The stars against Monsanto

In the last week my Environmental Science class has been discussing the production, use, and safety of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).  It's a balancing act for me; addressing the legitimate concerns about their effects on human health and the environment, without buying into all of the alarmist hype, is never easy.  Additionally, the subject always brings up the questionably ethical practice of patenting genes and crop strains, so it is a topic that stirs up good discussion -- and strong feelings.

And, of course, inevitably the name "Monsanto" comes up.  Monsanto has become such a stand-in for "Evil Corporation" that a new fallacy, the argumentum ad Monsantum, was coined a while back -- the logical error that allows you to smear anyone or anything as long as you can tie it to Monsanto.

It's an increasingly hot topic.  So no wonder the woo-woos have gotten involved, this time to see if they can get some information about GMO safety, and the corporate practices of Monsanto...

... from astrological readings.

I swear I'm not making this up.  I'm not nearly creative enough to invent something this completely idiotic.  If you don't believe me, you'll have to check out the article on Activist Post entitled, "GMOs: What Do the Stars Say Astrologically?", by Catherine J. Frompovich.  In it, we learn that not only are the anti-GMO folks worried, the stars are, too.  Frompovich tells us that an astrologer, Eric Coppolino, has done a complete astrological work-up for Monsanto and its founder, John Francis Queeny, and what he found should alarm the hell out of you, as long as you have a single kernel of KettleCorn where most of us have a brain.

The first thing that Coppolino tells us is that when President Gerald Ford signed TOSCA (the Toxic Substances Control Act) into law, in October of 1976, "Mars and Chiron were in opposition."  Chiron, which is a comet-like body that has an orbit between Saturn and Uranus, is one I hadn't heard of before in connection to astrology, but Cafe Astrology tells us that it "is symbolized by the 'wounded healer.'  It represents our deepest wound, and our efforts to heal the wound."  So there you are, then.

Why that's important, Coppolino tells us, is that this reflects "a cosmic pattern that occasionally sets into Monsanto’s horoscope negative aspects that affect Monsanto’s genetically modified foods ‘mission’."  Whatever that means.

But things may not be all that rosy for Monsanto in the future, Coppolino says.  "Monsanto’s 11th house provides a description why the company seems so intractable, including its stranglehold on the public.  Monsanto survived the onslaughts against genetically modified food by its usual tactics – the use of government influence.  However, Monsanto’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction will experience a simultaneous conjunction from Pluto and square from Uranus, which happens in 2015."

Oooh.  Scary.  "While there is no way to predict exactly what the Uranus-Pluto square will bring," Coppolino says,  "there are few astrologers who would dare to underestimate its potential power.  Those who are working for a sane response to genetic modification or to stop Monsanto outright, should know that the company is approaching a vulnerable moment, which is an invitation for activists to persist in their efforts."

Yeah.  So take that, Monsanto.

As I've said before, astrology falls into the category of "mostly harmless" -- the only damage done being the suckering of gullible people.  Still, it always bothers me when two kinds of woo-woos join forces.  The anti-GMO crowd rely largely on discredited and dubious information in their claims for harm to human health from genetically-modified crops -- most notably, the now-retracted "study" by Gilles-Eric Seralini that allegedly showed that rats fed GMO corn developed tumors.  The data, after months of peer review, were deemed "inconclusive" -- and the conclusions of the study were therefore ruled suspect.  Even so, it's still considered gospel by people who think that any genetic tampering with anything is scary and immoral (despite the fact that we've been tampering with genetics for centuries, via selective breeding of domestic animals and plants).

So teaming up with astrologers, who have about the same level of scientific veracity on their side, is not good news for those of us who want to approach the whole thing in a more fact-based, logical, scientific fashion.  One has to hope that the number of people who would appeal to an astrologer on these matters are few in number, and that the astrological prognostications of Eric Coppolino will mostly be ignored, in favor of an actual consideration of the evidence -- i.e., the real information, not just some blathering on about Pluto and Chiron and Mars.

But as we've seen many times before, optimism is sometimes a losing proposition.  I predict that the next thing we'll see is either covens of witches casting spells to stop Monsanto, or else the homeopaths coming up with anti-GMO "remedies," made from shaking up RoundUpReady tomatoes in water, and then diluting it 5,000 times.

