Unreal estate

Thanks to a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia, I found out yesterday that those of you who would like a nice place to retire can now buy property...

... on Mars.

I'm not joking, although the people who set up the site may well be.  Here's the idea:

Own an acre of land in our Solar System’s 4th planet; package includes the deed, a map with location of your land, and a Mars info eBook.

Which sounds like it's completely aboveboard, given that it comes with an official deed and an informational booklet and all.

Home, sweet home.  [image courtesy of NASA/JPL]

They go on to give us more details:

Buying land on Mars sounds like a plot line in some futuristic sci-fi flick about billionaires.  In truth, it's a modern-day possibility for thousandaires.  Buy Planet Mars gives astrophiles the chance to buy one acre of land on the Red Planet.  Much like the purchase of a star, Martian Land Packages include a map charting your acre's location, an owner's deed, a NASA report on Mars exploration, and a photo eBook.  These packages are issued digitally, meaning they're available for download immediately after purchase.

Yes, thousandaires, as long as they have more money than sense.  An acre of land on Mars costs $35, which sounds pretty cheap, until you realize that (1) you're never going to go there, and (2) even after you purchase it, you don't really own land on Mars, because (3) the person selling the property on Mars doesn't technically own what he's selling.

Which evidently is not apparent to the 210 people who have paid actual money for this unreal estate.  The seller's Groupon page has a lot of positive testimonials, such as the following:

• When you can't afford land in California, might as well invest in the future!
• “It's fun, thought provoking, unique and a great conversation peace [sic] I have never owned property, how could I pass it up?
• Fun gift, who knows what it could be in the future?

Worthless!  Yay!  Isn't that fun?

Okay, I know I'm coming across as a humorless curmudgeon here.  Which is hardly fair, because I'm not humorless, although my wife contends that I've been a curmudgeon since infancy.  And after all, I'm the guy who was fully in favor of everyone purchasing alien abduction insurance.  (After posting that one, an anonymous reader of Skeptophilia purchased alien abduction insurance for me, and made my dog the beneficiary.)

So maybe I should be encouraging people to buy property on Mars.  You never know, maybe one day we'll have manned missions to Mars, and you could go visit your homestead.  Although this didn't work out so well for Matt Damon in The Martian.  As I recall, it became uncomfortably breezy.  And the upshot of it was that you might want to consider doing something with your land other than potato farming.

Anyhow.  If you've got an extra $35 that you can't think of doing something more productive with, which in my opinion would include using it to start a campfire, you can buy an acre of land on Mars.  If you do, make sure to post here and let me know the details.  I'm especially curious about the deed, because you have to wonder under whose jurisdiction it's being issued.

Silencing the experts

First, we had Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper imposing a rule on scientists mandating that their research pass government approval (i.e., not say anything that contradicts the party line) before they could publish it.  That rule was, fortunately rescinded within nanoseconds of Justin Trudeau winning the election last November, once again allowing scientists to speak to the media freely.

Then, here in the United States, we have such intellectual featherweights as Lamar Smith and James Inhofe at the helm of committees overseeing scientific research -- making about as much sense as putting weasels in charge of a henhouse.  The result has been round after round of budget cuts for scientific agencies, a pledge to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, and a campaign of harassment against climatologists researching anthropogenic climate change.

Now, presumably because this has all worked out so well for Canada and the United States, the leadership of the United Kingdom are doing exactly the same thing.

According to an op-ed piece by Robin McKie in The Guardian, the Cabinet Office has decided that researchers paid by government grants will be banned from lobbying for changes in laws or regulations.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I'm sorry, but isn't science supposed to inform government, and not the other way around?  The universe really doesn't give a rat's ass if you're liberal or conservative; data has no political spin.  The desperation of politicians to muzzle scientists when the science they're working on is inconvenient for the dominant political agenda is maddening at best and dangerous at worst.  Despite forty years of warnings from the scientific community, we here in the United States have sat on our hands with respect to all of the problems that come with runaway fossil fuel use -- environmental degradation from oil drilling and fracking, skyrocketing levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, and a global temperature rise that is predicted by mid-century to melt most of the Earth's remaining on-land ice, raising sea levels enough to inundate nearly all of the world's coastal cities.

