose Change: Beyond Thunderdome Director’s Revised Cut Reloaded fame, claims that Fox fingers the pharmaceutical industry as the culprit, though this seems to be a reading comprehension problem. And at the Grammys, Nicki Minaj, who I never heard of until the Super Bowl, was signaling who killed Whitney through the Illuminati-approved medium of Versace clothing. (The update on this one is pretty hilarious.)
Also from Mike Adams’ site, pharmaceutical runoff makes shrimp “commit suicide.”
From Mother Jones, a list of 109 separate things Republicans think Obama has declared war on.
Black Helicopters have landed in Chicago “in Mass,” according to Intel Hub. I bet the priest was annoyed!
Tesla, the Elvis of impossible technology enthusiasts, was MuRdErEd!
Oh, no! Anonymous has gotten hold of dangerous Xtranormal technology! In the “Protocols of the Illuminati” video, the speaker claims that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is the Illuminati’s playbook, the fact that they were debunked as a word for word forgery of a couple of different sources almost immediately notwithstanding. You know, replace “Illuminati” with “lizard people” and you are David Icke. Something tells me that Anonymous’ B-team is putting together the Xtranormal vids.
File this under “forgotten/forbidden knowledge”–Ancient nuclear blasts and flying machines:

I don’t know what this is…but I like the idea…Space Nazis!:

Oh dear. this weekend I’m going to a talk about maafa and abortion, I think. This is this is related to this guy’s interview.
DHS released a study (which they funded, but did not carry out) about terrorism and various forms of extremism over the last few decades which is meant to illuminate characteristics of threats. This was, of course misrepresented in conspiracy theory land: “According To A New DHS Report, If You Love ‘Individual Liberty’ Of If You ‘Believe In Conspiracy Theories’ You Are A Potential Terrorist.” Of course no one of these characteristics alone makes you more likely to carry out a terrorist attack. Only in clusters and with increased intensity do otherwise non-indicative signals correlate with a capacity for violence. You know, like members of the Hutari militia, who wanted to take out the Feds and whose trial starts very soon.
Is the US Government hiding evidence of Egyptian expeditions to the Grand Canyon?
Dude in Missouri: “US public schools are a Klan conspiracy.“
“Exo-scientists” confirmed that humans have alien DNA this week. I looked for the link to the peer-reviewed science journal, but could not find one. Go figure.
Intel Hub reports: “Going Rogue: Giant Wave Damages Cargo Ship, Is Electromagnetic Experimentation To Blame?” Oh, that’s easy. No. You’re welcome.
The Atlantic turned its attention to conspiracy theory this week. The first article is about “Agenda 21,” or as the Atlantic puts it, “Is the UN Using Bike Paths to Achieve World Domination?” Also, ooh! an excerpt from a new book about conspiracy and rightist rage. Want! Want!
Oh, jeez. ABC is going to create a show about an editor of a skeptical magazine who uncovers a conspiracy theory. Page Ben Radford!

That’s it for this week, folks. No conspiracy theory of the week. Oddly, nothing struck me as absurd enough. I hope that doesn’t mean that I am building up a tolerance. I’ve started working on a story about UFOs in the Renaissance. I may try to peddle it to, well, Ben Radford. We’ll see. Take it easy! Also, Eve, who has been a little AWOL lately, is working on something utterly hilarious. I hope that will be up soon.

RJB

12 Comments | conspiracy theory, fun, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

Skeptical Book Review: Reading Outside of Your Discipline, or A Psychologist, a Magician, and an Archaeologist Walk Into a Bookstore

February 8, 2012

If a very literate thief were to break into my apartment, I like to think he would take a moment to browse and appreciate my bookshelves. It’s a varied collection, which includes a massive collection of cheap paperbacks I picked up for my masters and doctoral exams, a huge number of obscure lit books by well known authors which are only ever read by professors, books of theory and poetry, a lot of science books, a collection of primary sources photocopied at cost from the finest archives around the world, a shelf of WWII memoirs and histories, a pony-load of anthologies, rhetorics piled out the wazoo, and a heap of books that can only be described as “flaky to the nth degree” (think of the ouvre of Jenny McCarthy). This ne’er-do-well, just before my cats mauled him beyond recognition, I like to think, would be slightly confused by my collection, which serves the bastard right for breaking into my apartment in the first place.