Sarah Palin vs. Joe McScrooge

Sarah Palin, who is determined for some reason Not To Go Gentle Into That Good Night, is once again winning accolades from the Religious Right.  This time, it's for a book about the alleged "War on Christmas," called Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas.

(photograph courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)

The book alleges that "joyless atheists," presumably including myself, are trying to "abort Christ from Christmas."  She collectively refers to people like this as "Joe McScrooge."  "Joe McScrooge," Palin opines, "armed with an attorney, is really dangerous."

"We were founded as written in our charters of liberty, in the documents that created America," Palin said, in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network.  "We're founded on a Judeo-Christian faith that would allow forever the right to express or respect for faith in America...  The road that we are on today is too many of those angry atheists armed with attorneys would try to take away that freedom to express faith. It's going to end in ruin unless we do something about it.  I want this book to be a call to action, to take steps for school districts, for communities, for business owners, for families to understand they don't have to hide their faith.  They don't have to be embarrassed by it.  This war on Christmas is really the tip of the spear when it comes to a greater battle that's brewing.  And that battle that's brewing is those who would want to take God out of our society, out of our culture, which will lead to ruin as history has proven."

Well, wiser heads than my own have addressed her contention that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation;" but I will point out that one of the most staunchly Christian governments this continent has ever seen was the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in which a man was placed in the stocks for an hour for "indecency," because he kissed his wife in public after having been away for three months.   This was the home of floggings for heresy, and hangings not only for witchcraft, but for being the wrong kind of Christian.

Whatever your belief system, I don't think that leaving that sort of thing behind could be construed as "leading to ruin as history has proven."

My central problem with Palin's contention, though, is that the "War on Christmas" that she and her pals at Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network like to whinge about really doesn't exist.  No, we Joes McScrooge don't want taxpayer money paying for Christian displays; we don't want Christian messages in our public schools, courthouses, and government offices.  To do so would be exclusionary to the one in four Americans who are not Christian.

But as far as what people do on private property?  No atheist I know gives a damn.  You can erect a crucifix so high it obstructs light plane traffic, as far as I care.  You can put up signs, as a member of my community has, saying, "Who does not accept Jesus Christ will be cast into the fiery furnace" and "The wages of sin are death!"  You can have a Christmas tree in every window and a statue of Santa Claus on your roof.

Because that's what private property means.  As opposed to public property, which implies paid for, and therefore endorsed by, the government.  A distinction that Ms. Palin apparently doesn't understand.

Oh, and for the most part, the atheists I know don't really care whether someone says "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" to them, because besides operating under the assumption that there is no god, we also have a general rule for behavior, namely, "Don't be a dick."  And like anyone who is not being a dick, we generally respond to the intent of the person we're speaking to, not just the words, and will repay kind intent with kind response.  Of all of the atheists I know -- and I know plenty -- I can only think of one who might get pissy if someone said "Merry Christmas" to him, and launch into a diatribe about how that was making an assumption about his beliefs.  And even he probably would only do that if he was already having a bad day.

So, Ms. Palin, sorry to take the wind out of your sails, not to mention your sales; whatever you and your book may claim, the "War on Christmas" really doesn't exist.  We atheists have bigger things to worry about, like the fact that a good many of your buddies are still trying to get Young-Earth Creationism taught in public school science classrooms, are still trying to make sure that religious-based homophobia is cast into law, are still trying to use the bible to argue that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening.  Given all of the bigger issues we face, the last thing most of us care about is whether you put up a "Jesus Is The Reason For The Season" banner in the local laundromat.

And I'd like to think that's that, but of course, that is never that with these people.  The alleged "War on Christmas" has been going on for years, with the Call to Arms being issued on Fox News before the Thanksgiving turkey carcass is even cold.  And each year, pretty much nothing happens, which you would think would eventually convince them that the "War on Christmas" is a figment of their imagination.

