Category: Conspiracies
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Angels and Demons – Feeding our love of conspiracies
Tomorrow Angels and Demons comes to theaters across the country. One in a long series of movies that profits from the idea that underneath our regular, ordinary world, there are powerful forces controlling the scenes. I understand the appeal of these movies, it’s an entertaining concept. A fictional conspiracy engages your intellect, creates a mystery,…
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The Teabaggers Are Nuts
Via Brayton I caught this disturbing video of the new right-wing fringe movement: Now, if you guys have been following along for the last few years of denialism blog, you know you should immediately be suspicious of people alleging conspiracy theories. This one is a doozy. The administration as a culmination of a 5 decade…
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Skeptics’ Circle 102 at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes
Please check out this week’s skeptics’ circle at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes. Of note, I liked Dr Austs’ post on the human toll of HIV/AIDS denialism, it is stirring. I also found the Skeptic’s field guide particularly interesting. I would have two suggestions. One would be to prioritize by frequency of use or rhetorical…
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Creationism—GOPs arugmentum ad populum
(HT to Nisbet…really) With the “choice” of Governor Palin as the vice presidential candidate, the GOP must now face up to questions about the teaching of creation myths is public school science classes. The new talking point? “It’s a local issue.” Science is local? Lucky for the GOP, Governor Pawlenty wasn’t chosen for veep, given…
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A blog recommendation
Everyone this morning should check out a new favorite website of mine the International Journal of Inactivism. Frank Bi has created a wonderful little catalog of global warming conspiracy theories that nicely illustrate the fundamental defects of reasoning used by the denialists. In particular, I enjoyed his genealogy of climate conspiracy theories. When we first…
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Ah, the credulity!
Yesterday, it was the Times with “Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer”. Today, it’s the Journal with “Do Fuel-Saving Gadgets Take You for a Ride?”, which includes this little gem from a gadget maker: The EPA and FTC “only test the ones that don’t work,” says Louis H. Elwell III, chairman and president of…
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Attack of the child zombies!
I was glancing at the Huffington Post today when I ran into yet another piece of what I wish was absurdist health reporting. Unfortunately, it’s meant to be taken seriously. What’s even worse is that there is a real problem hidden in the hyperbole, but the author’s over-the-top rant does more to obscure than expose…
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A mysterious encounter
The room was dark—preturnaturally dark (damn you, Stephen Donaldson!). I was led by the robed and hooded figures to an altar. On the altar was a…something, and it was covered with a cloth. The cloth was a remarkable black, the kind of black that escapes focus. It created an even darker hole in the already…
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Slate parses some crankery
Slate has a series of three articles on what editor Daniel Engber refers to as “the paranoid style”. Starting with A crank’s progress, sliding into a review of Doubt is their product, and finishing with a spot-on review of Expelled he runs the guantlet of modern denialism. He also happens to hit upon the major…
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I could have told him that
Richard Black investigates the common crank claim that science is just an old boys network designed to throw sweet, sweet grant money at their friends. Guess what? The evidence of this conspiracy is lacking. I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal…