Acceleration causation station

You might have heard that a while back, there was a recall on Toyotas because of a problem with stuck accelerator pedals, a malfunction that cost several lives and had one man unjustly imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter.  Toyota was accused of covering up the problem to avoid the cost of a recall, and ultimately paid out $1.2 billion in repairs and reparations to avoid prosecution.

What you may not know is that the entire problem was caused by...

... HAARP.

Yes, HAARP, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, the array of creepy-looking antennas out on the Alaskan tundra that has been blamed for everything from the Fukushima earthquake to Hurricane Katrina.  

Okay, I know HAARP shut down in 2014.

That's what they want you to believe.

HAARP [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So now here's another thing to lay at the feet of the Illuminati, who are (of course) the ones who operate the research station.  At least, that's the contention of the people over at the David Icke Forum, which acts as some kind of clearinghouse for loonies who don't think that anything happens by chance.

Here's the actual quote:

There seems [sic] to be a lot of accidents happening lately because of electronics failure. Many aircraft have fallen out of the sky due to autopilot error, etc. 

Trains have collided because switching stations have failed. 

Now the Toyota accelerator problem.  Truth is, GM, Ford and Toyota have all had the problem for years. 

I suggest that the nanoscale particles of silver released from the Chemtrail program in the form of silver-iodide that allows electrically charged ions to be directed and controlled through HAARP technologies is getting into electronics and reeking [sic] havoc by "tricking" (shorting) electro-mechanical switches.

Well, that's definitely the first thing I think of when I have car problems.  A while back, my 2007 Honda Element, which I love even though it looks kind of like a blue toaster on wheels, started making a weird grinding noise that seemed to come from the rear passenger side.  I immediately took it to my mechanic, Rick.

"Rick," I said, "I think something's wrong with the suspension or brakes back there.  Or, possibly, silver iodide nanoparticles released in the form of chemtrails by an atmospheric monitoring station in Alaska are tricking my car's electro-mechanical parts, thus "reeking havoc."

Turned out it was a stuck brake caliper.  Or at least that's what Rick told me.  There's always the possibility that he might be a secret Illuminati member himself, in which case I've now revealed to Them that I know what they're up to.

So now that I've given myself away, I guess I better watch myself.  Who knows what they'll beam silver iodide into next?  Maybe my computer at school.  Although considering that it already takes twenty minutes just to boot up when I turn it on, maybe that'll make it work better.  Heaven knows nothing else the IT guys have tried has made any difference.  My own contention is that the problem is caused by the fact that my school computer is powered by a single hamster running in a wheel, and that it's as slow as it is because the hamster's kind of pooped out after all these years.

But I digress.

In any case, let me say it as clearly as I know how: HAARP was shut down three years ago.  Any problems you have with your car, up to and including a stuck accelerator, are caused by mechanical failures, not by "silver iodide particles," which you can't "direct and control" using some kind of magic laser beam from space anyhow.  So just relax, and go back to chewing at the straps of your straitjacket, or whatever it was you were doing before.

In any case, I'd better wrap this up, because I've got to get showered, get some breakfast and coffee, and head on out to school.  Turn my computer on, and then wait twenty minutes to see if the hamster is in the mood to run today.

Lurking under the ice

So once again I've been sent a link several times with either "Oh, lord, here we go again" or "Ha!  This is real!  You skeptics are so dumb!" notes appended.  The link is to a story in The New York Post about a "massive anomaly lurking in Antarctica."

My first thought was to wonder how an anomaly can lurk, whether in Antarctica or elsewhere, and of course this put me in mind of H. P. Lovecraft's seminal horror story "At the Mountains of Madness."  In this tale some explorers head out to the Frozen Continent after the discovery of certain artifacts of great age, and upon investigation they find a massive city (I believe it's described as "cyclopean" and "eldritch," two of Lovecraft's absolute favorite words), following which they're one by one picked off and eaten by Shoggoths, who apparently lurk quite effectively.

So the usual stuff.  But the particular anomaly referenced in the Post article was discovered not through direct exploration but by use of a magnetometer, and the conclusion was that there is a large metallic object hidden (or lurking, as the case may be) underneath the ice in Wilkes Land, a region of eastern Antarctica.  It's buried at a depth of 900 meters, and is 250 kilometers across.

Which is pretty big.  Cyclopean, even.

Wilkes Land, also known as "Not My Idea of a Vacation Spot" [image courtesy of NASA/JPL and the Wikimedia Commons]

Some scientists have suggested that the anomaly is the remains of a huge asteroid -- perhaps twice as large as the one that created the Chicxulub Crater in what is now the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, and in the process did in most of the species of dinosaurs.  If so, the Wilkes Land Magnetic Anomaly is a good candidate for the smoking gun of the Permian-Triassic Extinction, which occurred 252 million years ago and is estimated to have wiped out 96% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life in one fell swoop.  The timing certainly seems right, as do the characteristics of the site.

But of course, far be it from your average New York Post reader to accept something like the results of scientific study.  No, the lurking anomaly has to be something more mysterious.  Some of the suggestions have been:

• it's a massive UFO base
• it's an underground (or underice, as the case may be) city where the Nazis escaped to after their defeat in World War II
• it's where they moved HAARP after they decommissioned the one in Alaska.  (Yes, I know that HAARP studies the atmosphere, so it wouldn't do you much good buried 900 meters deep in ice.  Stop asking questions.)
• it's a portal to the inside of the Hollow Earth

Then there's the "UFO-hunting crew" that calls itself "Secure Team 10," which basically combined all of the above into one all-purpose loony explanation.  The Post explains their claim as follows:

Secure Team 10 suggested the Nazis built secret bases in Antarctica during World War II, which were designed to be used by flying saucers. 

The UFO hunters added: “There is some evidence of this coming to light in recent years, with images purporting to show various entrances built into the side of mountains, with a saucer shape and at a very high altitude.” 

“This begs the question: how would you enter these entrances without something that could fly and was the same shape as the hole itself?”

My general opinion is that it begs a great many more questions than that one, but do go on.

Secure Team also suggested the US Navy led a mission to investigate the mysterious continent. 

This expedition was called Operation High Jump, which conspiracy theorists believe was an attempt to find the entrance to a secret world hidden underneath Earth.

Have I emphasized strongly enough that this magnetic anomaly, whatever it is, is covered by a 900-meter-thick sheet of ice?

Anyhow.  Once again we have the woo-woos coming up with bizarre ideas, which of course is what woo-woos do, and tabloid clickbait like The New York Post enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon to induce readers to provide them with ad revenue by clicking on the link.

And, as a side effect, inducing my readers to send it to me, which they've done (at the time of this writing) six times and counting.  So thanks to all of my loyal readers for keeping me informed on the latest missives from the wingnuts.  As for me, I think I'm going to lurk my way up to the kitchen and get another cup of coffee.

Acting on absurdities

In C. S. Lewis's wonderful fantasy story The Magician's Nephew, he says, "The trouble about making yourself stupider than you really are is you very often succeed."  In the story, Uncle Andrew (the magician of the title) has convinced himself so completely that what he is seeing isn't real that in the end, he actually becomes unable to see it.

It's not so far off from what happens with conspiracy theorists.  When you have accustomed yourself to accepting an idea even if it has no evidence to support it -- or, in some cases, because it has no evidence to support it -- you're likely to fall for any damn fool claim that comes along.  And, if you'll allow me another quote, this one from Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

We got an object lesson in these two principles last week when two men from Georgia, Michael Mancil and James Dryden, were arrested for plotting to go to Alaska with piles of weapons, with the intent of blowing up HAARP.  You probably know that HAARP -- the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project -- has been blamed for everything from creating hurricanes to triggering earthquakes, when in reality all it does is study the ionosphere for the purposes of improving communication and navigation systems.  To be sure, it looks kind of creepy; a field of antennae sprouting up from the Alaskan tundra.