But no.  In that way, they're a little like my dog, who enjoys protecting our house from Evil Farm Machinery.  The difficulty is, we live across the road from a farm, so he barks pretty much constantly.  And each time a tractor goes by, and he barks -- the tractor goes away.  So he thinks that he has accomplished something, something vital, and that without his barking, the tractor would have come straight through the wall, and the farmer would have stolen his rawhide bone.

So he keeps barking.  Because you never know.  You have to keep vigilant.  Never let your guard down for a moment.  Because that farmer, he's a wily guy.

Just like we "Joes McScrooge."

Everything is false. Including this post.

I suppose it had to happen.  Eventually, if you buy into conspiracy theories -- where you consider the people in charge, and the media outlets, to be lying to you in order to push forward some sort of secret agenda -- you'll come to the logical end point of that belief system.

That everyone is lying to you.

That, at least, is the contention of a guy who posted on the website Above Top Secret a couple of days ago, heading his post, "Could Every Story on the News be Fake?"  Wondering how anyone could think that, of course I clicked on the link.  After all, this would mean that stories in my local paper this morning reporting on last night's Winter Festival Parade in my home town were false, and that the police closed Route 96 for two hours as some kind of diabolical False Flag, perhaps using coded Illuminati messages cleverly backmasked in Christmas carols.

So the post directed me to a video by Ed Chairini (published under his handle "Dallas GoldBug") called The Truth Exposed!  Basically, we seem to have arrived at Conspiracy Theory Nirvana, here.  I only made it through part of it, though, I'll be honest -- the video is an hour long, and that's just Part One of Three.  But on this video, which is like some sort of insane version of James Burke's Connections, we discover that some of the survivors of the the Virginia Tech massacre are "Seal Team Six," which supposedly was the group who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, except that it never happened.  Another Virginia Tech survivor is actually kidnapped California teenager Jaycee Dugard, who is actually Casey Anthony, who is actually one of the actors on The Bachelorette, who is actually dress designer Rachel Zoe, who is connected to vanished airplane hijacker D. B. Cooper.

Oh, but that's not all.  South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone engineered the Columbine shootings, which, incidentally, also never happened.  And Miley Cyrus is actually murdered child fashion show model Jonbenet Ramsey.

And at that point, I gave up.

The problem with people like Chairini isn't just that they exhibit confirmation bias on a scale never before seen in the history of humankind; the problem is that they have moved out past doubt, past cynicism, into some kind of rarefied atmosphere where you can't trust anything.  Everything you see is suspect.  Everyone you know is lying.  Everything you hear is a manufactured falsehood, there to mislead and misinform.

The difficulty with even addressing people like this is that after they've arrived at this place, they're stuck there forever.  The most convincing evidence against their stance, the most logical argument you can craft, only means that you're either deluded (in conspiracy theorist parlance, you've "drunk the KoolAid") or you're actually one of the disinformation agents yourself.  In either case, they have no reason to listen to you, and it cements their feet even more firmly in place.

Why someone would go to such lengths to do all of this -- to engineer a fake child murder and subsequent investigation, and shelter the child for years, and then bring her back out so she can "twerk" at the Video Music Awards -- he never tells us.

Or maybe that's just in Part Two, which I am not going to watch.

Cynicism, and its bizarre younger brother conspiracism, are sometimes passed off as sophisticated, worldly stances.  I see students sometimes who act as if statements like "the government always lies," "all of science could be wrong," and "the world is going to hell" are some kind of brilliant intellectual declarations, and that the speaker is therefore a smart and perceptive individual who has seen past the smokescreen.

In reality, of course, cynicism is just as lazy as gullibility -- and it is perhaps worse, because the confidence with which cynics proclaim their "worldview" gives them the veneer of deep thought.  The truth is that disbelieving everything is as bad as believing everything, with the added filigree of making you a generally miserable person to be around.

At least gullible people are usually happy.

Better to do the hard work of thinking; better to trust others unless there's evidence to the contrary.  Most people, I maintain, are just ordinary folks who want what we all want -- love, shelter, security, and a good laugh every once in a while.  Peopling your fantasy world with evil manipulators doesn't make you brilliant; it just makes you a bitter, joyless pain in the ass.

Human rights for chimps

There's now a lawsuit making its way through the U. S. judicial system demanding "legal personhood" for chimpanzees.