And why?  Because of a disinformation campaign waged by anti-science politicians who are being funded (i.e., controlled) by the petroleum industry.  (I can't even bring myself to call them "climate change deniers" any more; at this point, the data are so completely clear that in order to disbelieve in climate change, you'd have to ignore the evidence deliberately and completely.)

Despite all of this, the British government is going ahead with its policy of keeping the experts out of the decision-making process.  As Robin McKie writes:

The government move is a straightforward assault on academic freedom...  [C]ritics highlight examples such as those of sociologists whose government-funded research shows new housing regulations are proving particularly damaging to the homeless; ecologists who discover new planning laws are harming wildlife; or climate scientists whose findings undermine government energy policy.  All would be prevented from speaking out under the new grant scheme as it stands.

Cambridge University zoologist William Sutherland agrees.  "If they go ahead with this new anti-lobbying clause – and they are leaving it very late if they are not going ahead – then we will have many more poor decisions being made by government for the simple reason that it will have starved itself of proper scientific advice."

The illogic of preventing the people who know the most from influencing public policy is apparently obvious to almost everyone except the ones in charge.  "Politicians don’t have to agree with scientists, but does anyone believe we will make better decisions without hearing what the evidence says on flooding, climate change, statins and e-cigarettes?" said Fiona Fox, head of Britain's Science Media Centre.  "The anti-lobbying clause will send some of our best researchers back to the relative safety of the laboratory and away from the media fray they already fear.  That will be a victory for ignorance and a blow for the evidence-based policy that our politicians claim to want."

"Claim" being the operative word, here, because as we've seen over and over again, most politicians are only interested in science if it supports the views that are expedient for their political agenda.

So the whole thing is infuriating, and it's to be hoped that the outcry from scientists and science-minded citizens will overturn this decision.  In other words, that they follow Canada's example, and not the United States', where (by and large) the anti-science types are still running the show.  Here in the US, my fear is that it will take some kind of catastrophe to demonstrate that letting the tail wag the dog is a bad idea -- and by then, it will be too late.

To the Moon, Alice!

Coming hard on the heels of yesterday's post about the claim that NASA has discovered a "lost day," thus confirming the Old Testament, today we'll look at the claim over at the site Earth We Are One that NASA has detonated a nuclear bomb on the Moon.

My second question, upon reading this, was, "What is up there on the Moon that is worth bombing to smithereens?"  (My first question was, "What the fuck?", which is rhetorical in any case.)  And the answer (to the second question) is:

Aliens.

Of course.

As the writer explains it to us:

According to a set of images and alleged reports, there are alien structures on the surface of the moon, and NASA launched a 2-ton kinetic weapon to destroy them, despite international laws clearly prohibiting it.

Yes.  Article 12, clause 154 of the International Code of Law reads, "Under no circumstances is it legal to use thermonuclear weapons to bomb the shit out of aliens on the Moon."

Then we hear about NASA's LCROSS mission, which stands for "Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite," although according to the Earth We Are One folks, it is clearly nowhere near as innocuous as the name makes it sound.   NASA tells us that LCROSS's goal was to see if there is water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near the Moon's south pole, and its mechanism was crude but effective; the spent upper stage of the satellite ("Centaur") was deliberately aimed on a crash course with the crater.  The idea was that the orbiter would observe the dust plume ejected by the impact, and analyze it for the presence of water.

Which it found, by the way.

But then, NASA made the mistake of publicizing the fact that when Centaur hit the crater, it "released the kinetic energy impact of detonating approximately 2 tons of TNT (8.6 gigajoules)."  Which is, I have to admit, a crapload of energy.  When the conspiracy nuts read this, they ignored everything but "RELEASED ENERGY IMPACT DETONATING," which of course led them to believe that NASA was shooting nuclear weapons at the Moon.

The writer goes on to explain:

According to many ufologists,-and alleged images which show ‘alien’ structures on the surface of the moon- NASAs LCROSS mission had a more militaristic objective rather than scientific.  Many believe that the 2-ton weapon that was detonated on the Moon’s South Pole was aimed at an Alien Base located there.

Righty-o.  A "militaristic objective."  Because NASA can't be telling the truth, obviously.  They never tell the truth.

This “bombed” moon base might perhaps explain why we haven’t been there in recent years, why would we avoid the Moon so much?  We know that it is a place filled with minerals, it has water (and they really needed to bomb it to find out?) and it would make a perfect outpost for anyone who wants to continue the exploration of our solar system and it would also help us get to Mars and beyond.