So the conspiracy theorists just love HAARP, and their fears were not assuaged a bit when the U. S. Air Force, which ran HAARP, basically turned it over last year to the University of Alaska - Fairbanks.  You'd think that people would say, "Okay, if HAARP really could be used as an ultra-powerful weather modification device, capable of spawning tornadoes on the other side of the planet, the Air Force would definitely not release their interest in it."

But that is not how the minds of conspiracy theorists work.  Of course HAARP is still being run by the government, and is still causing lightning strikes in Dakar, Senegal.  We couldn't be that far wrong, could we?

Of course not.

But as I pointed out before, people who (1) don't care about evidence and (2) are convinced that the government is in a huge conspiracy to wipe out the entire human race are very likely to do stupid stuff.  Witness Mancil and Dryden, who according to the Coffee County Sheriff's Department had amassed "[a] massive amount of arsenal seized [that] looked like something out of a movie, one where a small army was headed to war."

Apparently, besides HAARP's role in modifying the weather, Mancil and Dryden also thought that it was being used to "trap people's souls."  What the U. S. government would do with a bunch of souls, I have no idea.  Maybe they figured that there were some members of congress who could use a replacement, I dunno.  Be that as it may, Mancil and Dryden were apparently "told by god" that they were to go to Alaska, kidnap a scientist and steal his ID badge, and use that to gain access to the facility, after which they would blow it up and "release the trapped souls."

So here we have yet another example of why it's important for people to start paying more attention to facts, and less attention to crazy claims made by random wingnuts.  (Following this dictum would put Alex Jones out of business, which would be a step in the right direction.)  In any case, I'm glad the whole thing ended happily.  The would-be terrorists never made it out of their home county and are cooling their heels in jail, and the scientific facility is safe, at least for the time being.  So now we can turn our attention to worrying about other things, such as the outcome of next week's presidential election, which may well leave me wishing that HAARP could wipe out humanity.

Storm warning

I swear, the conspiracy theorists are getting faster these days.

In the past, it seemed like they'd at least wait until the dust settled from the latest catastrophe before claiming that it was (1) a hoax, (2) set up by the government as a "false flag," (3) engineered by the Illuminati, or (4) all of the above.  But now, thanks to the internet, we can conclusively state that light is the fastest thing in nature, but bullshit comes in at a close second.

This all comes up because we're already beginning to hear loony theories about Hurricane Matthew, which pummeled Haiti and Cuba, slammed the Bahamas, and is currently ripping its way up the Florida coast (with a potential afterwards for making a weird loop out in the Atlantic and hitting Florida for a second time).  Certainly its track has been odd -- I can't remember ever seeing a hurricane in the southern Caribbean make a ninety-degree right-hand turn the way this one did.

But there's a lot we don't know about steering currents, the prevailing winds that move storms around.  We're getting far better at predicting them -- which is why our ability to forecast storm tracks has improved dramatically in the past thirty years -- but it's still far from an exact science.

Hurricane Matthew on October 4, 2016 [image courtesy of NASA]

All of which leaves open a gap for the nutjobs to crawl through.

First, we have online media commentator Matt Drudge, who never misses an opportunity to use human suffering to hammer home his ultra-right-wing views, claiming that the people at NOAA are overplaying the severity of the hurricane to "make an exaggerated point on climate."  The ironic thing about this is that given the fact that we just had our umpteenth-in-a-row month of record-setting heat, I'd say the climate is making the point for itself.  But silly things like facts don't discourage Drudge, who is already saying Matthew is "a fizzle" and is not going to live up to the forecasters' dire predictions.

Then Rush Limbaugh jumped into the fray, claiming that not only is Matthew not going to live up to the expectations, but that hurricanes in general are a liberal conspiracy.  "It’s in the interest of the left to have destructive hurricanes because then they can blame it on climate change, which they can desperately continue trying to sell," he said on his radio show this week.

So apparently all the left has to do is to make up stuff, and it becomes real.  I bet the Democrats are going to be tickled that they have this much magical power.  All they have to do is wave a wand and say "Hurricanus manifestum!" and lo and behold, we have a storm.

Maybe they should try "Anncoulteria shutthefuckuppibus" and see what happens.  I know I'm willing to try it.

But I digress.

Anyhow, just because Drudge is an asshole and Limbaugh is a moron is not to say that Matthew hasn't been an odd storm.  Not only has it taken a weird path, as I mentioned earlier, but it strengthened really quickly, blowing up to category 4 only a day after it took its northward turn.  So it will come as no surprise that we're already hearing about how the odd features of Matthew are because it's...

*cue scary music*

... not an ordinary hurricane.

This alarming news comes from one Dr. Ethan Trowbridge, who is called a "leading climatologist" over at the website Someone's Bones despite his pronouncements making me wonder if he's been doing sit-ups underneath parked cars.  Trowbridge, who appears to be unclear on the process of hurricane formation, attributes Matthew's ferocity to the close approach of the planet Nibiru (I bet you thought we were done with the Nibiru horseshit.  Ha, fooled you, didn't I?).  According to Trowbridge, some bizarre and hitherto-unknown physics is allowing the mysterious tenth planet to stir up hurricanes:

Nibiru is producing latent heat on our planet.  And this has a positive correlation on weather patterns currently being experienced on Earth.  There are a lot of things the public is not being told, that can influence this storm’s trajectory. Many things factor into this... 

Nibiru is annihilating Arctic sea ice, and its proximity to our inner solar system is pulverizing and altering atmospheric conditions across the globe.  Greenland, for example, has lost much of its polar ice, causing the region to darken; the consequences allow solar radiation—from both the sun and Nibiru—to permeate the atmosphere, warm the Earth’s oceans, and destabilize the planet’s crust. 

These are dangerous times.  What happens in the Arctic impacts the world.  This is known as the ‘carbolic effect,’ a concept the USGS and its affiliates keep hidden from the public.  Greenland has reached its carbolic point, and now Nibiru’s presence is influencing weather all over the planet. Hurricane Matthew is the latest example, and Nibiru is the cause.

The author of the article tells us that Dr. Trowbridge is "now in exile," which I suppose is nicer than saying "was laughed out of the scientific establishment."

As if this wasn't bad enough, we then find out from an entirely different wackmobile that Hurricane Matthew is a "weaponized storm" meant to blast America for "rejecting globalist, totalitarian rule." The proponent of this theory (if I can dignify it with that term) is one Steven Quayle, who goes on to tell us that HAARP is involved (of course), the whole idea was dreamed up by the Illuminati (of course), and the fact of its being named "Matthew" is significant because of the "Biblical associations... and obvious prophetic implications."

Which makes perfect sense, given the well-known biblical books the "Gospel of Katrina" and the "Letter of St. Wilma to the Louisianians."

And this isn't even taking into account the fact that HAARP closed two years ago, and even if it was still operational and could do what Quayle claims it can do, it only seems to be able to generate hurricanes in areas that always get hit by hurricanes anyway.

Now if HAARP could generate a category-5 hurricane in, say, North Dakota, I'd be impressed.  But south Florida?  Not so much.

So the damn thing is still out there churning, and already the loonies are trying to tie it into their warped worldview.  Which, I suppose, shouldn't be surprising.  In any case, enough about the lunatic fringe; I'll just end with a wish for all of those in harm's way from this storm to remain safe -- whatever its ultimate cause was.

Apocalypse whenever

I have an update for those of you who are worried about when the world is going to end, or civilization is going to fall, which honestly would happen anyhow if the world ended.

This update comes from sources that conveniently ignore the fact that previous predictions of the world's end have had a 100% failure rate.  Every time we're told that an asteroid is going to end it all, or the Rapture is going to happen, or the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons are going to run roughshod over the populace, what happens is...