(photograph courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)

A non-profit organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed three separate suits in a New York State court claiming that chimps are "a cognitively complex autonomous legal person(s) with the fundamental legal right not to be imprisoned."  The suits were filed on the behalf of four chimps who are so "imprisoned" -- two by private, licensed owners, and two by research labs at the State University of New York in Stonybrook.

The lawsuits are extremely likely to be thrown out, and it has nothing to do with whether or not holding chimps in such situations is ethical or not.  They are not human -- and the framing of most laws are explicit in giving rights to humans ("men and women," or "people"), not to non-human animals.  The organization filing the lawsuits might have been better off making the claim based on animal cruelty laws; that an animal as "cognitively complex" as a chimp is undergoing abuse simply by virtue of being imprisoned, even if nothing is explicitly done to hurt it.

It does open up the wider question, though, of what our attitude should be toward other species.  The whole issue crops up, I think, because so many humans consider themselves as disconnected from the rest of the natural world.  I find that a great many of my students talk about "humans" and "animals" as if humans weren't animals themselves, as if we were something set apart, different in a fundamental way from the rest of the animal world.  A lot of this probably comes from the fact that much of our cultural context comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition, in which Homo sapiens wasn't even created on the same day as everything else -- and is, therefore, the only being on earth with sentience, and an immortal soul.

Once you knock down that assumption, however, you are on the fabled and dangerous slippery slope.  There is a continuum of intelligence, and sentience, in the animal world; it isn't an either-or.  Chimps and the other anthropoid apes are clearly highly intelligent, with a capacity for emotions, including pain, grief, loss, and depression.  Keeping such an animal in a cage is only dubiously ethical, even if (as in the case of the chimps at SUNY-Stonybrook) you might be able to argue it on a "greater good because of discoveries through research" basis.

But if we have an obligation to treat animals compassionately, how far down the line would you extend that compassion?  Spider monkeys are less intelligent than chimps, by pretty much any measure you choose -- but not a lot less.  We keep pigs in horrible, inhumane conditions on factory farms -- and they are about as intelligent as dogs.  Down the scale it goes; fish can experience pain, and yet some people will not eat chicken on the basis of its causing another creature pain, and yet will happily devour a piece of salmon.

Douglas Hofstadter, the brilliant writer and thinker who wrote Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid and I Am a Strange Loop, proposes a "unit of sentience" called the "huneker."  (He named the unit after James Huneker, who said of one Chopin étude that it should not be attempted by "small-souled men.")  He is well aware that as neuroscience now stands, it's impossible to assign numerical values to the quality of sentience -- but, he says, few are in doubt that humans are more sentient, self-conscious, and intelligent than dogs, dogs more than fish, fish more than mosquitoes.  (Hofstadter says that a mosquito possesses "0.0000001 hunekers" and jokingly added that if mosquitoes have souls, they are "mostly evil.")  But even though he is talking about the whole thing in a lighthearted way, he bases his own decisions about what to eat on something like this concept:

At some point, in any case, my compassion for other “beings” led me very naturally to finding it unacceptable to destroy other sentient beings... such as cows and pigs and lambs and fish and chickens, in order to consume their flesh, even if I knew that their sentience wasn't quite as high as the sentience of human beings.

Where or on what basis to draw the line? How many hunekers merit respect? I didn't know exactly. I decided once to draw the line between mammals and the rest of the animal world, and I stayed with that decision for about twenty years. Recently, however — just a couple of years ago, while I was writing I Am a Strange Loop, and thus being forced (by myself) to think all these issues through very intensely once again — I “lowered” my personal line, and I stopped eating animals of any sort or “size”. I feel more at ease with myself this way, although I do suspect, at times, that I may have gone a little too far. But I'd rather give a too-large tip to a server than a too-small one, and this is analogous. I'd rather err on the side of generosity than on the other side, so I'm vegetarian.

Although I agree with Hofstadter, I've never been able to give up eating meat -- and I'm aware that the choice is based mostly upon the purely selfish consideration that I really enjoy it.  We belong to a local meat CSA that raises the animals under humane, free-range conditions, which assuages some of my guilty feelings when I'm eating a t-bone steak.

The issue is not a simple one, but I've tried to make my decisions based upon an effort not to cause needless suffering.  Locking up a convicted murderer probably causes him suffering, but refusing to do so on that basis is hardly a reasonable choice.  Ending an animal's life in a quick and humane way to provide me with dinner is, in my opinion, acceptable as long as the animal was treated compassionately while it was alive.  And I extend that qualifier of need all the way down the scale.  I'll scoop up spiders in cups and let put them outside rather than stomp them.  There is no need for me to kill harmless spiders -- however far down the sentience scale they may be.

In the case of the "imprisoned" chimps, there is almost certainly suffering, and (as far as I can tell) little need.  Unless research is of immense and immediate value to humanity, an animal as sensitive and intelligent as a chimp should not be used for it.  There are a great many reasons not to keep animals like chimps in captivity.

Calling them "persons," however, is not one of them.

Chemtrails on Venus

Yesterday a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, and frequent contributors of topics thereto, sent me a link with the note, "Nothing like explaining one crazy idea using another crazy idea, is there?"

The link brought me to a page on Above Top Secret entitled "A Possible Reason for Chemtrails: A Form of Galactic Protection?" in which we learn that the government might have a positive reason for chemtrailing the absolute hell out of all of us.

They are trying to create a screen to shield us from the sensors of alien spaceships that intend to destroy all life on Earth.

At this point, you're probably already facepalming.  But in the words of the 1980s infomercials -- "Wait, there's MORE!"

How does the author know that this is possible?  Because that's what happened to Venus:

'Under all those sulfuric clouds [on Venus] there is a whole ecosystem'...  [W]hat if it's possible that there IS and ecosystem under those clouds, but not just an ecosystem; a whole civilization!

What I am getting at is what if the reason that the TPTB (or whatever you'd like to call them) are spraying chemtrails is to create a layer of atmosphere that will constantly reflect sunlight (When viewed from the outside of our atmosphere) hence making us look as bright as Venus at the moment. This in turn will hide us from any alien predators IF there are any lurking out there looking for a place to conquer and devour. 

Of course, there's just one teensy problem with this idea, besides making me wonder if the author's skull is filled with PopRocks.  And that is that the temperature on Venus is so high that the first probes to land there got fried.  To quote Universe Today:

There are many geophysical similarities between Venus and the Earth. Average temperature is not one of them. Where the Earth has an average surface temperature of 14 degrees Celsius, the average temperature of Venus is 460 degrees Celsius. That is 410 degrees hotter than the hottest deserts on our planet...  The atmosphere has made visual observation impossible. It contains sulfuric acid clouds in addition to the carbon dioxide. These clouds are highly reflective of visible light, preventing optical observation. Probes have been sent to the surface, but can only survive a few hours in the intense heat and sulfuric acid.

So our alleged "ecosystem and civilization" down there would be a little on the toasty side.

The whole thing reminds me of one of the funniest moments on the wonderful 1970s science series Cosmos, written and hosted by Carl Sagan, in which he describes an earlier set of "inferences" (if I can dignify them by that term) about what might be on Venus:

I can't see a thing on the surface of Venus. Why not? Because it's covered with a dense layer of clouds. Well, what are clouds made of? Water, of course. Therefore, Venus must have an awful lot of water on it. Therefore, the surface must be wet. Well, if the surface is wet, it's probably a swamp. If there's a swamp, there's ferns. If there's ferns, maybe there's even dinosaurs.

Observation: we can't see a thing on Venus.  Conclusion: dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people who think this way, and with a small amount of digging, I found that there are still apparently folks who believe that there are aliens down there under the clouds on Venus.  Here's an excerpt of a "top secret file" I found, which I know is top secret because it says so at the top of the page, and which is so incredibly secret that you can find it with a thirty-second Google search using the keywords "Venus civilization:"

UFOlogia Top Secret File
TOP SECRET FILE

FORM INFRA D.I.P. PROJECT MARXEN UF088

EVIDENCE OF CIVILIZATION ON VENUS


It is scientifically possible for material plane beings to live in an atmosphere on another planet, that is too hot or chemically fatal to Earth humans, by constructing underground air-conditioned bases or cities protected from the elements on the surface. It is also feasible to create air---conditioned domes on the surface of other planets that have artificial atmospheres exactly like on Earth, and American scientists admit they already have the technology and plans to create these bases on Mars and our Moon. Therefore extraterrestrials with the superior technology to create disc--shaped U.F.O.s, that are detailed in dozens of photos and documents in the U.S. Air Force released Project Bluebook files, could logically possess the advanced science to create such bases on the surface of the planet Venus.