No, the reason we haven't been to the Moon -- much less, "Mars and beyond" -- is because the nimrods in Congress have cut NASA's budget to the point that it's a wonder they can afford toilet paper.  Hell, we can't even see fit to provide funding for NASA to study the climate, and that's a little more pressing problem at the moment than alien bases on the Moon.

But of course, no claim like this would be complete without a picture:

Nowhere in the article does it say that this is an "artist's conception," so the unwary reader -- which I suspect are the majority of the readers of Earth We Are One -- might think this is a real photograph.  But if it were, you'd think some of us here on Earth would have noticed it happening, don't you think?

On the other hand, those NASA folks are a wily bunch.  I wouldn't put it past them to point away from the Moon and shout "Look over there!" really loudly at the exact moment the nuclear bomb went off.  That's how sneaky they are.

Anyhow.  I think we can be pretty confident that LCROSS is exactly what NASA tells us it is -- a device for analyzing the composition of the Moon's surface.  There is no evidence of aliens on the Moon, which would make it kind of silly for NASA to waste their money sending bombs to kill them.  So I think we need to spend our time on more critical issues, such as how we have ended up with a presidential frontrunner who apparently doesn't know the difference between 9/11 and 7/11.

The missing day

Can I make the not-very-earthshattering observation that if you are explaining evidence supporting a belief, your argument is not made stronger by lying about it?

Especially if that belief is that your own personal religion is not only superior morally, but 100% true?

I'm referring to a story of dubious provenance that has been showing up all over the place lately, mostly on Christian apologetics sites, and then forwarded by people who (1) don't understand how science works, (2) don't know how to do a Google search to check for accuracy, or (3) would prefer something sound good than be correct.  Or all three.  I ran into it via the site Command the Raven, but other versions I've seen are substantially similar.  Here are a few excerpts, edited only for length:

For all you scientists out there and for all the students who have had a hard time convincing these people regarding the truth of the Bible – here’s something that illustrates God’s awesome creation and shows He is still in control. 

Did you know that NASA’s space programmes are busy proving that was has been called ‘myth’ in the Bible is true? Mr. Harold Hill, President of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, and a consultant in the space programmes, relates the following incident: "One of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Maryland. They were checking out the positions of the sun, moon and planets out in space where they would be 100, and 1000 years from now. We have to know this as we do not want a satellite to collide with any of these in its orbits."

So we're off to a flying start, with the claim that NASA has to be very careful to make sure that satellites in orbit around the Earth don't collide with the Sun or Neptune or anything.  You can see how that could happen.

Computer measurements and data were run back and forth over the centuries when suddenly it came to a halt, displaying a red signal, which meant that either there was something wrong with the information fed into it, or with the results as compared to the standards.  They called in the service department to check it out, and the technicians asked what was wrong.  The scientists had discovered that somewhere in space in elapsed time a day was missing.  Nobody seemed able to come up with a solution to the problem.

Which brings up the awkward question of how you'd discover that a day was missing.  Were the technicians sitting around, monitoring the satellite transmissions, and suddenly one of them got this horrified look on his face and said, "Wait... where the fuck did I put last Tuesday?"  Then all of the other technicians and engineers and physicists and so forth all start searching under desks and in storage closets and behind garbage cans and so on, but to no avail.  Last Tuesday is definitely AWOL.

Finally one of the team, a Christian, said: “You know, when I was still in Sunday School, they spoke about the sun standing still…” While his colleagues didn’t believe him, they did not have an answer either, so they said: “Show us.” He got a Bible and opened it at the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for anyone with ‘common sense’. There they read about the Lord saying to Joshua: “Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not be a man of them stand before thee.” (Joshua 10:8). Joshua was concerned because the enemy had surrounded him, and if darkness fell, they would overpower him. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still! That’s right – “And the sun stood still and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Ja’-sher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hastened not to go down about a whole
day.” (Joshua 10:13).

The astronauts and scientists said: "There is the missing day!"

So there was much rejoicing.  But then one of them pointed out that it wasn't a whole day that was had been found -- it was only 23 hours and 20 minutes.  Which left 40 minutes unaccounted for, "which could mean trouble 1000 years from now."  Why it isn't trouble now, I have no idea, but concern for our distant descendants sent the NASA folks back on a search for the missing 2/3 of an hour.

And you'll never guess where they found it.

The bible.  See, I told you you'd never guess.

As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in the Bible which said the sun went backwards. The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but once again they opened the Book and read these words in 2 Kings. Hezekiah, on his deathbed, was visited by the prophet, Isaiah, who told him he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for some sign as proof. Isaiah said: “Shall the sun go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?”  And Hezekiah answered: “It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees; nay, but let the shadow return backwards ten degrees.”  Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord, and He brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.” (2 Kings 20:9 -11). Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty-three hours and twenty minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in 2 Kings accounted for the missing day in the universe!

Which would have been the cause for even more rejoicing, if the whole thing hadn't been made up.  I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist (a real one, I mean, like they have at NASA) to find the story eye-rollingly ridiculous, but it has been so widely circulated -- I've seen it three times on Facebook just in the last week -- that it actually has a Snopes page dedicated to it.  In it, we find out that Harold Hill was the president of Curtis Engine Company of Baltimore, but that's pretty much the only thing in the story that is true.  First off, Hill wasn't a NASA consultant.  It turns out that Hill was an evangelical Christian with a fairly loose interpretation of the word "true," because he'd read about the "lost day" legend in a book by Harold Rimmer entitled The Harmony of Science and Scripture and decided that the story would carry more punch if he claimed he'd witnessed the whole thing happening.  He embellished his account -- adding, of course, accolades such as "NASA consultant" for himself -- and repeated it many times in public speeches.  He even devoted a whole chapter to it in his 1974 book How to Live Like a King's Kid, apparently because by then, he'd told the tale so many times that he actually was beginning to believe it.

John Martin, Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still over Gideon (1816) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And now with the amazing bullshit conduit that is the internet, the story has roared into life again.  Snopes writer David Mikkelson says about it:

To those who've given over their hearts to God and the Holy Word, this is a deeply satisfying legend.  Faith is, after all, the firm belief in something which cannot necessarily be proved, a quality that can leave believers (especially those who find themselves in the midst of non-believers) feeling unsatisfied.  As steadfast as their certainty is, they cannot prove the rightness of the path they tread to those who jeer at their convictions.  And this is a heavy burden to shoulder.  A legend such as the "missing day explained" tale speaks straight to the hearts of those who yearn for a bit of vindication in this life.  Being right isn't always enough: sometimes what one most longs for is sweet recognition from others.

Which may well be the case, but doesn't take away from the problem of a devout follower of a religion that considers "Thou shalt not bear false witness" as one of its fundamental teachings passing along a story that is essentially one long lie.  It makes me wish that as a corollary of the ninth commandment, Yahweh had seen fit to add, "And this meaneth that thou shalt spend five minutes and do a Google search before thou post this shit on Facebook."

So anyway.  No, NASA is not spending its woefully tiny budget paying scientists to verify the Old Testament.  There's no evidence whatsoever of a "lost day," because against what clock would you be able to verify that time had stopped 3,000 odd years ago?  I'd be much obliged if the people who think that god is going to bless them if they pass along this nonsense would just stop already.  Thank you.

Fire and brimstone

There are times that I believe that whoever is running the universe has a wicked, wicked sense of humor.

Many of you will remember virulently anti-LGBT pastor James David Manning, of the Atlah World Missionary Church, who won the World Championship Weird Diatribe Award in 2014 by saying that no good Christian should patronize Starbucks because they put the "semen of sodomites" in their cappuccinos.  So the guy obviously has a screw loose, but that doesn't stop him from having parishioners flock to his church, nor did it prevent his getting a national venue for defending his epithet-laden, spittle-flecked screeds on Hannity & Colmes.

So I read with interest a new development regarding Manning and Atlah; he stands a good chance of losing his church building because of non-payment of creditors.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Manning, of course, isn't going to take this lying down.  His first response was, "We don’t owe the taxes.  We’re tax-exempt.  We’re a church, for crying out loud!"  Illustrating that he not only has odd attitudes toward sexuality and morality, he evidently doesn't understand the difference between "paying your debts" and "paying your taxes."

But according to Manning, the fact that he owes over a million dollars to various people and agencies is not why his building is being foreclosed.  "This foreclosure is a bogus foreclosure," he said, "inspired by the [New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio administration, probably prompted by Obama, to finally try to shut up my very strong voice against this wicked and immoral activity of sodomy."