Our thief, as the cats flayed him alive with their razor-sharp, serrated tongues, would in his dying moments probably wish that I would come home from my vacation, but in all likelihood I’d be too busy playing tourist. I’m as pleased as punch to wear a stupid Hawaiian shirt and wander the streets of an unfamiliar city gawking. I also like to pick up souvenirs when I travel, specifically, I like to buy a book in each town I visit. It gives me something to do during downtime, and I can always recall what I was interested in at the time I was traveling. For instance, the last time I was in New Orleans (CSICon excluded), visiting the D-Day Museum with my grandmother, I bought the collected short fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald at the airport bookstore. That’s presumably when I started using the phrase “a _____ as big as the Ritz” in everyday conversation.

Anyway, my recent trip to CSICon in New Orleans was no exception. Not only was the solar-fusion yellow Hawaiian shirt in full effect, but I also returned with three more books than I arrived with. What struck me about this particular collection of reads was the variety of disciplines they touched on. At the CSICon book display, I picked up The Truth about Uri Geller, the classic work of flair-trousered debunkery by magician James Randi, and 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jon Ruscio, and Barry L. Beyerstein. (Scott, I should mention, was my conspiracy theory session’s chair.) Down the street from the conference hotel, at Crescent City Books, I picked up Frauds, Myths and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, 6th ed., by Kenneth L. Feder.

These books, together, only make sense on a skeptic’s bookshelf, which is one of the reasons I am so attracted to skepticism as a methodological framework for scholarship–it gives one a large set of tools that can be applied to widely divergent areas of study. While I have chops in a couple of disciplines, I also have the flexibility to begin to assess the contents of novel claims, even if I am not an authority in all areas.

The value of these books, to me at least, is how each contributes to my mental map of my own limitations, which is important to know if you want to avoid making unwarranted, unsupportable and silly claims. The subjects of these books span the range of topics from deliberate deception, in the case of Geller, to inadvertent yet pervasive misinformation, in the case of popular psychology.

James Randi’s The Truth About Uri Geller is a skeptical standard, as is anything written by James Randi. Besides being a magician, Randi also has to be a bit of an acrobat, one the one hand laying bare that Uri Geller, the 1970s spoon bending Israeli, was little more than a stage performer, all the while protecting the secrets of the craft and so forth.

Much of the book is documentary, culled from sources reporting on Geller’s rise to prominence in the US. Randi spends a lot of time showing how the media was fooled, and how misremembering and misreporting fed into the Geller myth. Occasionally, Randi illustrates precisely how a trick was accomplished by publishing evidence of Geller’s mistakes. My favorite was Geller’s attempt to take a “psychic photograph” on a camera that still had its lens cap on. This “test” of Geller’s abilities was performed in a private residence, and illustrates how a patient and talented performer can multitask. In this case, he said that the photograph had been taken (it had not), but then later in the test, he had his test administrators leave the room to write something on a slip of paper. While they were out of the room, he removed the camera and snapped a photo. Randi can confidently assert this because Geller did not realize that the lens had an extra-wide field of view and caught his FACE in the shot, thoroughly debunking himself! Randi replicates effect, and the conclusion is undeniable.

You walk away from the book admiring Geller’s skill as a magician and manager of illusions, but with no respect for him as a person. Geller’s talent for peeks, distraction, and causing confusion is undeniable. But his trickery, which seems inexplicable to the untrained eye, withers under the scrutiny of his technical equals and moral betters.

Next is Kenneth Feder’s Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. I read the sixth edition. Feder provides a general guide to distinguishing good archaeology from not-as-great archaeology. Feder pays special attention to a number of hoaxes and sensational claims about civilizations past. In doing so, he builds up models of how archaeologists treat and interpret evidence.

Personally, I think that much pseudo-archaeology, including ancient alien hypotheses and so-called biblical archaeology (which seeks to establish that one’s own literal interpretation of the Bible is the correct one), do not meet nearly enough informed criticism in the popular press. Feder lays bare what we would expect to find if these extraordinary claims are found to be true and how news evidence fits into a much larger body of evidence about humanity’s past.

The most important warning that Feder delivers, it seems to me, is to be especially wary of those claims that give you exactly what you most expect or hope to find. Many of the hoaxes and instances of scientific fraud Feder takes the reader through, like Piltdown, succeeded because people embrace agreeable finds. While it may seem staggeringly obvious in hindsight, the satisfaction of expectations and justification of prejudices seems to be especially compelling to the public. At the same time, those most memorable, earth-shattering claims are the most likely to be repeated in the media and repeated. An understanding of the standards of practice and the process of archaeology is an important safeguard against embracing impossibilities. Critical thinking exercises at the end of each chapter drive home the important points and encourage readers to consider the implications of issues raised in the chapters.