The physicists William Plummer and John Strong stated that Venus may have large areas of bearable temperatures. The regions near the Venusian north and south poles would be much cooler than the areas reportedly monitored by space probes. Furthermore, according to Professor Alexander Lebedinsky, in the Soviet Union, in data suppressed by the United States Pentagon complex, the usual surface temperature of much of Venus must be about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, even though "radio---electric" measurements indicated 700 or more degrees. Similar observations can be made on the relatively COOL surfaces of gas tubes used in neon signs, because the radio--electric equivalent of those tubes is also several thousand degrees! 

Yuppers.  There you have it.  The Venera, Mariner, and Magellan probes, which sent back photographs from Venus's surface, just accidentally landed over and over on Venusian neon signs, and it confused the sensors.   Never mind that every single photograph they took looked like this:

So whatever "civilization" the Venusian chemtrail-cloud-anti-alien-shields are there to protect must not mind being red hot and swimming around in liquified rock.

On a more somber note, I hope that there's not a grain of truth to all of this nonsense -- that what we are currently doing to the atmosphere, in the form of excessive fossil fuel use, might not generate a runaway greenhouse effect.  In the same episode of Cosmos that Sagan quipped about dinosaurs, he threw in his own cautionary note -- that the reason Venus is so hot is only partially its greater proximity to the Sun.  It is largely due to the huge amount of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.  So while the author of our original webpage perhaps didn't intend it, there's a way in which there is a connection -- enough injection of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, via the burning of hydrocarbons like jet fuel, and we might well raise the surface temperatures out of the narrow range in which carbon-based life is possible, altering our Earth into a planet like Venus -- a place that, to once again quote Sagan, "is very much like hell."

Historical hype, government coverups, and the "Spanish flu"

At the heart of skepticism is a philosophy that says, basically, "question everything."  I would add a few "especiallies:"

• especially if the claim appeals to your personal biases and fears;
• especially if it seems sensationalized;
• especially if there is no hard data to support it;
• and especially if it's claiming that the reason there's no data is because of a government coverup.

 I ran into an excellent example of this just yesterday, with an article on The Liberty Digest titled, "U.S. Government Kills 100 Million People -- Deflects All Blame," by Truman Jackson.  My first thought was to wonder how 100 million people could have died without my noticing, but upon opening the link I found that he wasn't talking about something recent.

He was talking about the "Spanish flu."

An influenza hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas, winter 1918 (photograph courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)

What followed was such a mixture of truth, half truth, and complete bullshit that the author should win some kind of award for Best Example of Journalistic Hash, 2013.  Here's his claim, to which I've added a few annotations of my own:

Consider this a history lesson. At the time, it was an experiment in attrition and public gullibility, and both experiments proved favorable to ‘the powers that be’ as far as the outcome obtained.

It’s referred to as the Great Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 in the history books, but there was nothing Spanish about this plague that killed between 20 million and 100 million people world-wide. [True.  It was the worst pandemic in modern history, rivaling or perhaps exceeding the 14th century Black Death.]  It was 100% U.S. Government controlled and engineered.  [Bullshit.]

In a nutshell, while mass troop movements were heading to Europe during WWI, the U.S. Government, through the Department of the Army, was experimenting with this really neat, and new for the time, technology, called vaccines.  [True.]  They were injecting flu vaccine, among others, into soldiers who were on their way to fight in the “war to end all wars.”  [False, and not only false, but impossible.  The first flu vaccines weren't developed until 1931, twelve years after the epidemic, and World War I, both ended.]

As everyone knows, most vaccines have a strain of that of which they are supposed to be preventing, and in this case, a common strain of flu common for the U.S. at least.  [True in essence.]