So you can imagine what he thought when he found out that the first agency in line to buy the building if he loses it is an organization...

... that helps homeless LGBT youth.

When I heard this, I tried to put myself in Pastor Manning's shoes.  And I think he... I mean, he must be...  it must be such a terrible... um...

BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *falls off chair*

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.  This is simply too perfect.  I know that as a staunch, if unorthodox and rather single-minded, evangelical Christian, he doesn't believe in karma.  But seriously.  It's almost like things were set up so as to give his particular sensibilities a painful twist.

Predictably, Manning himself was outraged.  When he found out about this, he held forth with a curse that is bizarre even by his standards:

The next time you get poked in the butt, a flame, when that man pulls that penis out of you, a flame will shoot out of you!  I got the word in my mouth!  You think AIDS was bad?  You ain’t seen nothing yet!  Thus sayeth the lord!  I’m the lord’s servant!  I’m the sodomite slayer!  You gonna see, it’s gonna be a wonder to behold!  You’re gonna see the power of God fall upon Harlem!  Tell these faggots, either they get outta town or flame and fire gonna come outta their butthole.  And anybody that sympathizes with ’em, they gonna have a flame shooting outta their vagina.  You gonna need asbestos panties!  God has sent the word!  Ye shall be justly afflicted!  God will destroy you!

Now I don't know about you, but I think the ability to shoot flames out of your ass isn't an affliction, it's a superpower.  Just think of what that could do!  If some bigoted jerk starts hurling epithets at an innocent gay guy, all he has to do is turn around, drop trou, and toast the sucker.

And I won't even get into how a vaginal flamethrower would be a serious deterrent to rape.

So anyway.   Manning was unhinged to begin with, but at this point it sounds like he's completely lost his grip.  The foreclosure hearing is supposed to occur later this month, so stay tuned.  Because I think that no matter what happens, we're in for some fireworks.

Literal or metaphorical.

Knowing the score

New from the "Merciful Heavens, Please Tell Me We're Not Fighting This Nonsense Again" department, officials at the New York State Department of Education are proposing using student scores on AP exams and the SAT test as a means for evaluating teachers and administrators.

How many times does it need to be said?  Standardized test scores are not a measure of teacher effectiveness.  Okay, if I was completely incompetent, my AP Biology students would probably all tank the exam.  But beyond that, my students' scores are far more indicative of their ability to comprehend technical material, their curiosity, and their work ethic than it is of anything I happen to be doing.  I have had years where every single student in my class has gotten a score of 3 or above (usually sufficient to obtain college credit).  Other years, I have not had a single 5 (the highest score) and a commensurately high number of 1s and 2s.  What happened?  Was I competent one year and completely ineffective the next?

Add to that the fact that the College Board, in their infinite wisdom, completely restructured the exam four years ago, and I don't think the scores actually mean much of anything from the standpoint of what I am doing in class.

The SATs are even worse.  I used to teach SAT math prep courses in the evening until I became so frustrated by the "learn how to game the test" approach of most of the curricula we used that I decided to make extra pocket money a different way.  My considered opinion is that your SAT exam score tells you exactly one thing -- how well you did on the SAT test.  A study two years ago found little correlation between SAT score and success in college.  More troubling still is the fact that the one of the strongest correlations of SAT exam scores is with parental income; on average, students from the wealthiest families outperformed the students from the poorest families...

... by 400 points.

So is the idea here to further penalize teachers and administrators who work in schools in high-poverty areas?  Because that's sure as hell what it sounds like.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

New York State education officials are either unaware of these problems or else are ignoring them.  Ira Schwartz, Assistant Commissioner of Education, said in a memo, "The proposed changes would recognize efforts to encourage student participation and success in college preparation courses."

And unfairly penalize schools and teachers where other factors interfere with student success in these measures.  So Schwartz and Mary Ellen Elia, the State Commissioner, are either being disingenuous or else are once again proposing using standardized test scores as a way of instituting a top-down micromanagement approach that stifles creativity, destroys morale, and virtually eliminates local control.

"In December, the state’s education policymaking body suspended the use of those tests in teacher evaluations for the next four years," wrote Monica Disare in Chalkbeat New York.  "The moratorium is meant to give the education department time to redo the evaluation system.  This announcement, especially the references to SAT, AP, and other exams, offer early signs of how state officials will sort out that task and which new metrics they are exploring."

