Anti-blasphemy laws and the right to criticize ideas

Goaded by the recent riots in the Muslim world over a YouTube video ridiculing the prophet Muhammad, representatives of a 57-country coalition are planning to propose a measure to the United Nations General Assembly that would criminalize blasphemy.  [Source]

The move has been tried before, unsuccessfully.  This year, the coalition is led by Turkey, a country with significant clout at the UN.  Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, plans to speak at the General Assembly, demanding international legislation making it a crime to defame religion.  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has given some indication that he is in favor of such a move, saying that there should be limitations on free speech if it is "used to provoke or humiliate."

This is, unequivocally, a terrible idea.

Let me be clear about this.  People deserve respect.  Human beings have the right to have their basic needs met, and to be able to live without fear of persecution.  We also, in differing ways and to differing degrees, should respect and protect animals, plants, and the environment.

On the other hand, there is no good reason to demand that everyone respect ideas.  Ideas only deserve respect insofar as they merit it.  If you believe in something wrong, foolish, harmful, counterfactual, or dangerous, there is no logical reason in the world that I should be required to respect it just because it happens to be your belief.  Enacting anti-blasphemy laws is a way of putting religious beliefs out of the reach of criticism -- which is equivalent to giving carte blanche to anyone, for saying or doing anything, as long as the phrase "and thus sayeth the precepts of my religion" is appended to it.

The bottom line is that your beliefs have to earn my respect, based upon (1) how they are manifested in your treatment of others, and (2) their consonance with the facts about the world that we have discovered from science.  If your beliefs lead you to oppress women, if they encourage you to blow yourself and others up, if they demand that you suppress free speech and dissent, if they impel you to foist your mythological and erroneous views of the origins of life on children, then your beliefs are not worthy of respect.  And your saying, "but it's my religion!" is entirely irrelevant.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying we should silence people from voicing these beliefs.  That's as wrong-headed as the proposed anti-blasphemy laws.  You have every right to trumpet your beliefs from the rooftops, if you want to.  However, no one, myself included, has the right to demand that his opinions, once voiced, be immune to criticism.  Or ridicule, either; ridicule may not be nice, but it is powerful, and satire can be a potent force for positive social change (think of the impact that Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal had).  So, you may not like it if I or others make fun of your beliefs, but your taking offense cannot trump my right to speak.  If it does, it sets up a dangerous precedent, creating a world where every word has to be sifted through the mesh of "Will This Bother Anyone?"

I still think that it would be wonderful if people were kinder.  "Don't go out of your way to be an asshole" is still a pretty good guide to behavior, and I believe that a lot of the recent deliberate provocation of Muslims is mean-spirited, crass, and frankly unwise, given how devout Muslims generally respond to such goading.  But my saying "it isn't nice," or even "wow, that was a dumb thing to say," is a far cry from "you are forbidden by law from saying that."  So, what the filmmaker had to say about Muhammad on his YouTube video might have been banal, crude, foolish, disgusting, and worthy of a hundred other disparaging adjectives.

But he did have the right to say it.  And no one, up to and including Ban Ki-moon, should be able to tell him that he can't.

Shifting your moral magnetic north

Most of us are pretty certain of our own moral compasses.  Circumstances might change, the attitudes of those around us might waver, but at least we know right from wrong -- and why we believe what we do.

A new study, headed by Lars Hall at Lund University in Sweden, seems to indicate that we're not as rock-solid in our beliefs as we think we are. [Source]

The experiment took 160 volunteers and asked them to fill out a two-page survey rating how strongly they believed each of twelve statements on the morality of certain issues, from the ongoing struggles in the Middle East to prostitution to covert government surveillance of its citizens.  The researchers, however, employed a magic trick; the surveys were actually composed of two sheets lightly stuck together, and the clipboard had a dab of adhesive on it.  When the subject turned the sheet over to answer the back, the top sheet stuck to the clipboard and pulled away, revealing the second sheet.  The participants' answers were also recorded there (presumably using some sort of carbon paper to impress the answers onto the page as the subject wrote) -- but the second page had two questions that were different.

