Searching for the ultimate

Okay, folks, I understand that the world is a Big Scary Place where Big Scary Things sometimes happen.  It's an inherently chaotic system (at least in my opinion) where there are proximal causes for almost everything that happens and ultimate causes for very little.  Looking for the overarching pattern, the big reasons, is an exercise in futility.

The view of the universe as a giant pinball game doesn't bother me, or at least not very much.  My general attitude is that I don't have to understand everything; understanding the bits of it I can parse through science is enough.  It is, though, what makes religion appealing to a lot of folks, and I can certainly empathize with the draw.  It provides meaning, gives an ultimate context, reassures you that even when things seem awful and random and incomprehensible, there's a pattern there that you're not seeing, that makes it all make sense.

There's a toxic side of all of this, though, and it manifests in the desperation of a lot of people to discern a Big Reason for large-scale devastating events.  It's what drives some of the religious to postulate a devil-figure that does bad things to humans, or (even worse) a retributive god who smites whole cities for the perceived sinful actions of a few.  It's the basis of what creates a lot of conspiracy theories, because better that there be some pattern, even a dreadful one, than no pattern at all.

Take, for example, the current nonsense circulating the internet about Ebola.  On the one hand, I get why people feel like they have to look for a reason; the Ebola virus is one scary mofo, causing horrific symptoms that result in a 60-70% mortality rate.  And honestly, we don't know how fast it's going to spread in the United States.  The epidemic in West Africa is certainly far from over, with one estimate suggesting that the infection rate there could increase by a factor of ten by December.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But the crazy End Times shit and conspiracy theories now popping up on a daily basis are not helping the situation.  We have Ron Baity, a Baptist preacher in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who said that not only is Ebola a punishment from god for the recent push for gay marriage, if we don't reverse course quickly, god has something even worse up his sleeve:

If you think for one skinny minute, God is going to stand idly by and allow this to go forward without repercussions, you better back up and rethink this situation.  I want you to understand, that is raw, pure blasphemy...  My friend, we are meriting, we are bringing the judgment of God on this nation as sure as Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed, don’t be surprised at the plagues.  Don’t be surprised at the judgment of God.  You think Ebola is bad now, just wait.  If it’s not that, it’s going to be something else.  My friends, I want you to understand, you can’t thumb your nose at God, and God turn his head away without God getting your attention.

So yeah.  But that wasn't all.  We have an uncredited article over at UFO Blogger (a site that has become increasingly about conspiracy theories and less and less about extraterrestrials), in which we're told that singer Avicii's recently-released song "The Days" confirms that the Ebola virus is a government-created bioweapon that they're turning against their own people:

Illuminati owned singer and performer Avicii's predict a future event in his latest music video "The Days" which was released on Youtube on 3 October, 2014. 

Which confirms Ebola is Illuminati bio weapon and they don't care if you find out. They have become that bold. 

"Avīci" (from Buddhist origin) means "the lowest from the hell"... As we have seen before the satanic cabal The Illuminati hide their plans in plain sight as a way to brainwash and program the masses!

As evidence, we're presented with the lyrics, which seem to be no more Dark and Evil and Predictive than your average alt-rock.  And given that I regularly listen to Nine Inch Nails, any contention that this represents the most twisted, Satan-inspired message the music industry is capable of makes me laugh.  (You can watch the video here; it's kind of a catchy song, really.)

But then we had the other end of the spectrum; it's neither a case of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God nor the Illuminati Trying To Murder Us All.  A dude named Nana Kwame over in Ghana is claiming to have "rocked the internet" by the revelation that the Ebola epidemic is a big fat hoax.

The revelation appeared on the site Spirit Science and Metaphysics, which is evidently competing with Natural News for first place in the Purveyor of Bullshit Contest.  Kwame, whose ideas are as contemptible and dangerous as they are ludicrous, says that the CDC and WHO have made the whole alleged epidemic up:

People in the Western World need to know what’s happening here in West Africa.  THEY ARE LYING!!!  “Ebola” as a virus does NOT Exist and is NOT “Spread”.  The Red Cross has brought a disease to 4 specific countries for 4 specific reasons and it is only contracted by those who receive treatments and injections from the Red Cross.  That is why Liberians and Nigerians have begun kicking the Red Cross out of their countries and reporting in the news the truth.

Marvelous.  Just what we need.  Some nutjob scaring sick people into avoiding treatment.  It's what we saw when Pakistanis started shooting Red Cross volunteers because they thought the polio vaccine was going to sterilize and/or kill Muslim children.

Kwame goes on to explain that the WHO and associated groups are doing this so as to have an excuse to bring in troops to get a hold of West Africa's mineral wealth and simultaneously reduce the native population.  Because evidently in spite of the fact that Ebola doesn't exist, it can still kill people.  Or something like that.

I dunno.  It's kind of impossible to combat such desperate lunacy.  As I said before, I think it does come out of an understandable human need; the need for meaning.  I do get that.  And Ebola is freakin' scary; I'll admit to a serious sinking feeling when I found out about first one, then two, confirmed cases in the United States.  (I think my exact words were, "Yikes.  Here we go.")  Now, mind you, I still think the likelihood of a major epidemic in the United States, Canada, or Western Europe is slim; but even that slim possibility is terrifying.

But it doesn't push me to need an ultimate explanation for it, nor (worse) to make up one should no convenient explanation be at hand.  I'm okay with living inside a pinball machine, even if it does make life seem rather absurd sometimes.  And as far as the tragedy of the Ebola epidemic; let's concentrate on containing its spread, work on cures, and deal with the proximal causes.

Let the ultimate causes look after themselves.

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.