Also some early signs that what we're looking at is more of the same.  Evidently the Test 'Em Till They Can't See Straight approach, both here and in other states, has not been diminished despite objections from educators and the increasingly powerful opt-out movement.  You have to wonder what would make a difference.  Perhaps when they realize that they're driving experienced teachers from the profession, and discouraging college students from pursuing education as a career.

Or maybe that will just give them the impetus to gut the public school system completely, and replace it with corporate-run for-profit schools designed on the factory model.  Which is increasingly seeming like what they want.

Jones vs. Beck vs. reality

It's always amusing when two conspiracy theorists go for each other rather than spending their time calling the rest of us sheeple.

This time it is Glenn Beck and the fortunately inimitable Alex Jones, who have come to verbal blows -- no physical ones yet, at least that I am aware of -- over the presidential race.

First, we had Beck throwing down the gauntlet when he reacted angrily to political commentator Matt Drudge photoshopping Marco Rubio to look like a midget.  "I don't know what the hell has happened to Matt Drudge," Beck said.  "Ever since he started hanging out with Alex Jones, he's gone to this weird conspiratorial place where you can't even trust the news coming from him any more."

Notwithstanding that Beck himself is a complete fruit loop who appeared in a Huffington Post article three years ago entitled "The Top 9 Glenn Beck Conspiracy Theories," which featured such gems as:

• Obama advisor Cass Sunstein is a Nazi who is going to create a "Second Bill of Rights," so we all need to buy guns right away.
• Don't use Google, because They are watching everything you do and you'll end up getting arrested.
• The Entertainment Industry Foundation -- presumably including honorary board member Rupert Murdoch -- are "Maoists" who are taking over all media to push a communist agenda.
• President Obama is going to release Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently in prison for his involvement in 9/11, as a way of appeasing his Muslim friends in Egypt.
• The Department of Education, through a secret protocol called "System X," is deploying sensors in chairs in public school classrooms -- and also portable MRI machines -- as a way of collecting information on students for thought control.

Have you noticed a commonality between all of these?  Besides the fact that in order to believe any of them, you'd have to have a quarter pound of Laffy Taffy where the rest of us have a brain?

That's right: none of them actually happened.

But Glenn Beck is too smart to let a little thing like a zero batting average discourage him.  So he has now accused Matt Drudge of taking his marching orders from Alex Jones to discredit Beck's favorite presidential candidates (Rubio and Cruz).

And far be it from Alex Jones to take that lying down.  Especially given that he thinks that Donald Trump represents the Second Coming of Christ at the very least.  So he responded with a diatribe that even by his standards is pretty extreme.  Here's an excerpt:

The cult leader, Glenn Beck, he is now an official religious cult leader.  He’s the false prophet and his messiah is Ted Cruz...  Beck is a cynical, twisted, weirdo who will end up destroying himself. He is an egomaniac, super-narcissist, probably psychotic, in my view, and he’s insane and wants to be a cult leader. 

Moses has returned, you didn’t know?  The two prophets of Revelation, it’s Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck, you didn’t know?  He says it’s a priesthood he’s starting.  Oh yeah?  Oh really?  The liberal, hardcore shock jock that was hired right before 9/11 and gotten ready to come out to be the synthetic Alex Jones?  I’ve been told that by the executives involved where they sat — and he’s an actor — and watched weeks of my videos and shows and said, "Take this and mix it with Oprah." That’s what I was told by the executives that used to run his operation.  He’s a mixture of Oprah Winfrey and Alex Jones, all in a big, weird doughboy’s body.  A cult leader.  A Nellie high priest.  Scared to death, by the way, dozens of security people.

So I guess that told Beck a thing or two.

Me, I find the whole thing hilarious, given that my contention is that they're both a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  After all, do the adjectives Jones used to describe Beck -- egocentric, super-narcissist, probably psychotic -- sound like anyone else you can think of?

Hello, Pot?  This is the kettle...

So anyway.  While the rest of us sit back with a bowl of popcorn to watch the hilarity, two of the conspiracy world's inadvertent comic geniuses do their best to tear each other limb from limb.  Like I said: fine with me.  The more time they spend doing that, the less time they'll have to try to convince anyone else.