... nothing.  Civilization, or what passes for it these days, just keeps bumbling along as usual.  There are no death comets, no killer plagues, no Second Comings of Deities.  All of which I find reassuring but at the same time vaguely disappointing, because I live in the middle of rural upstate New York and we could really use some excitement around here most days.

Of course, a batting average of zero isn't enough to discourage these folks.  This time it's gonna happen, cross our hearts and hope to die in horrible agony when the Earth explodes.

First, we have the Nibiru cadre, who have been predicting the arrival of Nibiru for decades, kind of like what happened in Waiting for Guffman but not nearly as funny.  This time, though, we can say for sure that Nibiru is approaching because there's going to be a "Blood Moon" (better known to those of us who aren't insane as a lunar eclipse).  Yes, I know that lunar eclipses happen every year, but this one is different.  Don't ask me how.

According to an article in Express, the fabled tenth planet is due to arrive any time now, and has been captured in a video.  Not a NASA video, mind you.  A video taken by an anonymous YouTube subscriber, which as we all know is a highly reliable source of scientific research.

"And now," writes the author of the article, Jon Austin, "conspiracy theorists have somehow tied it in with the infamous blood moon events of a year ago that appears [sic] to be happening again."

What?  Those events of last year wherein nothing happened?  Ah, yes, I remember thinking at the time, "Heaven help us all if this happens again!  Scariest non-events I've ever seen!"

According to this bizarre view of how the world in general, and astronomy in particular, works, the "blood moons" aren't caused by the Earth's shadow.  Nope.  The Nibiroonies have "now tried to tie together the two myths and even claim it is the shadow of Nibiru causing the blood moons."

Because it's not like if there was a planet near enough, and big enough, to cast a giant shadow over the moon, NASA would notice it, or anything.

Then we have the revelation that Obama and his evil henchmen are planning a scheme to destroy America and take down other major world governments along with it.  According to the site What Does It Mean?, the president and his collaborators have a Cunning Plan to unleash upon us, despite the fact that the guy only has five months left in office, so if he really has been intending to destroy the United States, he's gotten off to an awfully slow start.

But no, the article says, he's palling up with Hillary Clinton, who apparently rivals Obama himself for being the embodiment of pure evil.  And they've teamed up with the people who run Google for a conspiracy trifecta to accomplish the following:

1.) [D]isabling of advertisements on all websites critical of the Obama-Clinton regime, including the globally popular Antiwar.com, in order to destroy them.

2.) Deleting Donald Trump from the search list of candidates running for the US presidency. 

3.) Developing and employing a filter so that the name Donald Trump won’t even show up on anyone’s computer device or smart phone.

4.) Hiding in their search results information relating to Hillary Clinton’s health and the massive numbers of suspicions deaths associated with her.

5.) Being supported in their hiding Hillary Clinton health information by the New York Times, with one of their insiders admitting what they’re doing.

Myself, I would be thrilled if something would prevent my ever having to look at a photograph of Donald Trump again.  If that's what the conspiracy's about, I'm all for it.

And as evidence for all of this, they cite...

... InfoWars.  Yes, Alex Jones, who despite having a screw loose is still considered by some to have inside information about the plots that are running rampant in our government, but which never seem to accomplish a damn thing.

It's sort of like the "Obama's coming for your guns" thing you hear all the time from the far-right.  I mean, dude had eight years to take all our guns, and as a nation we're still as heavily armed as ever.  And the contentions that Obama's a radical Muslim.  Really?  He drinks beer, eats bacon, doesn't fast during Ramadan, and supports LGBT rights.  If the guy is a Muslim, he's the worst Muslim ever.

Last, we've got the weird coincidence of three separate lightning strikes that killed hundreds of reindeer (in Norway) and cattle (in the US), and which is said to be HAARP gearing up for a major strike on the populated places of the earth.  Add this to the fact that there's a hurricane in Florida as we speak, because that's not common or anything.  HAARP has done all this as a sort of test run, and next thing we know, there'll be earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and the works, and civilization will have no other choice besides giving up and collapsing.

What's funniest about all of this is that just last week, the University of Alaska - Fairbanks, which now owns HAARP, had an open house last week wherein they invited anyone with questions or suspicions to stop by for a tour of the place so they can see what it actually does, which is to study high-altitude atmospheric phenomena.  I coulda told them this strategy wouldn't work; if you demonstrate conclusively to the conspiracy theorists that HAARP was a harmless scientific study facility, they will either (1) tell you that the real HAARP had been moved elsewhere, or (2) that you are only saying this because you are under the influence of a mind-control beam, which is one of the things HAARP is supposedly able to do.  So you can't win.  These are people who think a lack of evidence is evidence.

Anyhow, there you have it.  Three ways in which we will almost certainly not be meeting the fall of civilization as we know it.  It's kind of anticlimactic, really.  We're moving into autumn, here in the northeast.  School's starting, the days are getting shorter, and we soon will be battening down the hatches for cold weather.  Myself, I think an apocalypse would be a nice change of pace.  I'm not in favor of wholesale destruction, mind you, but a minor catastrophe or two would go a long way toward alleviating the monotony.

Heavy weather

I find it puzzling how few people actually understand weather.

Partly, this puzzlement is because I've always found it completely fascinating.  I spend a lot of time on Weather Underground and the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) sites, with the result that I frequently update my wife on the status of weather systems in Nebraska.  (Her stock response: "That's nice, dear.")

I cannot, for example, fathom how people wouldn't be intensely curious about videos like the recent time-lapse series taken of a supercell system in Wyoming, which all of you should watch right now:

What surprises me is how few people get beyond the "Oh, wow," stage with all of this.  I know that the first time I saw a photograph of a supercell -- which ranks right up there with a dry microburst as the most bizarre weather phenomenon I've ever heard of -- I immediately thought, "What could cause something like that?"  And asking this question led me to all sorts of cool places, like atmospheric convection and adiabatic cooling and evaporative cooling and wind shear.

Now I realize that this stuff gets complex fast.  To quote Garrison Keillor, "Intelligence is like four-wheel drive.  It enables you to get stuck in even more remote places."

But it's still awesome.  And weather is, after all, ubiquitous.  How you could be immersed in something all the time, and not want to know how it works, is mystifying to me.

All of this comes up because of two stories this week, both of which never would have been more than meteorological curiosities if it weren't for the fact that people tend not to know much about the weather phenomena that surround them all day, every day.  The first, which involves an admittedly odd cloud pattern called a "hole-punch cloud," or "fallstreak hole," had people speculating that the seeming "hole in the sky" (check the link for photographs) was one of the following:

1. A wormhole.
2. A flaw in the Matrix.
3. A sign that we're all living inside some kind of self-contained dome, à la The Truman Show, and the hole was sort of like the can light that fell out of the sky at the beginning of the movie.
4. A gap through which an angel was about to arrive.  Why an angel couldn't just come through the clouds without there being a hole, given that clouds are basically big blobs of fog, I don't know.
5. A portal to a different dimension.

Of course, all of the furor was founded on the fact that hole-punch clouds have a perfectly natural explanation, usually that an airplane (or, much less commonly, a meteor) disrupted what was uniform cloud cover, leaving a temporary hole through the clouds.

No Matrix, wormhole, or angels required.

Second, we had a story from the wonderful site Doubtful News that blamed the unusual (and destructive) rains that have hit Serbia in the past week on none other than...

... HAARP.

Yes, we have not seen the last of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, that favorite bête noire of conspiracy theorists -- despite the fact that HAARP closed last year and is currently being dismantled.  It's been blamed for everything from tsunamis to earthquakes to tornadoes to hurricanes, and now... floods:

Many of my contacts in Serbia have spoken of whispered accusations that the unprecedented flooding and unusual weather patterns in the last few years have something to do with the US’s HAARP system. According to one website: “A Serbian journalist was advised not to write about a HAARP installation near Belgrade. After series of texts regarding HAARP antenna system near Barajevo (Belgrade municipality) and application of this ELF system in Serbia the journalist of newspaper Pravda has received a phone call on Monday evening around 10PM from unlisted phone number. The voice on other side of the line gave the journalist a “friendly advice” to stop writing on HAARP...” 