For example, sheet one (the questions originally answered by the subject) might have the statement, "Large-scale governmental surveillance of e-mail and Internet traffic ought to be forbidden as a means to combat international crime and terrorism."  The subject then rated how strongly they agreed or disagreed with that statement.  The second sheet had the same statement, with the word "permitted" substituted for "forbidden."  So, if the subject strongly agreed with the first statement, you'd think (s)he would strongly disagree with the second, and would recognize that the statement had been altered.

That's not what happened.

When showed their responses to the original statements marked on statements that had the opposite meaning, half of the subjects did not notice any changes -- even when they were asked to read the statements, and their answers, out loud.  Only 31% noticed every change that had been made.  A full 53% were willing to argue in support of their answers on one or both of the statements that had been altered to mean the opposite of the statement they had actually responded to.

Hall and his team call this "choice blindness."  Once we are confronted with evidence that we made a certain choice, many of us internalize that information even if it's in conflict with what we really believed at the time the choice was made.  And after that, we are perfectly willing to argue in favor of our new opinions.  Memory, of course, is plastic and unreliable, as a multitude of experiments have shown, and any good book on optical illusions can illustrate how easy it is to baffle our sensory apparatus.  Now Hall's clever little experiment shows that our moral sense might be as easy to fool as our memory centers and sensory organs.

I find all of this simultaneously creepy and reassuring.  I've always felt that on those topics I have strong moral opinions about, I wouldn't flex just because I'm around someone with different attitudes.  I've always had the impression that my ethical sense is rooted in concrete.  Okay, there are gray areas; but some things are simply wrong, and they'll always be wrong.  It's kind of scary to think that if a sneaky researcher convinced me that I'd answered a question the opposite way to how I actually feel, that I could be tricked into arguing for something that (minutes ago) I'd disagreed with.

On the other hand, maybe it is a good thing that the human mind is as open as it is.  After all, it's raging dogmatism that is now ripping the Middle East to pieces, after a moronic filmmaker made a banal fourteen minute film insulting the Prophet Muhammad, and devout Muslims worldwide have responded by blowing themselves up and setting stuff on fire.  Maybe the fact that we have such play in our moral compasses is a hopeful sign, that if we're somehow forced into considering opposing viewpoints, we might actually be capable of seeing the other side of the argument.

Dream job

Are you interested in research?  Do you like hiking and camping?  Are you knowledgeable about technical equipment?  Do you have a desire to spend your time looking for a creature that may not, technically, exist?

Well, a nonprofit in upstate New York has a job for you.  [Source]

Apparently, a Bigfoot research group based in Whitehall, New York, has an advertisement in the "Help Wanted" section of Craigslist, inviting interested parties to apply for a position as a research assistant.  Here's the main body of the ad:

Not for profit organization, located in Whitehall, NY is a high-energy, team-oriented research entity that is involved in the tracking, documenting, and study of cryptozoological creatures, with a deep interest in the study and search of bipedal primitive apes.

We seek an experienced researcher with a deep understanding of cryptozoology, primatology, with a good background with scientific research and interest in great apes. The ideal candidate must be able to work both autonomously and as part of a large team. The individual must also be able to solve problems creatively, communicate effectively, and collaborate well with project leaders and team members.

Duties and Functions:

• Develop actionable tracking program in designated geographic area.

• Investigate, document and interview individuals with reported Bigfoot sitings.

• Occasional travel to remote areas of Adirondacks including spending several nights in the wilderness, checking motion cameras, collecting hair and dung samples for laboratory analysis amongst other related activites.

• Must have own transportation, four-wheel drive a plus.

** Serious Inquiries only **
Compensation: based on experience, this is a grant funded position and is expected to last 6 months with the possibility of renewal.

This sounds like a job made in heaven for me -- the combination of the hiking and backpacking aspects, the biological research aspects, and the cryptozoological aspects, not to mention that this is veritably in my back yard, seem to cry out that I apply.  Of course, there's the downside that this job is only guaranteed for six months, and I'd have to quit my other gainful employment, which I suspect both my principal and my wife would have an opinion about.  But come on -- a Bigfoot research assistant?  In the Adirondacks?  How cool would that be?

Of course, I do have some questions.  First, the salary is based on experience?  Experience with what?  Actually finding Bigfoot?  Because if so, this is looking like it could be a volunteer position.  Also, you have to wonder who is actually funding this whole thing.  I tried to find out more about it, but whoever is behind it seems to be keeping their names out of sight.