As questions at the end of chapters usually do. (Sigh.)

The final book that I brought home from New Orleans was 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology by…a whole lot of psychologists. Fine, I’ll type them all out: Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jon Ruscio, and Barry L. Beyerstein (abbreviated to “L.L. RuBe”). L.L. RuBe looks at a large number of popular popular misconceptions about how our minds work. The topics covered, from the idea that we use only 10% of our brains to the idea that people commonly repress traumatic memories, are those sorts of things that have seeped into the culture. Again, the explanations for why these ideas are popular vary, but often they seem to patch over gaps in actual knowledge, and L.L. Rube does an excellent job filling those in with solid science.

An interesting and unexpected feature is a list of topics that the authors, numerous as they were, simply did not have time to cover. At the end of each chapter, they remind you that they have only scratched the the tip of the volcano. Uhhh… That metaphor slipped away from me like a slippery thing. I can easily see using this book in my writing about science and pseudoscience class as an invention source for first-year research questions, for instance.

Review Questions:

1) Can you tell where Bob forced together two versions of this post? If not, check to see if you have a lobotomy scar.

2) At what point did Bob simply run out of steam?

RJB

3 Comments | critical thinking, fun, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (5 February 2012)

February 6, 2012

BAM! Finished another article and sent it off tonight. What next? I could watch Puppy Bowl reruns….Aw shucks, let’s do a conspiracy theory round-up!

Orly Taitz gets smacked down–again–this time in Georgia. Here’s the judge’s decision. What was it that Intel Hub said two weeks ago? “POTUS Gets a Failure to Appear – 100 Times Bigger than Watergate,” I think it was. *facepalm* I know I’d get tired of being wrong after a while. If that ever happened. HA!
Lizard-sniffer-outer David Icke is making friends with the Zionist Rothchilds.
Is Barrak Obama really the clone of Akhnaten? (Conspiracy theory of the week contender for sure.)

Remember that tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima reactor? Turns out actually it was Israeli nukes. Or possibly Jews using Stuxnet, the virus that was designed to apparently take out specific hardware in Iran. Not that tsunami that drowned the plant. Jews.
The case for the alien agenda. If we are being controlled by aliens, rest assured that I have already betrayed the human race.
Chris Pinto, who you may remember is scared of Jesuits, says, “[…] conspiracy theories have little or no value unless they glorify God, and demonstrate the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.”
GET OFF MY LAWN, DAGNABBED ILLUMINATI!:

ATS finally clears things up: the ancient aliens were actually time travelers.
Wow. 8 hours of 9/11 with Bill Cooper, as it happened. I mean, I’m not going to sit through all of it, but, it’s a moment in conspiracy theory history.
You know how the gummint has it out to crush unpasteurized milk with FASCISM?! [sic]. There are numerous reasons that food products are regulated, and one of them is Campylobacter, which has made 37 people sick in 4 states. Campyobacter can kill people with compromised immune systems. Or you can embrace the crazy and invoke the Bible in your defense of raw milk, which, of course kills immunodeficient Christians too.
Man, the Jesuits bomb a lot of boats, it seems. This time it is going to be the USS Enterprise and be done to provoke war with Iran.
Girls sucked kicking and screaming into alternate universe.
Alex Jones’s site reports that “Big Evidence” forms a lobby group to keep atl med from being taught in universities. Good.
What do Warren Buffet, Dakota Fanning and Lady Gaga have in common?
On the heels of last week’s announcement that conspiracy theorists can embrace multiple, mutually exclusive conspiracy scenarios at once come three different JFK conspiracy theories at the Intel Hub. Was it LBJ? Was it the monkey-polio-cancer-virus people? Was it…some guy’s dad? It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not the official story.
An evangelist says that this is the year that endtimes prophecy will be fulfilled. It sounds like the type of thing a “Clontz” would write.
Joe and Rosie, talking about things they don’t understand.
The FDA is mercilessly regulating medical treatments. Or as Blacklisted News and the Alliance for Natural Health report it: “FDA’s New Claim: Your Body is a Drug and We Have the Authority to Regulate it!“
Who is stopping Ron Paul from winning. I know, I thought it was Ron Paul and his crazy ideas, but apparently it is the Zionists.
Fluoride, the weirdest, most durable conspiracy theory, still weird, seems enduringly durable.
Amy Winehouse’s coroner resigns; is news for some reason.
Salon wonders if we need a sort of Ministry of Truth for the Internet to counter brain-and society- damaging misinformation like anti-vax and climate change denialism. I will happily be Big Brother.
Tapes of conversations between Air Force One and Washington on date of Kennedy’s assassination released.
Why does the government want you to keep you from eating horse meat? Also, why has the ban on horse meat been lifted (as of Nov. 2011)? EXPLAIN THAT!
Mysterious Crop Circle Code Finally Cracked: “Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine.” There was another post related to reading crop circles titled, “Did Carl Sagan know something?” To which the answers is, yes, he knew a lot of things, I think you’ll find.
Some of Ron Paul’s supporters in Georgia have started a new MeetUp, but all I see is that Paul is allowing that baby to desecrate an American flag.