However, the strain was not common in Europe and the rest of the world and the other people who inhabited those countries had not had a chance for their immune systems to develop any defense against the U.S. flu strain.  [True, but misleading, because this more or less happens every year -- that's why there are epidemics.  If people had a "defense" against a strain, they wouldn't get sick.  It doesn't require some sort of deliberate attempt by the U.S. to spread the disease, the virus is perfectly capable of doing that on its own.]

The result was catastrophic, and some would say diabolical. Nearly 5% of the earth’s surface population at the time was killed by the outbreak of the flu.  ["Diabolical" implies intent, so while the percent mortality is accurate, the implication is not.]

How did Spain get the blame?

Simple.

The ‘powers that be’ who were involved with the war made sure to keep a tight lid on the story of the flu. They feared world-wide riots should the populace learn the facts behind how far and wide the outbreak had spread. However, Spain was “neutral” during the war, and they openly reported on the havoc the virus was causing in their country. As a result they ended up getting the blame for the outbreak, and nothing could have pleased the ‘powers that be’ more. Remember, no good dead [sic] goes unpunished.  [Bullshit.  Although the author is correct that the identification of Spain as the origin of the epidemic was probably false, no one was trying to "blame Spain" for some sort of geopolitical reason, any more than calling the 1968 "Hong Kong flu" was an attempt to blame China.]

Many experts who have written on the “Spanish” influenza which killed upwards of 100 million people, believe the virus actually originated at an Army base in Kansas.  [Half-truth.  The origins of the virus are still uncertain.  Epidemiologists have proposed France, Austria, and China as alternate explanations, but the fact is, we don't know where it came from.]

So what we have here is the usual conspiracy nonsense, bolstered by people's fears of the side effects of vaccination due to the insidious work of such discredited nutjobs as Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy.

Of course, the timing of this article is no coincidence; the 2013-2014 flu season is just ramping up, and people are considering whether to get vaccinated.  Anti-vaxx hype is big this year, although studies debunking the supposed horrible side effects of vaccines clearly demonstrate that the risks of vaccination are vastly outweighed by the risks of contracting preventable diseases.  Flu kills thousands of people yearly, and most years the vaccine does a pretty good job of preventing the disease.  (I have to use the qualifiers "most" and "pretty good" because the flu virus is notorious for mutating, and the vaccine is based upon a best-guess of what the strains that year will be.  Every so often, the researchers don't get it right, and there's a strain prevalent that the vaccine doesn't immunize you against.  Even so, they get it right far more often than they get it wrong, and the benefit still far outweighs the risk.)

But no wonder that this article is making the rounds of social media, anti-vaxx websites, anti-government websites, and conspiracy theory websites.  It hits all of my "especiallies;" it caters to preconceived biases and fears, it's sensationalized, it has nothing in the way of data proving its points, and it claims that the reason for the lack of evidence is a conspiracy.

The nice thing about the Internet Age is that we have virtually instantaneous access to information, and with a little bit of training, anyone can learn to sift the truth from the bullshit.  Start, for example, by looking only at sources that are peer-reviewed -- it's not a guarantee of accuracy, but at least you've raised the bar from the kind of tripe published in places like The Liberty Digest.  Ask questions, especially "how does the author know this claim is true?"  Question your own biases and assumptions.

And never, ever accept what someone says without evidence.

Using tragedy as leverage

Most of the time I'm able to keep some sense of humor about the crazy stuff that is the inspiration for the lion's share of my blog posts.  However maddening the illogic, however infuriating the ignoring of evidence, however baffling the stretching of credulity, I usually can find some way to put it all in perspective, to shake my head at the silliness and then move on.

But sometimes, I find something that galls me so deeply that I can't even find an angle from which I could poke fun and lighten it up.

That's the way I'm reacting to the conspiracy theories that have sprung up following the death of actor Paul Walker.

(Photograph courtesy of André Luis and the Wikimedia Commons)

Walker, best known for his roles in action flicks like Fast & Furious, died Saturday in a fiery one-car crash that also took the life of Walker's friend Roger Rodas.  Given Walker's penchant for fast cars and parties, it seemed like there was nothing more to it than a fatal recklessness -- an explanation supported by the discovery at the site of tire tread marks that seemed to indicate that the car had been doing doughnuts prior to the crash.

But that's not enough for the conspiracy theorists, is it?  No, of course not.  It never is, somehow.  It's not sufficient to let Walker's family, friends, and fans mourn his untimely death.  These vultures have to capitalize upon it, grab the notoriety and run with it, use it as leverage for promoting their bizarre, counterfactual view of the world.

In that way, they're a little like the Westboro Baptist Church, aren't they?  "The government is trying to kill us all" is just a little more PC than "God hates fags," that's all.

So, what are they claiming?  Well, take a look at this page on Before It's News, a site already well-known for promoting "truthers" of various stripes.  This time, it's "Paul Walker: Murdered for Digging Too Deep?" by Susan Duclos, which makes the claim that Walker was murdered by the government because he was about to blow the whistle...

... because he'd found out that the United States is secretly putting birth control drugs into food shipments destined for hurricane refugee camps in the Philippines.

Don't believe me?  Here's a direct quote:

Paul Walker and his friend were killed shortly after they discovered a conspiracy to supply victims of Typhon [sic] Haiyan with a prototype permanent birth control drug hidden in medicinal supplies and food aid. They had a damning recording and they were on their way to rendezvous with an ally who would have helped them get in touch with the right people. Turns out they were betrayed and someone rigged their car’s breaks [sic] to malfunction after a certain speed.

Now that the loose end has been tied up, and the recording destroyed, the people responsible have nothing to fear as this will become another “conspiracy theory” no one will take seriously.

You know, there is a reason, sometimes, when people don't take you seriously.  It's what happens when you propose insane idea after insane idea, each time claiming that this is the time you've found the smoking gun.  It's what happens when you predict electrical grid failures, government collapses, assassinations, mass arrests, and releases of bioengineered plagues, and none of it ever happens.

It's what happens when you prove, over and over, that you are nothing more than an unethical, loudmouthed, bullshit-spouting crank.

And yet, bafflingly, conspiracy theories are gaining traction.  Like the hydra, you strike one down, only to find nine more in its place.  Argue one follower away, and others jump into the fray.  Look, for example, at some of the comments on Duclos' piece:

It’s interesting that the big web searches are reporting the story, but not including any pictures nor video footage, when clearly their available. Furthermore, the weather conditions were fine, not a factor, the people driving the car were professional racers, yet they can’t even handle a turn- going from A to B? But what makes me the most suspicious is considering to damaged to the car…I’m sure the occupants where completely unrecognizable, yet they positively identified Paul Walker on the spot? How exactly? How’d they know that he personally in the car? With the fire and everything, his face, his ID would have been damaged beyond recognition…Yet the story came out within the hour of the accident, positively identifying him as there. My gut feeling is that he wasn’t in the car, I don’t know where he is, this doesn’t make sense… Geez, this horrible.

This crash has all the same features as that journalist who was murdered recently. the one who said he was working a a huge story and would have to lay low for a while …refresh my memory re. name. Now according to this story the motives are almost identical as well.

It was a ritual sacrifice….
Take todays train wreck as an example–
63 injured 3–6′s = 666
6+3 = 9
11 people injured = 9-11
Just as Paul Walker died at age 40 in a 9-11 Porsche
4 people killed in the train accident– Walker 40 + 4 = 44 = Obozo -He better be careful!
6 days ago, All over the news was “Brian is dead” from Family guy–Paul Walker played Brian in the Fast and Furious franchise..
None of this is a coincidence…Welcome to the Matrix!

If that's not disheartening enough, there's the alternative explanation on Truther News -- that Walker was killed by an "Obama drone strike."

I probably shouldn't let it get to me.  But for crying out loud, two guys died here.  It was an accident -- one of those stupid, reckless, tragic accidents that ended two lives forty years too early.  One of those things that happen because life is risky, and because humans, even famous and popular and handsome ones, sometimes do stupid things.

And that was all it was.  So conspiracy theorists, hear this: let their friends and family grieve, and stop spinning your stupid fucking webs of fantasy around Paul Walker's grave.