Also, I had no idea that the Whitehall area was as much of a hotspot for Sasquatches as it is.  I knew about the Connecticut Hill Monster, which is even closer to my home (a mere thirty miles) than the Adirondacks; but I hadn't heard of the sightings around Whitehall.  But evidently this is a seriously squatchy area, with tales of giant apelike creatures going back at least a hundred years, perhaps more.  In 2008, the Glens Falls Post-Star did a story on the whole phenomenon:

For Whitehall, the pivotal year for sightings seems to be 1976. The country was celebrating its bicentennial, but Bigfoot was the local center of attention that summer and fall.

[Paul] Bartholomew details the encounters in his book.

On Aug. 24, three Whitehall teens reported seeing a 7-to-8-foot-tall brown, hairy creature in a field off Abair Road. The teens allegedly saw the figure two times that night. They also claimed to hear a noise that sounded like a "cross between a woman screaming and a pig squealing."

The next day, a farmer found "big, human footprints" nearby and a ravaged deer carcass.

That night, a local off-duty police officer, who was a brother of one of the teens, went to the site with a New York State Trooper.

Around midnight, the police officer spotted a pair of red eyes reflecting off his headlights. He shut off his lights and radioed the trooper, who put a spotlight on some nearby bushes.

The police officer said he turned his headlights back on when he heard something crashing through the shrubs. He claims to have seen an almost 8-foot-tall creature that he estimated weighed 400 pounds.

He didn't fire his gun because he said the figure looked too human. The creature then vanished into the bushes.

Later that year, a village police sergeant reported hearing an "eerie, high-pitched yell" while hunting in the same area.

A few days later, a man from Granville reported shooting at "Bigfoot."

For the record, Paul Bartholomew is also the guy who spearheaded the successful effort ten years ago to get Whitehall to pass a law designating the forests around the village "protected Bigfoot habitat."

So anyway, the whole thing sounds pretty interesting, and I'm bummed that I won't be able to apply.  I do wish the best of luck to whoever gets the job, and hope that they get some hard evidence, something that has been sorely lacking in all previous efforts.  As I've said before, I see nothing scientifically impossible about the existence of Bigfoot, but I'm certainly not going to throw myself in with the True Believers with only uncorroborated eyewitness testimony and fuzzy photographs as proof.  If more data surfaces, however, I'm perfectly willing to consider it, in the spirit of skepticism, and also because it would be wicked cool if it actually was true.

Confirmation bias, and the story of Jesus' wife

In well-done science, conclusions are based on one thing and one thing alone: the quality of the evidence.  When physicists announced a few months ago that they had data that seemed to support the conclusion that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light, every high-energy physicist  in the world began to sift through the evidence, looking for flaws, looking for inaccuracies, trying to see if the data supported such an earthshattering outcome.  And after rigorous analysis, the result did not stand -- Einstein's fundamental speed limit on the universe seems to have been vindicated once again.

Contrast that to how conclusions are drawn in other realms, where vanishingly small pieces of evidence are considered enough to support any conclusion you happen to favor.

This whole thing comes up because of the recent announcement that a small fragment of papyrus, covered with faded Coptic script, seems to indicate that Jesus might have been married.  [Source]  The finding, which has been analyzed extensively by historian and ancient language scholar Karen King, is the subject of a paper that was presented Tuesday in Rome at an international meeting of Coptic scholars.

Of course, the first question asked was, "Is the artifact a fake?"  And the conclusion was: probably not.  The script was examined by experts, and looks authentic.  The phrasing of the text seems consistent with other early writings in that language.  While the piece is too small to carbon-date, there is apparently some talk of a non-destructive spectroscopy on the ink that could give a rough estimate of its age.  One phrase begins, "And Jesus said, 'My wife...'" and then is cut off.  A later phrase on the piece says, "... she should be my disciple."

So: what we have here is a small fragment of paper, of unknown age, with two incomplete (but admittedly provocative) phrases.  And that was all it took.