Conspiracy Theory of the Week: Ron Paul Edition

First, an irony of epic proportions. It turns out Ron Paul’s biggest donor is a Bilderberger.

Also, and I know I posted this earlier, but I love, freaking LOVE, this video at the Georgia Guidestones by a Ron Paul supporter/conspiracy theorist. Make sure you watch until after the wind dies down, because, wow, there is some profound linguistic analysis.

Conspiracy is so much fun!

Anyway, I have a couple of reviews in the pipeline, so stay tuned. Keep it classy, Internet!

RJB

5 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, critical thinking, history, mass media, politics, psychology, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

A Brief Note on the Sokal Hoax

January 31, 2012

Yesterday, chum of the Skeptical Humanities site, Sharon Hill of the Doubtful News blog, posted a generally excellent piece about skeptics putting on hoaxes. Go read it. But be ye warned, she ventures like a deer into the barreling Mack track that is Skeptical Humanities when she says:

Many other hoaxes can be found on the Museum of Hoaxes website including the famous Sokal hoax where Alan Sokal sent in a paper full of gobbledegook words to a journal to see if it would be accepted. It was. He succeeded in dramatically demonstrating the decline in standards of humanities journals and embarrassing his field into reaction.

Well, not exactly. Sokal was a physicist, who was attempting to make a point about certain critics’ misuse of scientific terminology and a sort of absurd posturing that one often sees in the postmodern camps of literary theory.

In the schools of thought that concerned Alan Sokal, all language is basically a game and meaning is never absolute. He was prompted to perpetrate the hoax after he read Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, by Gross and Levitt. In Higher Superstition, the authors, both working scientists, look at a lot of the big names in critical theory, including Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, and others and show in excruciating detail how utterly unqualified to have an opinion about the scientific matters on which they publish. Most of what they find is gobbledegook, not unlike the science word-salad of newage gurus like Deepak Chopra and Ramtha, the guy from outer space who lives inside a lady.

Gross and Levitt notice that there are some similarities between the schools of thought that accrete around these academic gurus. In these cliques, you are generally rewarded for exaggerating the socially liberating potential of… whatever text you are looking at, whether it is Finnegans Wake or the back of a Happy Meal. (I’d rather read the back of a Happy Meal, to be honest.) They notice a particular ritual vocabulary, the presence of which seems to validate whatever is being said by the critical theorist, but which is impenetrable to mortals. And, lastly, they especially focus on the ways in which critical theory has presumed to critique not only the language in which science is communicated, but the content of the science itself, that is, that in the extreme forms of this criticism, all reality is merely a linguistic construct, often one that somehow offends the political principles that motivate the cultural critics. Therefore, the critic concludes: “Science is wrong. I just recreated the entire world. I’m pretty much a genius.”

You’d like to think that I’m joking, but take Sandra Harding’s closer to her book, The Science Question in Feminism:

“When we began theorizing our experience…we know our task would be a difficult though exciting one. But I doubt that in our wildest dreams we ever imagined that we would have to reinvent both science and theorizing itself to make sense of women’s social experience.”

So, this sort of self-important posturing by the scientifically illiterate does exist, and this is what Gross and Levitt demonstrated in spades in their book. How far can it go, wondered NYU physicist Alan Sokal?

Pretty far, it turns out.

Sokal submitted a paper to the postmodern critical journal, Social Text, called, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” It’s a screamer. It makes no sense. The editors of Social Text accepted it without any changes (they had asked for some, but Sokal refused, and they ran it anyway). It seems they were excited to have a physicist speaking their language and trusted him.

Oops.

When “Transgressing the Boundaries” went to press, Sokal released yet another article in a different publication exposing the hoax. I was an undergraduate at the time and missed the controversy the first time around, but it was intense and still ignites fierce debate about the meaning of the hoax, academic honesty, and a whole range of other issues, many of which Sharon identifies with respect to other hoaxes. I discussed this hoax in a paper I gave in April, “The Topography of Ignorance: Science and Literary Theory.”

