Accidentally correct

One of the most wonderful moments in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy occurs when Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent fire up the Infinite Improbability Drive, which allows a spaceship to pass through all points in space simultaneously.  Unfortunately, it has as a side effect altering the likelihood of every event in the vicinity of the ship.  As their ship is being zipped along, Arthur comes in with an alarmed look on his face.

"'Ford!' he said, 'there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.'"

It's a standard way to explain the likelihood of extremely unlikely occurrences over long periods of time -- that something that exists at a very low probability (like monkeys randomly pounding keys on a typewriter and writing out the script to Hamlet) will eventually happen if you wait long enough.  It's like the random motion ("Brownian motion") of molecules, due to their thermal energy.  It's possible that all of them will, by chance, move in the same direction at the same time, and your cup of coffee will jump up off the table.  But as my long-ago thermodynamics professor said, "It is, however, extremely unlikely."

This all comes up because something that was incredibly unlikely just happened a couple of days ago.  Fasten your seatbelts and hold down your coffee cups:

Ken Ham said something that was scientifically correct.

Okay, he said it for the wrong reason, but he still was right, which kind of blew me away.  He was being asked about racism, and not only did he give the right general response ("racism bad") he said, "The answer to racism is believing the true history of humans in Genesis (as confirmed by science): we're all one race — not different races.  When politicians and media talk about 'races' of humans, they are actually fueling racism there's only one race, the human race...  There are no truly black or white people — all are basically brown (pigment melanin) — but differing shades because of genetic variability."

Which, if you leave out the "true history in Genesis as confirmed by science" part, is actually pretty much correct.  The things we lump together as "race" -- physical features such as skin color, eye color, hair color and texture, and so on -- are actually not very good indicators of degree of relatedness between different human ethnic groups.  Geneticist Richard Lewontin writes:

It is clear that our perception of relatively large differences between human races and subgroups, as compared to the variation within these groups, is indeed a biased perception and that, based on randomly chosen genetic differences, human races and populations are remarkably similar to each other, with the largest part by far of human variation being accounted for by the differences between individuals... 

Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance... no justification can be offered for its continuance.

Now, to be sure, race and ethnicity have a great deal of cultural significance.  But its biological significance is nil.  As my college genetics professor, Dr. Lemmon, put it, "There is more human genetic variability in one hundred-square-mile area of Tanzania than there is between a typical Englishman and a typical Japanese man."

Which makes sense, of course, given that East Africa is where the human race evolved.  It's unsurprising that we still see tremendous diversity there.  Add that to the suggestion (well supported by evidence) that Homo sapiens went through a major genetic bottleneck about 74,000 years ago -- some researchers believe that the survivors may have numbered less than 2,000 individuals -- and a lot of the diversity (and lack thereof) has a fairly natural explanation.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It also makes claims about racial superiority/inferiority seem kind of idiotic, doesn't it?

So Ham is right, although for entirely wrong reasons.  He's correct that traits such as skin color are very variable; but the idea that the genetic variability just kinda happened is ridiculous.  There's a big difference in selective pressure on the genes that control melanin production if you live in (for example) Kenya as compared to living in northern Finland.  In Kenya, the main driver is protecting the skin from harsh sunlight, and thus higher melanin production; in Finland, it's UV-mediated vitamin D synthesis, and thus lower melanin production.

In other words, natural selection and evolution.

Anyhow, I found it remarkably like Adams's infinite monkeys when I read Ham's statement, given that most of the rest of what he believes has no scientific basis whatsoever, even on the level of general gist.  But, to look at it a different way: as my dad used to say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

A win for the scientists

Some days, we all need some good news, and I got mine when I heard over on Patheos that the CEO of a public school district has ordered their science faculty to stop using creationist materials for teaching biology and geology.

Of course, the fact that they were doing this in the first place is kind of appalling.  According to Zack Kopplin, who has been crusading since he was a teenager for teaching actual science in science classes:

A curriculum map… recommends teachers in this public school district show a creationist video, Cambrian Fossils and the Creation of Species, as part of 10th-grade science education.  The video claims that the Cambrian Explosion “totally invalidates the theory of evolution.”  The Cambrian Explosion was a time period, nearly 550 million years ago, where, over the next tens of millions of years, the number of species on Earth experienced a (relatively) rapid expansion by evolutionary standards.  Christian creationists regularly point to this explosion of life as evidence for creation by God and against evolution.