Already we have people who are against the Catholic policy of celibacy for the clergy saying that this should change church law.  If Jesus was married, why shouldn't priests be able to?  Folks who want women to be priests jumped on the second phrase; the lack of a clear mention of female disciples in the bible is the only justification for church policy on the issue, they say, and this fragment clearly supports the ordination of women.

Then the woo-woos got involved.  Fans of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code and Martin Scorsese's controversial 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ, both of which claimed that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, are saying that the fragment supports that contention.  Many of these people seem not to realize that the book and the film both reside in the "fiction" aisle.

Even wilder stories have started up.  Take a look at this article, that claims that the piece of papyrus is a clear vindication of the wacky ideas from Laurence Gardner's The Bloodline of the Holy Grail, in which Jesus survived the crucifixion, lived another hundred years in which he traveled to Tibet, and his wife and children ended up in France where they founded the Merovingian dynasty and ultimately ended up on the throne of Scotland. 

And to all of the above, I can only say: will you people please just chill?

There's a name for taking a tiny, questionable piece of evidence, and pretending that it trumpets support for an idea that you already agreed with; it's called confirmation bias, and unfortunately for the proponents of married priests, female priests, and Jesus being the ancestor of the Kings of Scotland, it's a logical fallacy.  Meaning that thinkers who are being honest should not engage in it.  The evidence we have is flimsy at best; Karen King, who is clearly a scholar of some repute, isn't even willing to hazard a firm opinion about the piece's provenance, but has given a guess that it probably dates from the Fourth Century.  So even if it is authentic, the thing was written three hundred plus years after Jesus died.  At that point, anyone could have written anything, and it wouldn't necessarily have any bearing on the truth of the matter.  The piece of paper could state that Jesus had blond hair and was left-handed and liked to eat donuts for breakfast, and there's no reason to conclude that those statements have any relevance to what the real man was like, since it was written long after anyone who actually knew him had died.

But, of course, unlike in science, that's not how these things work.  The married-priest cadre will certainly be harping on this finding for a while, as will the female-priest cadre.  The Dan Brown Writes Non-Fiction Society is probably also going to continue making little excited squeaking noises about all this, and any woo-woos further out on the plausibility scale will have a field day drawing conclusions from what in any other field would hardly constitute any evidence at all.

As I've observed before: confirmation bias is these people's stock in trade.  So honestly, I shouldn't be surprised.  But I still am, somehow.

Wheat from chaff

Yesterday, I looked at the general idea of separating science from pseudoscience, and my conclusion is that any sufficiently educated person can learn to distinguish the two.  The main hallmarks of good science are (1) the characteristic of prediction and falsifiability, and (2) reliance on mechanisms that are consistent with already-verified science.

How, though, do you make the distinction between pseudoscience and valid, "emerging" science?  New ideas in science are frequently ridiculed, especially before the mechanisms governing them are completely elucidated; even such rock-solid (pun intended) models as plate tectonics were considered to be foolishness before the magnetometer data discovered in the late 1950s showed that the ocean floor was spreading.  Some ideas that fly in the face of what is currently known will turn out, on analysis and through experiment, to be verified science.  How do we know that by labeling something as pseudoscience, we're not tarring good ideas and bad with the same brush?

Here are a few things that seem to be general characteristics of pseudoscience.  Note that not all pseudoscientific theories have all of these traits -- but this will at least provide a few general rules-of-thumb for recognizing it when you see it.

1)  The reliance on undefined, or poorly-defined, terms.  I've harped on this one so many times that it doesn't bear much more description than that.  Watch out, especially, for terms that are firmly defined in one realm (e.g. physics), but are being used in a fluffy, non-specific way.  Favorites are frequency, vibration, quantum, energy, field, wavelength, and resonance.