What is important for the purpose of this post is that the Sokal Hoax does not actually demonstrate what people have said that it demonstrates. A sample size of one does simply does not qualify all-inclusive statements like “[Sokal] succeeded in dramatically demonstrating the decline in standards of humanities journals….” He did, after all, only show that one journal of a specific academic bent, postmodern criticism, was WAY too uncritical about what it accepted, not that humanities journals are in decline.

The type of problem that Social Text represented back in the day (it is not often noted that the editors re-schooled themselves in science after the hoax was revealed, much to their credit) should not reflect on the myriad of other journals that use accumulated evidence and genuine expertise to make statements and meaningful arguments about history, linguistics and languages, literature, rhetoric, media, music, ethics, philosophy, theology, and all the other fields of study that fall under the purview of the humanities writ large. Yes, critical theory sometimes is wacky, but sometimes it’s sensible, even enjoyable. No, critical theory is not the humanities, though by the grandiose posturing that some practitioners have adopted, you might be tempted to think that they were.

This is the point of this blog, to show that there is more to the humanities than theorizing feminist algebra, whatever that is, and to remind our friends in the sciences that we are doing serious, scholarly work as well.

RJB

14 Comments | academia, art and science, critical thinking, history, humanities, literature, rhetoric and composition, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This YouTube video is why we must save the Internet

January 30, 2012

I put up the conspiracy theory round-up last night, and this only arrived last night. It will doubtlessly be in the running for the conspiracy theory of the week. It’s really this guy’s language skills that knock me off my feet, hold me down, and beat me mercilessly:

RJB

2 Comments | conspiracy theory, mass media, politics | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (28 January 2012)

January 29, 2012

Amazingly, there were no new conspiracy theories this week. Everyone just kind of got it together and things ended up being pretty groovy. OH WHO AM I KIDDING?! I’VE BEEN SENTENCED TO LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE!!!

At any rate, I picked up Conspiracy Rising by Martha F. Lee. I’ll likely review it here in a few days. It’s one of my first few ebooks. I may review the ebook experience while I’m at it, since I have been a holdout for a long time.

Nanoparticles? At Fukushima? Oh no! Not NANO! Nano’s the conspiracy theorist’s flubber! Sure, there haven’t been any deaths from the meltdown at Fukushima, that doesn’t mean you can’t scare your readers. Unethical, InfoHub. Would you at least apologize when you are wrong? Reputable news outlets do that when they screw up so epically.
A new study finds that some conspiracy theorists are capable of believing two incompatible conspiracy theories at once. We are going to have to revise the definition of “genius,” clearly.
Well, a graduate student at Yale is having a bit of a protracted freakout. She was relieved of her teaching duties when she unrolled a mother of a conspiracy theory on her students. It’s out there.
Now, I’m not calling Above Top Secret reputable, mind you, but a mod did go out of his/her way to correct misinformation a contributor released. The tweet I received read:

Judge Has Ruled, Secretary Of State Agrees, Obama Off Of Ballot In Georgia!!!!!! (69 flags) dlvr.it/17Ttp

A moment’s consideration reveals that since this is not front page news all over the country it is unlikely to be true. The mod links to the AJC, which is darned respectable. Here’s their take.

Sometimes I wish I could make money by crusading against boogeymen like Alex Jones does. Of course, if it means that I would have to speak in a civil tone to Mayer Eisenstein, it’s can’t possibly be worth it. Odd that Jones does not mention the fact that Eisenstein was on the losing end of one of the largest infant death malpractice suits in history–$30 million. I think that any doctor who suggests there is a link between autism and vaccines should have their medical license revoked for incompetence. (I’m looking at you, Mayer.)
Of course, Alex Jones has discovered, eek, more “FEMA rendition camps.” The description of this facility is the same one I got from someone fretting about the murals in the Denver International Airport:

The photos and an interview with an eyewitness who described the facility and its inward facing barbed wire fence and one-way turnstiles add more compelling evidence to the indisputable fact that FEMA operates as a modern version of the Gestapo.