Would it be surprising if the US, after unleashing neo-Nazis in Ukraine, unleashed flooding in Serbia? Those in the know would probably say no.

 And there's a reason for that, you know?  Like the fact that HAARP couldn't even cause floods when it was running, much less now, when it isn't?

Of course, every time there's a catastrophe, people want an Explanation, not just an explanation.  It's not enough just to talk about weather systems and frontal boundaries and atmospheric moisture; there's got to be more.

But dammit, it'd be nice if people would start with the weather systems and frontal boundaries, rather than starting from ignorance and going downhill from there.  If you want to comment intelligently on anything, it helps to know some of the science behind it first.

Okay, I'll calm down, now.  Back to my happy place.  NOAA.  I see that there's a low-pressure center over Manitoba at the moment.  Isn't that cool?  Isn't it?

That's nice, dear.

Sorry, you get an "F"

Tomorrow is the start of a new school year for me, and that probably explains why I had the reaction I did to a flyer that some friends of mine picked up.

They were in their car in downtown Ithaca, and a very earnest-looking woman came up and shoved a piece of glossy paper through their open window.  Nearby were several people with picket signs.  Resisting the impulse to roll the window up, my friend's daughter took the piece of paper, which was apparently a joint effort of two groups called GeoEngineering Watch and Global Skywatch.

A brief glance at the flyer was enough to elicit some hearty guffaws from my friends, and the daughter, riding in the passenger seat, read the contents to her dad as he drove.  Several times, he reported afterwards, he almost had to pull over because he was laughing so hard.  And the consensus was, "Oh, we have to keep this and give it to Gordon," with the probable reasoning being that my blood pressure is far too low.

So anyhow, over dinner a few days later, I was presented with the flyer.  I won't quote the whole thing, because the back is covered with fine print and it would be as tedious for me to type it out as it would be for you to read it, so I will simply present you with the high points, along with some parenthetical comments that I would have scribbled in, in red pen, if this had been a paper that one of my Environmental Science students had submitted to me.

Illegal government-controlled chemical weather modification programs are taking place over our heads right now day after day!  [Source?  This is clearly an overgeneralization.]

It's called, [misplaced comma] GeoEngineering [but you need a comma here] AKA Chemtrails, Stratospheric Aerosols or Solar Radiation Management.  [Geoengineering and stratospheric aerosols aren't the same thing, and chemtrails and "solar radiation management" appear to be made up.]  We are being sprayed with tiny particles of Aluminum, Barium, Strontium, and other highly toxic chemicals that go right into our red blood cells.  [No, we aren't, and no, they don't.]

These chemicals spread across the sky and block out the sun.  [Yesterday was nice and sunny, but thanks for asking.]  The lack of sunlight and the nano size particles are poisoning everything and making us sick.  [Strangely enough, I feel fine.]  Respiratory and brain disorders have risen off the charts.  [Source?]  The aluminum is poisoning our farms so only Monsanto's aluminum resistant GMO seeds will grow.  [Odd that my vegetable garden is doing so well this year, isn't it?]

See through the lies!  Do your own research!  [Oh, I do.]

Save the planet!  [Doing my best.  The first thing I'd choose to save it from is "stupidity," but at the moment I'm thinking this is a losing battle.]

Governments and corporations are deliberately manipulating and altering Earth's climate, endangering the lives of people all over the world.  [Source?]  Two of the most extreme cases of geo-engineering are chemtrails -- the release of toxic chemicals into the air that are poisoning people and the planet [please review the definition of "geoengineering"] -- and HAARP -- an electromagnetic antenna array in Alaska that can send radio frequency radiation over large geographical areas [so do television station transmitters] and manipulate weather patterns causing earthquakes, tsunamis, and more.  [Earthquakes and tsunamis are not "weather patterns"]  These projects represent some of the worst crimes in history, yet most people are unaware of them.  [Perhaps because you're making this up as you go along?]

For over ten years, observers have been noticing white aerosol trails being dispersed in the skies that don't behave like usual condensing jet exhaust.  When seeking explanation, investigators are told by the government that these are just the normal "contrails" that we see coming from commercial jets and that they are perfectly safe.  [Seems right to me.]  However, they don't dissipate the way regular condensation trails do.  [Yes, they do.  The evaporation time of a contrail is dependent on the weather conditions in the upper atmosphere -- temperature, windspeed, and humidity -- but they all eventually evaporate.  Water does that, you know.]  They linger for hours, spreading across the sky, and are often laid out in cross hatch patterns.  [Check out maps of common air traffic flight paths in your area for an explanation of this.]  The government has refused to test samples collected underneath the trails.  [Better things to do, I would imagine.]  Now a TV news report from Germany has confirmed that their military is in fact doing aerial spraying of chemtrails.  [Oh!  A TV news report from Germany!  Well, then!  All the proof I need!]

An article from the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, confirms that not only are chemtrails real, [Bull.  Shit.]  but they are suspected to be responsible for a variety of neurotoxic conditions including MS, Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's, and Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS).  [All of these conditions are caused by different things.  Have you ever passed a biology class in your life?]

Intense spraying of dangerous chemicals from planes has been reported in, at least, the US, Canada, Germany, England, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and Croatia.  [Source?]  A nasty mixture of parasites, pathogens, toxic heavy metals, and nano-engineered particles have been found falling to earth from the trails of certain planes.  [Living parasites and pathogens somehow survive the combustion process in the jet engine?  Really?  Do you have even the vaguest understanding of how jet engines work?]  Aluminum, barium, bacillus spores, radioactive thorium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, dessicated blood, mold spores, yellow mycototoxins, ethylene dibromide and synthetic nano-fibers are among the ingredients found in collected samples.  [Wasn't this the recipe for a magic spell by the witches in Macbeth?  Oh, and I think you mean "mycotoxin."  Are the yellow ones really bad?]  As these fill the atmosphere and lodge in our lungs and blood streams through the air we breathe and the food we eat, it represents the most unavoidable toxic pollution in history!  [Odd, then, that you aren't wearing a filter mask right now.  Why is that, I wonder?]

And so forth and so on.

So, yes, the chemtrail people have come to very close to my home town, and they are pissed.  Which they should be, because I would definitely give them an "F" for this report.  I might even call home and talk to their parents, perhaps recommending that they drop my class and sign up for some remedial-level science courses. 

Because it sure as hell sounds like they need them.

Funeral march for HAARP and orchestra

In fiction, when an evil villain against whom you have fought long and hard is finally vanquished, you are generally depicted as being pretty happy about it.  When the Ring was destroyed and Sauron defeated, there was, as I remember, a great big ol' party afterwards.  The slaying of the Emperor, and the Death Star being blown to smithereens, was followed by a feast, complete with dancing Ewoks.  Even Jean-Luc Picard, not known for his effusive outbursts of emotion, stopped for celebratory cup of Earl Grey tea after the Borg cube self-destructed.

I find that in real life people don't react that way.

Last week it was announced that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, HAARP for short, was closing due to lack of funding.  HAARP, which journalist Sharon Weinberger calls "the Moby Dick of conspiracy theories," has been accused of almost everything evil you can imagine -- creating hurricanes, generating earthquakes, spawning tornadoes, triggering droughts (and floods), and even exerting direct-into-your-skull mind control over the innocent citizens of the U. S. of A.  So when Deborah Byrd, of EarthSky Science News, announced that HAARP was shutting down, you'd think there would be Great Rejoicing, right?

Here's a direct quote from Byrd's article:

The 35-acre ionospheric research facility in remote Gakona, Alaska – 200 miles north of Anchorage – shut down in early May 2013. HAARP has an antenna array used by scientists to study the outer atmosphere by zapping it with radio waves generated by 3,600 kilowatts of electricity. Not sure how, but HAARP became infamous among conspiracy theorists and some environmental activists, who believed it was responsible for intentional weather modification. Dire events – such as Hurricane Sandy in late 2012 – have been blamed on HAARP by people called “uninformed” by scientists and other commentators. But no more. HAARP’s program manager, Dr James Keeney, said in a July 15, 2013 press release: "Currently the site is abandoned. It comes down to money. We don’t have any...  If I actually could affect the weather, I'd keep it open."

"Ha!" you would think the conspiracy theorists would shout.  "The American people have finally triumphed!  HAARP is no more!"

Nope.  You should read the comments on Byrd's article.  The conspiracy theorists are pissed.  They also don't believe she's telling the truth, so they're really pissed.  Here's a sampler, in case you don't want to risk valuable cells in your prefrontal cortex reading through them all.  You'll just have to believe me that spelling and grammar have been left as-written, because I didn't want to write "sic" 548 times.

This is the facility for the public to see. The real HAARP culprit is in Gakona, Alaska. Does anybody know if that facility is shut down. I don't think so. It's like we have two space program. NASA and the military. The military is functioning real well unlike NASA which is a shell of its former self.

READ: According to Keeney’s press release, the only bright spot on HAARP’s  horizon right now is that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is expected on site as a client to finish up some research in fall 2013 and winter 2014. DARPA has nearly $8.8 million in its FY 14 budget plan to research:

there are MULTIPLE facilities, not just Alaska!! Stationed GLOBALLY.

most scientists deny obvious Facts all the time.
most scientists are afraid to "loose credibility" if they dont repeat the nonsense they had to learn to graduate...
most scientists forget to try to disprove their own Thesis.

There is no right or wrong, just people who want to believe it's all A OK and those who suspect that it's not.

the moon is waxing to waning in a single night,doubt it,look at 3 hour intervals top lit at rise bottom lit at set,this isnt caused by cow farts .stop being stupid for a minute and think about it,,why is the moon flipping a 180 each night,it is the earth tilting on axis nightly,,face N mark spot u stand.then find earth bound 2nd optic reference and then the big dipper,,dipper N. of Polaris"N star as earth rotates always to the left big dipper north of N star should be moving W-E,,as the stars S of Polaris move E-W,,the big dipper and Polaris and the rest of the star field clearly dip ofer 70 degrees west moving against the normal ball like star pattern,our axis is being pulled 70 degrees a night or more,this is easily seen with your own eyes,,why dont you wake up and see the signs in the sun the moon and the stars

I speculate that the reason for all of this angst over HAARP's imminent demise is partly because in order to believe that HAARP is being shut down from lack of funding, you have to accept that it must not have been that important to the government in the first place.  If they really had developed the ability to create earthquakes, hurricanes, et al., do you think that the powers-that-be would have just... given up?  To accept this press release as true, the conspiracy theorists would have to do something unimaginable:

Admit that they have been wrong all along.

No way can they do that.  It's too big a revision of their worldview.  So the press release is an outright lie.  Or the facility is being relocated elsewhere, because too many non-sheeple figured out what they were up to.  Or the government has moved on to even more evil things, like making the moon flip over once a night.  (Can anyone tell me what the hell that guy was actually trying to say?)

So, they'd much rather believe that the Enemy is still out there, and still ultra-powerful, rather than settle in and enjoy their victory.  It reminds me of the line from C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, in which Lord Feverstone implies that the college bureaucrat Curry actually likes having obstructionists to complain about: "'Damn it all,' continued Feverstone, 'no man likes to have his stock-in-trade taken away. What would poor Curry do if the Die-hards one day all refused to do any die-harding?'"

In any case, I don't think there is going to be any celebrating tonight.  No party, no Ewoks, not even a nice cup of Earl Grey tea.  Because, you know... you can never let down your guard.  Not even for a moment.

It will be interesting, though, to see what they turn their attention to next.  It's probably too much to hope for that it will be something that actually has a basis in fact.

Shields up, captain!

Well, it was only a matter of time, wasn't it?

In the last few years, we've seen a surge in the number of claims that the government is engaging in clandestine high-tech mind control (and also weather modification, generation of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and an X-Files-style collaboration with aliens to gain access to their evil technology).  With all of that nastiness happening, it's understandable that your average conspiracy theorist feels like a lamb amongst the wolves.

But not any more.  Now, if you are a TI ("Targeted Individual"), someone the government is harassing using HAARP and chemtrails and direct "voice to skull" experiments, there is help available.

Meet the QuWave Defender -- the first device ever invented specifically to protect you from all of this bad stuff.  Here's the sales pitch:

ARE YOU CONSTANTLY BEING:

• Treated like a Targeted Individual ?
• Attacked by Psychotronic Weapons ?
• Subjected to Psychic Attacks ?
• Subject to Remote Brain Manipulation ?
• Have you been chipped or implanted ?
• Subjected to Electronic Harassment ?
• Exposed to HAARP, ELF, Microwave beams ?
• Subject of Voice to Skull experiments ?
• Subjected to Remote Viewing & Visions ?
• Are you on a TI list being Monitored ?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you might be a Targeted Individual, and you might need the QuWave Defender. It can improve your life and make daily living bearable.

The QuWave Defender, the site says, uses "Scalar Waves and Solfeggio Energies to protect Targeted Individuals from Electronic Harassment & Psychotronic Attacks."

Whatever the hell that means.

Do you need a QuWave Defender?

Electronic Harassment and other forms of control are designed to leave targets feeling stressed out, disoriented, drowsy, helpless, and paranoid. Targets are left with no one to trust and no one to turn to. This form of harassment uses electronic weapons of various types to remotely torture, control, and physically harm Targeted Individuals over time.

There are a variety of means that are used remotely to harm and control the targeted individuals. Some of these techniques are: Microwave, Ultrasonic, Laser, and Acoustic weapons such as Voice to Skul [sic] (v2k, v-2-k), which are used remotely to cause a variety of effects on Targeted Individuals. Many victims find themselves implanted with microchips which have become too small for the human eye to see.

So, if you can't see a microchip, it means there's one there.

How does it work, though? I'm sure that's the question all of you are asking. Simple, the site says:

The QuWave "Defender" produces a Scalar Field specially tuned to protect your body & brain from “Psychotronic Attacks“ and Electronic Harassment from ELF, HAARP, Implants, Microwaves, etc. Also effective defense from Psychic Attacks, Remote Viewing/Manipulation, V2K, Mind Control, etc.

The Scalar Field interferes with external & internal negative harmful signals.

The Solfeggio Waves convert electronic and psychic attacks to positive energy and strengthen the human Bio-field.

By directly modulating a Scalar Wave with Solfeggio Frequencies, we are able to beam them directly to your sub-consciousness. Directly into your body/brain to restore natural balance, protection, and improve brain waves.

It works because it works! Science-y words! Scalar frequency waves! Psychotronic attacks! Stop asking questions!

I have to say, though, that every time they mention "solfeggio frequencies" I keep picturing the kids from The Sound of Music singing, "Do, a deer, a female deer, Re, a drop of golden sun..."

Oh, and I should mention at this juncture that they also claim that the QuWave Defender uses orgone energy, which (as far as I understand it) is some kind of universal life force that we all share, and that is released suddenly during orgasm.  And one of the benefits reported by "a certain percentage of QuWave Defender users (results may vary)" is "improved loving."  So there you are, then.