Which is using one of the strongest pieces of evidence from the fossil record for evolution as evidence against evolution.  It's as if you used the fact that there are different constellations in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere as evidence that the Earth was flat.

Oh, wait, there are people who do that.  Never mind.

Anyhow, Krish Mohip, the new CEO of Youngstown (Ohio) City Schools, has put a stop to this nonsense.  He has mandated that Youngstown, just like every other public school district in Ohio, has to use curricula consistent with the Ohio State Science Standards, which mention the words "evolution" and "evolutionary" almost fifty times, and (surprise!) never mention "creation," "creationism," or "intelligent design" at all.  Mohip doesn't pull any punches.  In his memo, he says that "beginning this 2016-2017 school year any reference to intelligent design, creationism, or any like concepts are eliminated from the science curriculum."

Which is exactly as it should be.  Materials from the Discovery Institute, such as the video Darwin's Dilemma, have no place in the public school.  They are religious indoctrination, pure and simple, claiming that there is a controversy where no controversy -- among the scientists, at least -- exists.

However, I'm sure that this will just open up more fun lawsuits from aggrieved hyper-Christians who think that the bible needs to be the basis of science classes throughout the nation.  They're not nearly defeated yet, considering the borderline white supremacist history texts being adopted statewide in Texas, which make it look like the Founding Fathers copied the Constitution straight from the bible, and the Native Americans and African slaves were just thrilled to pieces to be taught about the American Way by the white settlers.

So it's not that I think the war is over, but at least this particular battle is won, thanks to a forward-thinking CEO who actually cares whether the students in his district come away understanding how science works.  And at the moment, I'll take all the good news I can get.

The political teeter-totter

During election seasons, you often find out far more than you wanted about your friends' political leanings, pet issues, biases, and blind spots.  We all have them, of course; but the natural tendency is to feel like everyone else is falling for fallacious thinking, whereas we are (in Kathryn Schulz's words) "looking out at the world through a completely crystal-clear window, seeing everything as it actually is."

The problem is, it's amazingly difficult to root out errors in thinking.  People are prone to the backfire effect -- being presented with facts supporting an opposing point of view often make people double down and believe what they already did more strongly.  But it goes deeper than that. A paper written by Tali Sharot, Cass Sunstein, Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez and Stephanie Lazzaro was released this week in the Social Science Research Network, and showed that not only does presentation with the facts often cause people to veer back into their previous thinking, it increases polarization in general.

The research team used three hundred test subjects, first giving them questionnaires designed to determine their attitude about anthropogenic climate change.  From their answers, they divided the subjects into three groups -- strong believers, moderate believers, and weak believers.  Each group was asked what their estimate was of the increase in global average temperature by the years 2100.   Unsurprisingly, the strong believers had the highest estimate (6.3 degrees on average), the weak believers the lowest (3.6 degrees) and the moderate believers were in the middle (5.9 degrees).

When it got interesting was when the researchers presented half of each group with data that was good news for the planet (global warming isn't going to be as bad as predicted) and the other half with bad news (global warming is going to be far worse than predicted).  Afterwards, they were reassessed about their opinions, and asked to revise their estimate for the change.  The strong believers presented with bad news revised their estimates upwards; those presented with good news revised their estimates downward, but only a little (0.9 degrees on average).  The weak believers were highly responsive to the good news -- lowering their estimate by a degree on average -- but didn't respond to the bad news at all!

What this shows is rather frightening.  Presented with facts, both the believers and the doubters will change -- but always in such a way as to increase the overall polarization of the group.  This sort of backfire effect will result in a society where the degree of separation between two opposing factions will inevitably increase.

Sobering stuff.  But not as much as a different study, which shows how easily our political beliefs can be changed...

... without our realizing it.

According to a study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, all scientists had to do was stimulate one part of the brain -- the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex -- and it caused test subjects' views to tilt to the right.

The paper, entitled "Alteration of Belief by Non-invasive Brain Stimulation," describes research by Caroline Chawke and Ryota Kanai, of the University of Sussex - Brighton's School of Psychology.  They begin with the sentence, "People generally have imperfect introspective access to the mechanisms underlying their political beliefs, yet can confidently communicate the reasoning that goes into their decision making process" -- which sums up in only a few words how little real faith we should have in the stuff our brain comes up with.

Previous research had suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was involved in political decision-making (via its role in resolving cognitive conflict).  Specifically, it was observed that DLPFC activity was higher when people were challenged on their preconceived opinions with regard to political views.  So what Chawke and Kanai did was to stimulate that area of the brain while showing participants a campaign video from either the Labour (liberal) or Conservative party.  The expectation was that when the DLPFC was activated, it would push cognitive conflict resolution by moving both left- and right-leaning individuals toward more centrist beliefs.

That's not what happened.  The people shown a Labour video showed a movement toward the right -- but so did the people shown a Conservative video.  In other words, you stimulate the DLPFC, and everyone becomes more conservative.

Ready for the scariest part?  Let me give it to you in their own words:

It is also interesting to note that none of the participants in the current study reported any awareness of changes to their political beliefs... conclusively disagreeing with the possibility that political thoughts and values had been altered in any way.  Therefore, during the conscious deliberation of political statements, it appears as though implicit cognitive control processes may have biased subsequent belief formation in the absence of conscious awareness.  Although research has argued that rationalization and reappraisal must require some degree of conscious deliberation, the findings of the current study would provide reason to speculate an unconscious role of the DLPFC in changing political orientation.

The authors suggest the explanation that the DLPFC may have evolved as a structure whose activity is involved in perceptions of security, certainty, and social dominance, all characteristics that are associated with conservative ideology.  But wherever it comes from, the most bizarre part of all of this is how little we seem to be choosing our political leanings based on anything logical -- or even conscious.

So, there you are.  More reason to distrust the whole political process, as if this year you needed another one.  Myself, I think I'm being forced to the opinion that, as Alexis de Tocqueville said in Book II of Democracy in America: "In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own."  Little did he know how accurate that statement was -- not only about Americans, but about everyone.

An argument over mosquitoes

I broke one of my own cardinal rules a couple of days ago, which is: never argue with strangers on the internet.  This activity is the very definition of futility -- I defy you to cite one example of someone being talked out of a previously-held opinion through a war of words on Facebook.

This particular go-round of vitriol was over the role of the Zika virus in the microcephaly cases in Brazil.  The woman who got my ire up claimed that the combination of irresponsible mainstream media and the outright evil of Monsanto et al. had conspired to pull the wool over our eyes; the actual culprit for the birth defects was a mosquito larvicide called pyriproxyfen.  As support, she cited an article in the Tech Times, because apparently that's not mainstream media.

Before giving up and saying "whatever" (which I did in short order), I referred to several peer-reviewed studies that have established a pretty firm causal link between the virus and microcephaly.  The New England Journal of Medicine published a case study in August 2016 of a microcephalic baby who was Zika-positive at birth and in fact continued to shed the virus for 67 days; three separate studies (outlined and cited in an article in Science from May of this year) demonstrated that Zika infection causes microcephaly and other neurological birth defects in rat fetuses; and a thorough analysis of the available evidence (also from NEJM) concluded that the criteria for establishing a causal relationship had been met.  The authors write:

On the basis of this review, we conclude that a causal relationship exists between prenatal Zika virus infection and microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies.  Evidence that was used to support this causal relationship included Zika virus infection at times during prenatal development that were consistent with the defects observed; a specific, rare phenotype involving microcephaly and associated brain anomalies in fetuses or infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika virus infection; and data that strongly support biologic plausibility, including the identification of Zika virus in the brain tissue of affected fetuses and infants.  Given the recognition of this causal relationship, we need to intensify our efforts toward the prevention of adverse outcomes caused by congenital Zika virus infection.

Add to this the fact that the connection to pyriproxyfen was thoroughly smashed by David Gorski over in the wonderful blog Respectful Insolence, and I think if you approach the question without bias, there's no other conclusion you can reach.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

On the other hand, if you assume your own conclusion, there's not a whole lot logic can do for you.  The individual I was doing battle with pulled out the argumentum ad Monsantum, claiming that Monsanto was involved (Monsanto being the stand-in here for "Satan"), even though Monsanto doesn't manufacture pyriproxyfen -- a Japanese company called Sumitomo does.  But Sumitomo is "a Japanese strategic partner to Monsanto," so there you are.  Satan by association.

The funny thing is, I don't have a dog in this race.  If the birth defects had been caused by a pesticide, I would have no problem saying so.  While I think that pulling out the word "Monsanto" is kind of a cheap trick, I certainly am not of the opinion that they're squeaky-clean.

But I think the preponderance of evidence supports Zika as a cause of the birth defects.  I asked (sort of as a parting shot) if my erstwhile adversary had read any of the peer-reviewed studies, and she didn't respond, which I'm taking either as a "no" or as a way of saying "fuck you."  In any case, once you start thinking this way, peer-reviewed studies aren't going to convince you, because you're just one step from claiming that the authors of the studies are shills for the pesticide company.

You can't win.

Which I hope I've finally learned.  I really shouldn't take the bait, but the combative side of my personality (never very deeply buried) just can't stand to let things lie.

Anyhow, I've said my piece on this topic, and I'm really done.

At least until someone claims that I'm a shill for Monsanto.  Because them's fightin' words.

Robustness, data, and the EmDrive

I get asked rather frequently why I put such trust in the scientific process.  Often, that question is framed even more pointedly; doesn't my belief in the reliability of science amount to religious faith -- something that I believe simply because I believe it?

It's an interesting subject, and it will probably come as no real surprise to my readers to hear that I think the answer to the latter question is "no."  When science is working as it should (and it doesn't always; as a human pursuit, it's subject to human fallibility, like anything else), we amass evidence, craft theories to explain said evidence, rule out ideas that aren't supported -- and in so doing, we get closer and closer to a theory that is self-consistent and explains all of the data we currently have.  Scientists call such a theory "robust."

And once we're there, the idea that something could come along and shatter the whole thing falls into the category of "possible, but extremely unlikely."  People like to cite Einstein and relativity as having destroyed the Newtonian view of the world, but this isn't really so; Newtonian physics works perfectly well at the speeds and masses we usually experience.  It is only at velocities near light speed, or masses with a big enough gravitational pull to warp spacetime significantly more than the Earth (or even the Sun) does, that we see a big enough relativistic effect to measure.  So Einstein was more of a refinement of Newton than an invalidation.

The reason all of this comes up is because of the recent news about the EmDrive, a propellant-less propulsion system that its creators claim uses quantum and relativistic effects to generate thrust from a closed system.  The drive, which uses microwave or radio wave generation inside a shielded shell, allegedly has been measured to produce a "few ounces" of thrust, and a paper describing the physics behind it has allegedly passed peer review and will be published this fall.

The problem is, the vast majority of the physicists -- i.e., the people who actually understand the intricacies of how the thing works, not to mention theories of propulsion, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and the rest -- are, in general, doubtful.  Physicist Sean Carroll, who writes passionately about the cutting-edge nature of modern physics research, and is up front about how much we don't know, was unequivocal:

There is no such thing as a ‘quantum vacuum virtual plasma,’ so that should be a tip-off right there.  There is a quantum vacuum, but it is nothing like a plasma.  In particular, it does not have a rest frame, so there is nothing to push against, so you can’t use it for propulsion.  The whole thing is just nonsense.  They claim to measure an incredibly tiny effect that could very easily be just noise.

Others have called the explanations given by EmDrive creator, engineer Roger Shawyer, as "Star Trek technobabble," or more simply, "bullshit."  (The latter from physicist John Carlos Baez of the University of California - Riverside.)  In order for a true exhaustless drive to work, it would have to overturn nearly everything we know about mechanics (quantum, Newtonian, relativistic, and otherwise).  In other words, it would point to a great big hole in our understanding of physics.

Once again: possible, but extremely unlikely.

Don't get me wrong -- no one would be more thrilled to have a potential interstellar drive system more than me.  If there was a spaceship that could get us to another star system in weeks or months (instead of tens of thousands of years) I would be elbowing people out of the way to get to the head of the line.  But the likelihood that the EmDrive is it seems slim to me, and the chance that what effect they've seen is simple experimental error or (as Carroll says) just noise nearly 100%.

Like any good skeptic, though, I'm perfectly willing to see the thing tested -- and I hope it does work. For one thing, if it did it would mean that there is a lot of physics out there that we don't understand, which is tremendously exciting.  For another, it would mean that we have a completely new way to power spacecraft, which is somewhere beyond tremendously exciting.  If the alleged peer-reviewed paper turns out to hold water, and tests of the thing -- data from which we should get in six months or so --  show that there is something to it, I will happily eat my words, publicly.  Look for a retraction right here in Skeptophilia -- should such an eventuality come to pass.

Inquiries into inquiries about inquiries

I'm increasingly appreciating the quip that if "con" is the opposite of "pro," then "congress" is the opposite of "progress."

At the moment I'm thinking of Lamar Smith, the Texas Representative who chairs the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology despite being an anti-science climate change denier who back in 2014 said the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "said nothing new," despite its predictions of massive sea level rise, extreme weather, and catastrophic drought if nothing is done to rein in fossil fuel use.  Of course, what Smith meant by that was that the IPCC didn't say, "Ha ha!  We've been kidding all these years!  Climate change has nothing to do with fossil fuel use!"  Which is what he was hoping, given that he's proven himself over the years to be nothing more than a hired gun for Exxon-Mobil.

Rep. Lamar Smith [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Don't believe me?  In 2015 he started lashing out at climate scientists who were funded through government grants as an attempt to muzzle climate research and put a chill on anyone thinking of writing a paper further illustrating that climate change is anthropogenic (which it is).  He had a subpoena issued to Kathryn Sullivan, chair of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stating, "NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda."  Which is ironic given that Lamar Smith and his cronies suppress data to advance their own extreme pro-fossil fuel agenda.

Earlier this year, Smith went even further, launching a witch hunt against scientists even for communicating with each other about the topic.  He issued a subpoena for any internal documents containing words such as "global temperature" and "climate study," better to identify and harass scientists who were still trying to, you know, do science.

So it was no real surprise when the story hit two days ago that Lamar is at it again, this time launching an investigation to “examine Congress’s investigative authority as it relates to the committee’s oversight of the impact of investigations undertaken by the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts at the behest of several environmental organizations.”  Or, as Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard put it, he's investigating the House of Representatives' ability to investigate investigations.  This came about because those attorneys general (and also the ones in California and the Virgin Islands) have launched inquiries to look into Exxon-Mobil's efforts to suppress research linking fossil fuel use to global warming, much as in a previous generation Big Tobacco suppressed research linking cigarette smoking to cancer.  Lamar Smith and his cadre of science deniers are desperate both to discredit climate research (and the researchers who do it) and to sever any link between climate change and the runaway use of fossil fuels, and if they can't do it by harassment via subpoena, they'll do it by tying up congress in endless inquiries into inquiries about inquiries.

Smith hasn't arrived at his strategy just 'cuz.  He has the backing of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a virulently anti-science group devoted to casting doubt on anthropogenic climate change, which calls itself "non-partisan" even though it receives the majority of its funding from Koch Industries, Crownquest Oil & Gas, AEP Texas, ExxonMobil, VF-Russia, Texas Western Energy Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Chevron, and Henry Petroleum LP.   He is deep in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, and has no compunctions about using his position to forward their agenda.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has dismissed Smith's investigation as being a "small group of radical Republican House members... trying to block a serious law enforcement investigation into potential fraud at Exxon."  The problem is, Smith is in a position where he can do this kind of bullshit and get away with it.  He, and others like him, have sown such doubt in the minds of the American public about climate change that your typical American citizen can look outside and see record-breaking temperatures in 2016, which broke the record from 2015, which broke the record from 2014 (and so on ad nauseam), and still claim it isn't happening.

What I'm wondering is how the hell we can get this guy out of his position as chairman of the committee in the House of Representatives that oversees science.  I mean, for cryin' in the sink, the man doesn't believe in science.  Having Lamar Smith chair this committee is like having a creationist appointed to chair a university's Department of Evolutionary Biology.

The whole thing leaves me with that awful feeling that is a combination of anger, desperation, frustration, and disgust.  The fact that this smirking weasel of a man is currently driving national climate policy -- or, more accurately, putting our climate policy on a leash to the fossil fuel industry -- makes me wish that there was a stronger word than "appalling."

Apocalypse whenever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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