Protip: nothing is indisputable. Also, I thought they were preparing stadiums in L.A. for rendition. It’s interesting, but Rex84, the source of this latter theory, first appeared, if I remember correctly, in the Soviet paper Pravda. Not exactly an unbiased source, given the times.
Of course, it is the Intel Hub. They ran a headline about the President not showing in a Georgia courtroom to answer idiot questions from birther and dentist Orly Taitz, “POTUS Gets a Failure to Appear – 100 Times Bigger than Watergate.” So, they don’t really have that whole perspective thing down yet. So it goes.
Bob Tuskin, oh, man, made an ass of himself at Rudy Giuliani’s appearance in Gainesville. I met him at the Richard Gage event in Altanta back in the day. The local Truth community filmed my interview with him. (The comments are, as always, precious and dear to my heart.) Bob, the crowd was not laughing at Building 7, but at you. Seriously, walk away from this silliness while you are still young.
ATS contributor uploads photo of a werewolf, ATS readers get hilarious. (No werewolves were harmed in the writing of this post. Or the picture in question.)
Does the Fed “print money”, like so many conspiracy theorists claim? Yahoo! finance tries to clarify what the Fed does and does not do.
And the psychogenic illness spreading among teens at a New York school continues. Now, so help me, Erin Brokovich gets involved.
Brian Dunning hops out of the Hot Tub of Justice just long enough to talk about a possible explanation for perceiving non-existent malevolent agency everywhere as a part of his InFact video series.
Dr. Rachie is a conspiracy-debunking machine, but not a robot:

Rand Paul was stopped at an airport gate this week but refused a pat-down. That guy holding up the line? A Senator. I told the TSA workers at the Atlanta airport this week that I felt safer knowing that Rand Paul was not on my flight. One worker was positively distraught by the coverage they got in the press, noting that when they get charged by the press for “confiscating 100s of thousands of dollars a year” when passengers with short attention spans have actually left their change in the little trays.
There was a little buzz this week about military equipment being moved in and around the Mexican border. Eric Jon Phelps thinks it may be “used for America’s future Sino-Soviet-Muslim-Mexican invasion.” I didn’t even know we were going to have one. Dr. Roth (if I’m reading her ‘about the author’ right, she has a Ph.D. in Tae Kwan Do) thinks the shipment is to impose martial law.
ALRIIIIGHT! ZOMBIE RAGE VIRUS!
I have wondered about this, whether 9/11 Truther would go on the record suggesting that the commander of the fire department in NYC was complicit in the catastrophe. And, yes, they go that low. Put aside the fact that fire departments have neither the training, equipment, nor authorization to tear down a building, and it i still just a crummy thing to suggest. However, if Shepard Ambellas ever decides to attend be in the same room with Thomas von Essen, I would pay cash money to be there. You’ll notice that this reporter’s villain is indistinguishable from Icke’s reptilians.
Sigh. Someone thinks we’re setting up an “Iranian Pearl Harbor.”
Why doesn’t Santorum correct this woman who says Obama is a Muslim? What a barf.
David Aaronovich interviewed about conspiracy theories.
More about Lady Gaga “bathing in blood,” from the WhoForted blog.
“Whistleblower: Monsanto Wants to Kill The Bees To Make Way For Its Super-Bee“
Here’s Eve’s contribution to the week in conspiracy.
A writer at the Washington Times finds herself mentioned in a conspiracy theory and is not impressed.
HAARP can not only cause earthquakes, but it makes the skies snore.
Ron Paul’s newsletter entertained the idea that Oklahoma City was an inside job.
Slate asks if Google should tweak its algorithm to knock down anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Ooh! PalMD made it on my list this week! Are liberals or conservatives more likely to reject science? Yes.
I’m not necessarily on board with the politics of the Center for Consumer Freedom, but they do have some humdingers from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “[hog producers] “a greater threat to the United States and democracy than bin Laden’s terrorist network.” Kennedy, you may remember, published a hysterical, utterly uninformed article about vaccines in Rolling Stone that was basically corrected out of existence point by point after the public pointed out his factual errors.
Why does NASA keep the blurry, unclear photographic evidence of aliens patrolling the solar system under wraps? Surely it’s not out of fear that those not trained to examine it would blow it way out of proportion!
Here’s a sort of new age twist on the Matrix metaphor of conspiracy.

Conspiracy Theory of the Week:

I easily could have picked “Extraterrestrial War of the 1930’s reveals Jewish holocaust true masterminds,” but I didn’t. I picked the conspiracy theory I’m calling: “You got the right one–babies!” Mike Adams over at Natural News accuses Pepsi of using aborted fetuses in taste tests. The story does not originate with Adams, who I can’t remember ever being right about anything, but it prompted an Oklahoma state senator to introduce anti-Soylent Green legislation. This guy also happens to be a birther. My favorite headline: “Fun-Hating Legislator Proposes Ban on Eating Aborted Human Fetuses.” Forbes discusses the fake controversy.