I picture what these machines supposedly do as being a little like the "shields" in Star Trek.  You can't see 'em, and but they're there, protecting you from all sorts of new and unusual threats.  Scotty can explain how they work, but his explanations don't mean anything, because three-quarters of the words he uses sound like they were made up on the spot.  ("Aye, captain, we've got the alpha subspace polarity oscillators runnin' at maximum gain, but the warp antimatter quantum fields are creatin' pulses of verdion rays, which is gonna make the x-5 Fleegman junctions blow out before the next commercial break if we don't do somethin'...")

Because, after all, ye canna change the laws o' physics.

If you're wondering, by now, how much these things cost, the answer is: a lot.  The "Personal Defender," which is small enough to put in your pocket or purse so you can carry it around with you, and even "wear it as a pendant," is $297.  The "Tabletop Defender," which looks a little like an iPad and is for protecting your home, is $499.  Plus, in both cases, shipping and handling.

You know, I have to admit some grudging admiration for these people.  You take an imaginary threat, but one that a lot of people have become convinced of, and then sell them a useless device to protect them from the imaginary threat.  It's brilliant, really.  And given how well the placebo effect works, I have no doubt that people will report positive results.  There is a whole page full of video testimonials, my favorite of which I quote in its entirety below:

Hi, I'm Chris McKim, and I recently purchased a Tabletop QuWave Defender from QuWave.  I have the Defender, the Personal Defender, and it worked pretty well, so I decided I was gonna try the Tabletop Defender.  And for the last two days, I have not heard a damn voice in my head.  It's the first time in about eight years, so that's a nice change of pace.  I'm actually thinking about cleaning my house for the first time in quite a while, I know that sounds kinda sketchy, but you know, when your life is shit, you don't give a fuck about where you're living.  Excuse my language.  But now I do, and I'm gonna clean my house.  I think I like it a lot.  The lights are on, and that tells me it's working.  See?  [holds up the device]  The lights are on, and that tells me it's working.  And best of all, the signs inside me are telling me it's working.  So, I highly recommend it.  You can return it if it doesn't work.  I hope you'll give it a try, because if it makes your life better, it's well worth it.  Especially if you buy both of them together, you get a good deal.  So, thanks for listening to me.  Bye-bye.

Well, with a scientifically-controlled study like that, who can argue?

Anyhow, that's our bit of woo-woo weirdness for today.  For the record, I'm not going to buy one.  I'm not feeling any particular need for protection from the voices in my head, and as far as I can tell I'm not being harassed by HAARP, psychotronic attack, microwave beams, or microchips.  Right now, the only one who is harassing me is my dog, who wants his breakfast, and I doubt that the "QuWave Defender" would do a damn thing to help me in that regard.

The twisted world of the Tornado Truthers

If I can sum up the rationalist view of the world in one sentence, it would be: your belief in something does not make it the truth.

If you would like me to agree with you, I need more than hearing that you believe it's so.  I need evidence -- or failing that, at least a good, solid, logical argument in favor.

The problem is, there is a slice of humanity for whom a lack of evidence for a claim becomes some kind of twisted argument for its correctness.  These are the people who become conspiracy theorists -- people whose belief in their warped view of reality is so strong that a complete absence of any support for their views is turned inside out, is used to show that the coverup is real.  They are absolutely convinced, and are damn near impossible to argue with.

And now, of course, they have weighed in on the tornadoes that hit Oklahoma in the last three days.

They call themselves the "Tornado Truthers."  Don't believe me?  Here is a collection of direct quotes, taken from Twitter and Facebook.  [Note to readers who are offended by such things; there's a good bit of bad language in these quotes, but to edit that out would diminish the intensity of these people's feelings on this subject.  In any case, be forewarned.]

255 tornadoes issued today.  43 caused by HAARP.

TORNADO WARNING.  YEAH FUCK YOU TO HELL #HAARP

Government-made tornadoes - HAARP - check out HAARP maybe with one A - can't remember offhand Tesla's work

That tornado pic is insanity, hey government, I know you [sic] watching, TURN THAT FUCKING HAARP MACHINE OFF!!!!

Tornadoes is wild man it's not tornado season... #haarp

Dutchsince on YouTube.com issued a warning for the east coast.  The HAARP induced tornadoes that leveled cities in the midwest is now on its way to the east coast.  East coast get prepared.  Facebook just like Obama refuses to post information to warn America.  Why?

Notice to all these tornados this week are the result of haarp to set the stage for martial law and FEMA camps

30 + People Dead & Thousands of Homes/Towns DESTROYED cuz of The Illuminati & Their Weather Modification Machine (HAARP) ITS A FACT!  LOOK IT UP AND START SPEAKING OUT TO CREATE SOME WEATHER RELATED DISASTER TO FORCE US OUT OF OUR HOMES INTO THEIR NEW HOMES (FEMA CAMPS)

Thank you h.a.a.r.p. for this crazy fucked up weather

HAARP, of course, stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a government-run ionospheric research station in Alaska.  It has nothing to do with weather modification.  It cannot generate tornadoes (or earthquakes, or volcanoes, or hurricanes, or sinkholes, or any of the other hundreds of things it's been claimed to do).

Oh, yeah, and it is tornado season, actually.  The peak of it.  But by all means, "Tornado Truthers," don't let any facts get in the way of your beliefs.

And then Alex Jones, of course, had to weigh in.  Could the recent tornadoes be generated by the US government, a caller asked?  Don't be a ninny, of course they could.  After all, we now know that the insurance companies have been using weather modification to avoid having to pay out to ski resorts during winters when it doesn't snow.  "Of course there's weather weapon stuff going on," Jones said, one eyelid twitching spasmodically.  "We had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night.  Turned out it was the Air Force."  Of this week's tornadoes, he admitted that he wasn't sure that it was the government, but that if you saw small aircraft "in and around the clouds, spraying and doing things, if you saw that, you better bet your bottom dollar they did this, but who knows if they did.  You know, that's the thing, we don't know."

Heh.  We don't know.  *wink wink nudge nudge*  It's the government.

To Jones and his intrepid band of loony followers, anything constitutes evidence.  In fact, nothing constitutes evidence.  "I haven't seen any aircraft spraying stuff and immediately triggering a tornado" simply becomes, "They've got cloaking technology.  Of course you didn't see anything."  And all you have to do is append the word "Truther" to your particular warped view of the universe, and it becomes de facto Truth, capital T, no evidence necessary.

The whole thing makes me want to scream.

Better, though, to focus on what we should be doing; assisting with the cleanup and rebuilding, donating money if you can't go there to help directly.   (Here's a site that has a list of places to donate.)  Beyond that, focusing on the positive stories that have come out of this tragedy -- of the selfless teachers who tried to save their students' lives, some of them who lost their lives in the process; of the first responders who risked their safety to dig survivors out of the rubble of their homes; of the neighbors, friends, and families who pitched in to help as soon as the funnel clouds lifted.  And of the little miracles, like Oklahoma resident Barbara Garcia, who lost her home but was reunited with her little dog who she thought had been killed when her house collapsed.  (Have kleenex handy if you watch the video on this link.  Don't say I didn't warn you.)

 

Focus on what's important, here.  With any luck, the deafening silence that greets the screeching pretzel logic of the "Tornado Truthers" will convince them to crawl back under their rocks where they belong -- at least until the next natural disaster occurs.

Storms, earthquakes, and coincidences

Here I sit, having battened down the hatches in preparation for Hurricane Sandy (due to arrive in the wee hours tonight), and two things are on my mind.

First, why don't you ever hear the verb "to batten" used for anything other than "hatches?"  No one battens down windows, doors, throw rugs, or anything else.  You never hear of anyone leashing their dog to a post, for example, and then saying, "I have battened down Rex."  It seems like a useful word, and it's a pity it has such a restricted usage.  So I think all of you should make a point, during the next few days, of using the verb "to batten" in unorthodox ways.

Second, I've already begun facepalming over the eruption of woo-woo conspiracy theories claiming that Hurricane Sandy, Typhoon Son-Tinh (which just slammed into the Philippines and Vietnam this weekend), and the 7.7 magnitude Canadian earthquake that caused tsunami warnings to be issued in Hawaii (there were high waves, but no serious damage) are all due to President Obama using HAARP to monkey around with things.  Or possibly chemtrails.  Or both.  They don't seem to have any clear idea of how any of this actually could be manmade, but that still hasn't stopped them from claiming that it is, that President Obama is sitting in his underground bunker, an insane smile on his face, and pressing buttons and pulling levers, and saying, "Now they'll be sorry!  I've caused a massive hurricane that will hit Washington, DC, causing widespread flooding and destruction!  Despite the fact that I live there!  That's how evil I am!  Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

You think I'm joking.  Already websites like the rather ironically-named "Aircrap" are buzzing with statements such as, "You can't be expecting me to believe that all three of those events, occurring so close together, is just a coincidence?"

Actually, yes, that is exactly what I'm expecting you to believe.  When events coincide, this is called "a coincidence."  Given that the Earth experiences storms and earthquakes virtually on a daily basis, there will be times when several of these events happen in close succession because of no other factor than random chance.  We don't have to posit such absurdities as President Obama activating tractor beams from space via HAARP, or jets out of Newark spraying aerosols via their contrails to lay down a pathway for the storm, to account for this.  Both of which were, in all apparent seriousness, claimed by people on these sites.  And all of which shows that people who don't understand (1) the laws of statistics, (2) atmospheric science, and (3) geology, and who also (4) have spent too much time watching bad disaster movies on the Syfy channel, should really just keep their mouths shut.

So, anyway, that's our dip in the deep end of the pool for today.  Me, I'm not worried about HAARP or chemtrails, but I am a little worried that we'll lose power for a while, because we're supposed to get some serious wind here.  So if I am incommunicado for a few days, that's why, and I offer my apologies in advance, and a promise to write again as soon as I can.  I'll sign off here with my hopes that if you are in the path of the storm, you and your loved ones are safe and sound, and your homes undamaged.  As for me, I'm off to school to batten down the students.

Who'll stop the rain?

In Umberto Eco's brilliant novel Foucault's Pendulum, three worldly and skeptical book editors whose company specializes in publishing woo-woo nonsense decide to skip the middle-man.  Enough with trying to lure in writers with manuscripts about astrology, psychic phenomena, secret societies, and conspiracy theories; given the amount of time the three editors have spent reading all of this stuff, they have the background to out-woo-woo the woo-woos, and write a book themselves that will trump all the rest.

So they do.  Their manuscript ties together the Templars, the Masons, ley lines, the Holy Grail, black magic, Atlantis, and psychic super-energy.  Their tale is left open-ended, though; the final resting place of the Object of High Magic that has been sought by every secret society in the history of humanity is still being researched, and the Object itself is yet to be found.  After all, everyone knows how irresistible a mystery is!  When their book is printed, the editors congratulate themselves on having taken advantage of the gullible and credulous, and laugh up their sleeves at how anyone could be foolish enough to buy it.

But then, one of them is kidnapped by the very people they've catered to.  A ransom note is delivered to the other two, demanding to know what the solution to the puzzle is.  There is no way, the kidnappers say, that you got that far with putting the clues together, and didn't actually figure out where the Holy Grail is.  Tell us -- or we'll kill your friend.

And, of course, the more the kidnapped man and his two friends insist that there is no mystery, there is no Holy Grail, no Super-Powerful Magical Device hidden in some sacred spot in the world, that they made the whole thing up, the more convinced the kidnappers are that they're lying.  Why would they argue so hard if they didn't have something, something big, to hide?

It's the problem with conspiracy theorists, isn't it?  No power on Earth can convince them they're wrong; facts can be spun or made up, and the people arguing against them are either deluded, stupid, or else part of the conspiracy themselves.  And the trouble -- like with our skeptical book editors in Foucault's Pendulum -- is that sometimes, you end up convincing someone you wish you hadn't.

Which brings us to the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Ahmedinejad has long belonged to that unfortunately extensive list of world leaders who have a rather tentative grip on reality.  He's a hard-line Muslim, is (by all accounts) extremely superstitious, and is a raving Holocaust denier.  Now, however,  he's made statements that indicate that he's also spent too much time reading websites like AboveTopSecret.

Iran is currently suffering through one of the worst droughts in thirty years, and last week Ahmedinejad issued a statement claiming that hostile countries have used their technology to change the weather and cause the drought.  (Source)

"The enemy destroys the clouds that are headed towards our country and this is a war Iran will win," Ahmedinejad said on Monday of last week.  The West, he says, is "using special equipment" to "prevent rain clouds from reaching regional countries, including Iran."

Well, well.  I hope you HAARP conspiracists are proud of yourselves.  You have spent the last ten years blathering on about how the US military now can control the weather (and, according to some, cause earthquakes, mudslides, and volcanic eruptions), and now you've convinced a hostile world leader that you were right.  And not just any hostile world leader; a hostile world leader who (1) hates the United States, (2) is currently trying to develop nuclear weapons, and (3) already showed signs of being a delusional whackjob.

Nicely played, gentlemen.  Nicely played.  But what are you going to do now?

Of course, saying, "Ha-ha, we made it all up," like the editors in Foucault's Pendulum, isn't really an option, because you still believe it's all true, don't you?  So now we have to wait and watch while a nutcase threatens us with war because he believes an elaborate lie concocted by a bunch of other nutcases.

The whole thing is absurd enough that it almost does sound like the plot of a novel.  It makes me think that when the aliens from the planet Nibiru actually do arrive here on December 21, 2012, they're just going to destroy the planet on the basis of there being no intelligent life present.

Storms, consipiracies, and divine retribution

Last night the remnants of Hurricane Isaac swept through upstate New York, bringing electrical storms and some much-needed rain to our area, and doing little damage except for scaring the absolute hell out of my neurotic border collie, Doolin, who seems to think that thunder is the Footsteps Of Monsters Who Eat Dogs.  So other than straightening up the things she knocked over in trying to get Somewhere Safe, we actually were rather fortunate.

Sadly, the residents of southern Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana (especially Plaquemines Parish) weren't so lucky, and there are thousands that are still flooded out, and tens of thousands without electricity.  The prediction that it would make landfall as "only a Category 1" storm turned out to be correct, but a Category 1 storm turns out to be capable of a lot of damage, especially if it moves slowly, as Isaac did.

The science of predicting hurricane tracks has improved vastly, but it's still a highly complex business, dependent on a great many variables that can be hard to measure.  Still, we're better off than we were in 1900, when a hurricane slammed into Galveston, Texas with very little warning, claiming an estimated 8,000 lives.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the crazies from claiming that hurricanes are not controlled by such prosaic variables as air moisture, sea surface temperature, shear, and steering currents.  Big storms being due to purely natural causes?  No, that would be way too simple.

First, we have noted meteorologist Rush Limbaugh, who claimed that the folks over at NOAA were predicting the storm's path based upon their desire to disrupt the Republican National Convention:

So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that's why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week... And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?

The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It's only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he's raised, so this convention is very important. It's a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don't know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center's track is -- and I'm not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.

It's the government.

It's Obama.

Oh, right!  Okay!  That's perfectly believable, as long as you have a single kernel of Kettle Corn where most of us have a brain.  The hurricane is Obama!  Barreling toward the Republican National Convention!  With the destructive Winds of Liberalism!  I'm certain that the storm itself cared deeply about who wins the presidential election, because, you know, that's how weather works.

Of course, Limbaugh is bush-league crazy compared to Joe Kovacs over at WorldNetDaily, who claims that god sent Hurricane Isaac toward New Orleans deliberately to screw up Southern Decadence, an annual gay pride festival:

New Orleans is still hosting Southern Decadence with open homosexuality manifesting in the streets of the city. It could be that God is putting an end to this city and its wickedness. The timing of Hurricane Isaac with Southern Decadence is a sign that God’s patience with America’s sin is coming to an end. … Let’s all watch this very closely, because if New Orleans is destroyed, it is a sure sign that the final judgment for the national sin of America has arrived.