2)  Any idea that claims to contradict a thoroughly researched and experimentally verified model.  If someone starts by saying, "My theories overturn the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics," I pretty much stop listening.  Take a look at the webpage of The Thunderbolts Project, which claims that pretty much everything we know about physics -- gravity, electromagnetism, particle physics, convection, heat flow, quantum mechanics, nuclear fusion -- is wrong.  Instead, the universe is linked by "a web of electrical circuitry connects and unifies all of nature, organizing galaxies, energizing stars, giving birth to planets and, on our own world, controlling weather and animating biological organisms."  While it is always possible that new data could force a revision of a pre-existing model -- look at what Einstein did to Newtonian mechanics -- the chance of a few "progressive scientists, researchers, and laypeople" trashing all of physics in one blow is unlikely in the extreme.  If you take a look at the video clips put out by these people (such as this one) you find that mostly they are relying on the fact that physicists' models are themselves incomplete.  While no reputable physicist would argue that point -- after all, if their models were complete, they'd all be out of a job, because there'd be nothing left to research -- our ignorance about how some features of the universe work doesn't mean that the framework of science itself is faulty and needs to be replaced.

3)  A theory that blurs the distinction between a model and the reality.  This one can be pretty insidious, because scientists use models (especially mathematical ones) all the time, and frequently explain their ideas using analogies.  On its crudest level, we have people like the Rosicrucians, who think that because much of the universe is describable using mathematics, that the universe is numbers (and those numbers have mystical significance).  A subtler example is the work of Stephen Wolfram, who has modeled systems behavior using a construct called a cellular automaton, but who seems to me to cross the line from stating that cellular automata can model many observable processes (this model has been used in everything from developmental biology to particle physics), to stating that the universe is composed of cellular automata.  While the first statement is no doubt true, the second remains very much to be demonstrated.

4)  Experimental claims that no one else seems to be able to replicate.  Replicability is one of the most important characteristics of good science, which is why any peer-reviewed paper is expected to give thorough detail about the experimental protocol used.  Examples of this abound: three well-known ones are the famous "polywater" debacle, "cold fusion," and Cleve Backster's claim that he'd done an experiment proving that his house plant was aware of his emotional state.

Of course, there are many other good questions to ask that can help separate good science from bad.  Is there a profit motive involved in the claim?  Does the researcher have an ideological bent that is biasing him/her to ignore contrary evidence?  Are the results published in a journal that has adequate peer review?  Is anyone who questions the results viewed as hostile/biased/closed-minded?

Given the number of crazy ideas out there, it's absolutely critical that we learn how to recognize what constitutes a scientifically sound idea, and what characteristics should raise red flags that we're looking at pseudoscience.  Millions of dollars of hard-earned money are wasted every year on homeopathic "remedies," psychic and astrological readings, crystal therapy, chakra and "energy field" realignment, and so on.  The methods of science aren't error-proof, and scientists are fallible humans, just like the rest of us; but if you're looking for the best way to gain a solid understanding of how the universe actually works, science is the only game in town.

On the detection of pseudoscience

In yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education I read an article by Michael D. Gordin, professor of history at Princeton University, entitled "Separating the Pseudo from Science."  Gordin's stance is that establishing a particular area of study as pseudoscience is not as easy as it sounds:

The renowned philosopher Karl Popper coined the term "demarcation problem" to describe the quest to distinguish science from pseudoscience. He also proposed a solution. As Popper argued in a 1953 lecture, "The criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability." In other words, if a theory articulates which empirical conditions would invalidate it, then the theory is scientific; if it doesn't, it's pseudoscience.

That seems clear enough. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Epistemologists present several challenges to Popper's argument. First, how would you know when a theory has been falsified? Suppose you are testing a particular claim using a mass spectrometer, and you get a disagreeing result. The theory might be falsified, or your mass spectrometer could be on the fritz. Scientists do not actually troll the literature with a falsifiability detector, knocking out erroneous claims right and left. Rather, they consider their instruments, other possible explanations, alternative data sets, and so on. Rendering a theory false is a lot more complicated than Popper imagined—and thus determining what is, in principle, falsifiable is fairly muddled.

He then goes on to describe the theories of the noted crank Immanuel Velikovsky, whose work Gordin has studied extensively.  Velikovsky's most famous book, Worlds in Collision, describes how a chunk of the planet Jupiter was ejected, went into a highly elliptical orbit, and in several close passes with the Earth caused a variety of catastrophes that were recorded in historical documents (e.g. the biblical flood story and the parting of the Red Sea).  After zooming about the solar system for several centuries, near contacts with the other planets (notably Mars) caused it to settle down into an almost perfectly circular orbit -- and became the planet Venus.