Exopolitics let me down this week, I have to day. Oh, well. I’m sure there will be more to it.

10 Comments | conspiracy theory, history, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (22 Jan 2012)

January 22, 2012

…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’s subpoena of Obama not summarily thrown out of court, for once. The best coverage begins:

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.”
Big week for Patton, it seems. He was also killed by the OSS (precursor to CIA).
OK, point me to the passage in the Bible that mentions Verichip.
Newt decides that, what, his wife conspiring with the gay liberal media to publicize his position on family values?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is how NPR gathers news too:

AboveTopSecret @AboveTopSecret 2m Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
Who killed Iran’s nuclear scientist? CIA, Mossed, Britain, Iran? Let
me know RT @ATSRecapBryan – ow.ly/8A37y

NASA: “Not all triangles are UFOs.”
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, Streptococcus pneumoniae, 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.
Grr.
Oh no! The Illuminati are invading Eastern European pop music! Is nothing too irrelevant?!?
Shaq reveals he is a Mason:

The Phobos-Grunt Mars probe gets stuck in low-earth orbit, falls back into the atmosphere, and Russia blames a US radar station?
Bob Tuskin, whose card I have around here somewhere, makes a classic appeal to false authority with “Dr. King family’s civil trial verdict: US government assassinated Martin.”
Butt scanners.
Even when Mike Adams reaches the right conclusion, his reasoning is completely wrong.
Economic conspiracy theories are dull, but the ones that involve the Euro are moreso. YOU ARE A BORING CURRENCY, EURO! ACCEPT IT!
I know that China has a history of xenophobia, but did they really need to go to war with the space aliens? (I was trying to think of a “Great Dome of China” joke, but it just wasn’t happening.)
The advanced civilizations occupying the hollow earth are the greatest secret ever kept!
Uh-oh! Another flare up of that “McGuire Fire.” I think I have a multi-resistant strain. “Instead of democracy, we will be ruled by a secular humanist or occult elite that are building up a new world order, at lightning speed all around us.” Secular/occult/whatever!

Conspiracy Theory of the Week:

You almost won again again, Exopolitics.com, with “Evidence shows 9/11 false flag operation may have been a hyperdimensional ET event,” but this week’s prize goes to a family that should not have access to video equipment. Or the Internet. Or vinegar:

That’s all for now. I’m now off to have every item of clothing I own pressed and starched.

RJB

4 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, history, humanities, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (15 Jan 2012)

January 17, 2012

Sorry I’ve been quiet lately, but I’ve been out and about in a big way. Since last time I posted, I have been to the Pacific Northwest, where I had the pleasure of hanging out with many of the Seattle Skeptics. I went birding on Mt. Rainier (foolish me) and interviewed people who were a little scared of the murals at the Denver International Airport. Hopefully that will become a Skeptical Inquirer article or post.

Unfortunately, I started this post in the lobby of my hotel, and lost a huge amount of work when I closed my laptop. Grr. But technical glitches will not stop me from bringing you the week in the weird-o-sphere.

Get Joe Nickell on the phone! There’s a WWII diary that needs authentication! It may alter what we think happened to Glenn Miller.
Jesse Ventura got punched out by an actual SEAL! I don’t advocate violence, but give that guy a medal!
An interview with a member of, and this is a band name, Skyfucker. This is the evidence that Vigilant Citizen doesn’t want you to see!
Take anything printed in the Daily Mail with a grain of … nay, a salt-lick. But the story of David Icke’s collapsing marriage has to be included this week.
A story out of England, possibly misleadingly reported: “Dead Body Found On Royal Front Lawn Raises Questions About Personal Lives Of The Elite.” The author makes a point of tying the Royal Family to “the historical Count Dracula.” (Ugh.)
So, war is in the air, and Iran is going around torpedoing luxury liners.
A mystery illness strikes a bunch of girls in New York, and the conspiracy folks cry, “HPV vaccine!” Sometimes ignorance is obscene.
At the IntelHub, Peter Kirby speculates about the chemtrail business. He can’t even get through the first paragraph without totally messing up the chain of command:

The spraying itself is carried out by the U.S. military; probably the Air Force. The orders mostly come from Wall Street. The military man or men in charge of the operation take orders from an intelligence agency.