And as additional proof, we have a quote from Alabama Senator Hank Erwin, showing that government officials are only as intelligent as the people who elected them:

America has been moving away from God.  The Lord is sending appeals to us.  As harsh as it may sound, those hurricanes do say that God is real, and we have to realize sin has consequences.

No, Senator, what those hurricanes say is that low pressure centers form over the eastern Atlantic during the summer, increase in strength during conditions of warm surface waters and low shear, and get pushed toward the Caribbean and the southern United States by the prevailing winds.  Homosexuality really has very little to do with it.

Even this doesn't end the litany of wackos who have weighed in on the cause of hurricanes.  Over at Chemtrail Planet, we hear that the path of the storm was determined by Evil Government Officials putting chemicals in jet fuel, so that the exhaust contrails could change the weather:

High on the list of suspects for deployment of “chembombs” is the fleet of Evergreen Air B-747 tankers equipped with Evergreen’s own patented aerosol deployment system capable of spraying a wide variety of aerosols depending on the mission.

The huge 20,000 gallon system was originally promoted as a new technology for fighting wildfires even though the patent claims equal capability at releasing aerosols for the purpose of "weather modofication" [sic].

Suspicions are growing that Evergreen’s fire-fighting promotion was a decoy to hide their primary mission of covert climate modification.

This is accompanied by a highly informative YouTube video that made me weep softly while banging my head against my computer keyboard.

And last, our parade of wingnuts would not be complete without a salvo from Alex Jones, who as you might expect posted a YouTube video claiming that Hurricane Isaac was created by the US government using their magical superpowers, better known as HAARP.  "We would be weird to not say it could be government-created as some type of disaster for the election," Jones said.  "That’s not outside the realm of possibility."

Which is true only in the sense that earthquakes being caused by the leaping about of Giant Subterranean Bunnies is also, technically, not outside the realm of possibility.

What always puzzles me about this sort of thing is the fact that people listen to, or read, this stuff, and at least someone must find it plausible.  In fact, in the case of Limbaugh and Jones, the evidence is that a lot of people find what they say plausible, despite the fact that much of it is blatant horse waste.  Why, I wonder, don't people look folks like this in the eye when they make their ridiculous pronouncements, and say, "May I please see your Ph.D. in meteorology or climate science?  Or, in fact, any kind of science at all?  Oh, you don't have one?  Then SHUT THE HELL UP."

But people never do, for some reason.

Men in black, men in brown

It is a curious feature of woo-woo that the purveyors of such ideas feel driven to add layer upon layer of complexity to their theories, as if slathering more craziness upon an idea that was kind of ridiculous to begin with will make people sit up and say, "dear god, you're right!"  It's almost like some kind of strange parody of the scientific process, where experimentation, analysis, and insight lead to clarification.  Here, there's a sense of adding more mud to already muddy waters.

Our first example of this comes from the world of the conspiracy theorists.  I've devoted a number of posts to such issues as the Illuminati, HAARP, the Bilderberg Group, and secret societies, and how some subset of the above is responsible for (1) controlling world governments, (2) spying on innocent citizens with nefarious ends in mind, and (3) causing natural disasters.  The individuals running the conspiracy are always portrayed as evil, superpowerful arch-villains, who are untouchable by normal means, and who pull everyone else's strings for their own mysterious purposes.

Basically, the worldview is that we live inside a David Lynch movie.

In any case, it's kind of a dismal way to look at life.  So, it is not any real surprise to me that there has now been a revelation of a new conspiracy, a nice conspiracy, that will sweep down and get rid of the old, nasty, evil conspiracy.  (Source)

This claim states that "very soon" there will be a mass arrest of banking executives by a group of world leaders who are fed up with corporate corruption, removing the "Illuminati banking cartel" and returning "power back to the people."  Plans are already in place to "cut off... international calling" and stop international travel; at that point, "the pro-humanity forces will sweep through and arrest MASS AMOUNTS of bankers and corrupt financial execs as they complete their task to bring freedom to the world from these financial terrorists."

Well, that sounds hopeful enough, as far as it goes, but how do we know it's true?  The writer states:

The part of this story that makes it believable is that it is actually backed by Real Names and Real People who can be researched. The majority of the information comes from Benjamin Fulford.  Benjamin Fulford was Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief for Forbes magazine for seven years, until 2005 when he quit because of the "extensive corporate censorship and mingling of advertising and editorial at the magazine."

Oh.  Benjamin Fulford, eh?  The originator of the HAARP conspiracy theory?  The man who claimed that "the American government, in cooperation with [the] Federal Reserve, the Rockefellers, and other powerful groups" were going to cause Mt. Fuji to erupt on April 11, 2011, and who has continued to pontificate undaunted despite the lack of cooperation by the actual volcano?  The guy who says Bill Gates is going to be arrested as one of the lead conspirators, and that the pope is going to resign on April 15?  We're supposed to consider this guy a credible source?

It's not only the conspiracy nuts that have this regrettable tendency to elaborate themselves to death; the same is true of other branches of woo-woo.  Take, for example, this recent story from the world of aliens and crop circles.

In case you are understandably reluctant to read the article itself, the whole thing adds a new dimension to the idea that aliens are responsible for crop circles; the author claims that aliens are now being spotted hanging around the crop circles, as if waiting for something significant to happen.  And these are not easily identifiable aliens, i.e little gray guys with enormous eyes; no, these aliens are smarter than that.  They are cleverly disguised as tall blond guys wearing brown clothes.

There are several accounts of contact with these dudes recounted in the article, but the following is my favorite:

(A)n anonymous woman called the operator to the Air Force in the UK... in Suffolk and reported a strange episode that occurred when she was walking with his dog.  She saw a man dressed in a light brown suit... who spoke with a “Scandinavian accent.”  He asked if she had not heard about the large flat circles that appear on the wheat fields.  During the ten-minute conversation the man told me that he was from another planet similar to the Earth, and that his relatives have visited Earth, and made such education.  Guests arrived here on a friendly target, but “they were told not to come into contact with people for fear that their visit can be regarded as a threat.”  Apparently, he did not say who told them not to come into contact with us.  The woman was “very scared”, and while she ran to the house, she heard of a “loud buzzing sound,” and saw the trees soared a large spherical object, glowing orange-white light. BBC statement said the woman told me about an hour and had no doubt that she wrote about a real event.

So, now we not only have the crop circles to puzzle over, we have blond guys with Swedish accents coming up to innocent dog-walkers and saying, "Say, how about that crop circle over there?  Pretty nice one, eh?   Oh, by the way, I'm an alien, but don't be afraid.  Later."  And then they take off in their spaceships.

Then, to make matters worse, the author throws in his two favorite theories for what the crop circles are for.  I reproduce those here, verbatim:

(T)he location of crop circles – referencing a crop circle ‘database’ – near ancient formations indicate a connection between ancient extraterrestrial visitors and modern day crop circles. Crop circles that contain messages that will “help usher mankind into the Golden Age.”  ... Also, crop circles can be used as a reference point for time travel in the source field.  They often appear right next to the ancient monuments of the vortex points, and that to this day can serve as portals for time travel in space.

Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense.  Vortex points and time travel in the source field.  And also, don't forget frequency resonant vibration energy dimensions!  In space!

In any case, that's our dose of woo-woo lunacy for today.  Men in black (or brown, as the case may be), and how they either will be taken down by the People's Revolution or else use messages in corn fields to usher us into the Golden Age.  Either way, I suppose I should be happy that the outlook is good.  It certainly is preferable to some previous forecasts, such as a massive eruption of Mt. Fuji.  That would have sucked.