About Velikovsky, Gordin says:

(Velikovsky) courted his fellow Princeton resident Albert Einstein for legitimacy and sought to bolster the scenario from Worlds in Collision with claims that discoveries from the emergent Space Age confirmed his theories about Venus and other planets. He tried to establish himself through testimonials from scientific authorities and validated predictions as a legitimate scientist, not a crank...  There is an important lesson in this. All so-called pseudoscientists believe they are simply scientists, albeit ones with heterodox views marginalized by the mainstream...  But to be a scientist, you need to behave like one, and one thing scientists do constantly is, well, demarcate. Velikovsky and his peers knew there was an edge to legitimate science, and they policed it very carefully, just like "establishment" scientists did and continue to do.

And of Velikovsky's detractors, especially the late astronomer Carl Sagan, Gordin says:

Carl Sagan and other anti-Velikovskians believed that greater scientific literacy could "cure" the ill of pseudoscience. Don't get me wrong—scientific literacy is a wonderful thing, and I am committed to expanding it. But it won't eradicate the fringe, and it won't prevent the proliferation of doctrines the scientific community decries as pseudoscience.

Finally, he concludes that demarcation is critical, even if it is (in his opinion) a moving target:

Demarcation may be an activity without rules, a historically fluctuating marker of the worries of the scientific community, but it is also absolutely vital. Not everything can or should be taught in science courses in school. Not every research proposal can or should receive funds. When individuals spread falsehood and misinformation, they must be exposed.

We can sensibly build science policy only upon the consensus of the scientific community. This is not a bright line, but it is the only line we have.

Gordin's analysis is an interesting one, and although he speaks of the scientific process and the men and women who engage in it with obvious respect, I can't help but feel that he has things the wrong way around.  Pseudoscience, such as Velikovsky's ideas and a hundred other wild theories (astrology, homeopathy, psychic phenomena, and so on) fail not simply because they are heterodox -- they fail on the grounds of lacking evidence and a plausible mechanism.  They are not pseudoscience because the scientific community says they are; the scientific community considers them pseudoscience because they fail to meet the criteria of (1) making predictions that can be verified in controlled studies (what Gordin and Popper call "falsifiability") and (2) positing a mechanism by which they could operate that is consistent with already-verified science.

So even the realms of science that make claims that aren't falsifiable (the first standard) can still be considered from the standpoint of the second.  Gordin says, "the more 'historical' sciences, like geology and astronomy, pose theories that are more explanatory narratives than up-or-down (and therefore falsifiable) protocol statements of empirical bullet points," which he believes places them outside Popper's criterion of falsifiability.  We can't, for example, falsify claims by geologists that the continents were once a single land mass that subsequently fragmented, because no one was there to see it.  However, the Pangaea theory still lies in the realm of science, not pseudoscience, on the basis of (1) having a plausible mechanism that is in agreement with processes we do see operating in the here and now, and (2) being consistent with the evidence left behind in the rocks, minerals, and fossils we have at hand.

So, my sense is that demarcation isn't as complicated as Gordin makes it.  That's not to say that scientists practice it perfectly; one of my heroes, the Nobel Prize winning geneticist Barbara McClintock, was ostracized by the scientific community for years because of her claims that genetic material moved around in the genome, a phenomenon she called transposition and her detractors ridiculed as "jumping genes."  Transposition has now been observed in every eukaryote studied, and is considered one of the main processes regulating gene switching during development.  The scientists who refused to consider McClintock's groundbreaking work for over two decades did so because they weren't applying the rules correctly, not because the rules themselves are "muddled."  McClintock's evidence did support transposition, and once geneticists began to look for a mechanism by which it could occur, it was found in short order.

Just because it may be difficult at time to separate the wheat from the chaff in science doesn't mean that we should give it up as a bad job, nor that we should wait for the scientific community to come to consensus on a topic before labeling it as pseudoscience.  Any sufficiently literate person has the tools to analyze the claims of (for example) homeopathy, and to come to the correct conclusion that it is unscientific nonsense.  The methods of critical thinking are not so fluid, nor so esoteric, that anyone can't learn to apply them.  While "eradicating the fringe" might be, as Gordin claims, an impossibility, educating yourself in the scientific method is a pretty good way to avoid falling prey to its claims.

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.