Again with the IntelHub! They also picked up an interview with Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson, who was in the 2010 trouser truffle of a documentary, “What In the World Are They Spraying?” (It was horrid. I was at the world premier.)
On New Year’s Eve, Obama crowned himself. Or possibly he ate Parquet spread.
Eisenhower golfed with aliens. Well, the video doesn’t say that, but Eisenhower liked to golf, so that’s probably how the encounter played out. Also, I saw a document once, so trust me. (See how stupid that sounds, guys?)
Was Tesla an ancient Egyptian? Well, if he was a time traveler from the future, why not?
The Nazi connection to the JFK assassination. Be one of the first people to see this video! Nobody else has bothered!
This headline is so tantalizingly incomplete. Every way I try to follow up on this one I am blocked. But it leaves so many questions unanswered. Questions that it just raised!
I loved the headline, “Man Trapped In Time Vortex Appears In The Future,” because, well, how would we know?
Just too late for Christmas! Bohemian Grove action figures!
From Doubtful Newsblog, the Iranian-alien technology that they are not telling you about. I mean, Doubtful Newsblog is, but nobody else.
Oh man, do we need a conspiracy theory about Jay-Z and Beyonce’s baby’s name? Apparently someone does.
A new conspiracy theory book! Ooh! Ooh! Must have! Conspiracy Rising, by Martha Lee. Yayayay!
Finally, someone else talking about the Jesuits!
FederalJack releases the strikingly accurately titled “Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Swine Flu Deception.”
When is the gummint gonna open those FEMA camps? They’ve been sitting on this for 30 years. They haven’t put a single person away, so why would they possibly be building more?
Luke Rudkowski continues to be at the center of an epic delusion. Very embarrassing.
Weird, self-perpetuating groups, like clusters of conspiracy theorists, often have their own authorities. Here’s a write up about the phenomenon in the NYT as applied to evangelicals.
Outrageous! IntelHub says that a movie where Gwyneth Paltrow dies horribly is a bad movie! Shame, shame!
Will Diebold voting machines cheat Ron Paul out of third…NO SECOND PLACE FINISH (hell, why not just say first?) in N.H.?
The prize for most unlikely headline of the week goes to exopolitics for: “Expert: Prince William is the Antichrist, Future King of One World Government.” I give this award not because of anything to do with William, but because how do you become an expert in that fact?

Conspiracy Theory of the Week:

No contest. It was tweeted by Jason Brown, @drunkenmadman:

INVISIBLE HIGHLY-TRAINED ATTACK HAMSTERS WITH DIAMOND-TIPPED FALSE TEETH DID 9/11!!

That was at least as fun as “Terrified Woman From Other Universe Wakes Up Here.”

No wait. There is a new winner. It is this. She’s really sick, but the tales she tells (and the fact that she felt she needed to tell it in her bathroom wearing a bathing suit) freaking fascinate me. I mean…wow. Warning: this is so obscene your ears might burst in a desperate attempt to protect your sanity, but it won’t help. The sheer quantities of Jesuit bodily fluids. Be advised, do not watch this:

And that’s it. I’ll see you next week. I really hope. More traveling as the job situation gets serious. I have an interview in about two weeks and a talk to prepare to give to that department. I’m talking about…conspiracy theories (among other things). Go figure.

RJB

8 Comments | conspiracy theory, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

Skeptical Humanities Panel at Dragon*Con

January 15, 2012

We’ve been out of commission for a few weeks. I am working on another edition of the conspiracy theory round up this evening, but to tide you over, I’d like to direct you to a video that just went up, our Skepticism and Humanities panel at Dragon*Con, featuring Eve, Massimo Pigliucci, Jenna Marie Griffith, Joe Nickell and me.

Much thanks goes to Derek Colanduno, who runs the SkepTrack, and Mark Ditsler of Abrupt Media, who records every second of SkeptTrack in high-def on a minimum of five cameras.

RJB

Leave a Comment » | academia, critical thinking, history, humanities, language/linguistics, literature, rhetoric and composition | Permalink
Posted by Bob

The Last Two Weeks or So In Conspiracy (31 Dec 2011)

December 31, 2011

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

4 Comments | conspiracy theory, critical thinking, mass media, politics, psychology, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

Skeptical Humanities

This Week in Conspiracy (11 February 2012)

Skeptical Book Review: Reading Outside of Your Discipline, or A Psychologist, a Magician, and an Archaeologist Walk Into a Bookstore

This Week in Conspiracy (5 February 2012)

A Brief Note on the Sokal Hoax

This YouTube video is why we must save the Internet

This Week in Conspiracy (28 January 2012)

This Week in Conspiracy (22 Jan 2012)

This Week in Conspiracy (15 Jan 2012)

Skeptical Humanities Panel at Dragon*Con

The Last Two Weeks or So In Conspiracy (31 Dec 2011)

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