You might be a flat-earther if...

I see a lot of flat-earth stuff on Facebook. I don't know how if any of it is sincere, or if most or all of it is just engagement farming or flamebait. I just know I can't look away. The amount of utter ignorance apparently on display astounds me.

It's been well understood for millennia that the earth was spherical. Simple observation proved that: ships leaving port didn't just appear to get smaller as they sailed away; they disappeared from the bottom up as though going over a hill. The shadow cast on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always a circle; only a sphere casts a circular shadow from all angles.

In the third century BC, Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth using a couple of sticks and high-school geometry. Some of his assumptions were off (for example, the exact distance and bearing from Alexandria and Syene), but his methodology was sound. Columbus wasn't trying to prove the world was round; that was understood. The dispute was over its size, and whether Asia wa reachable by sailing west from Europe. (Obviously, it wasn't. It was fortunate for Columbus that North America was in the way. He thought the globe was much smaller.) Enlightenment intellectuals in the 18th and 19th centuries concocted the myth that the ancients believed the world to be flat, in order to portray religion as anti-reason. In reality, educated people knew the earth was a sphere. That people today will seriously entertain the notion that we live on a planar surface just goes to show how un-educated we have become.

Ruby Ridge, 30 years later

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the U.S. government siege of the Randy Weaver family cabin on Ruby Ridge, near the city of Bonners Ferry in the Idaho panhandle. Starting on August 21, 1992, a small army of government agents surrounded the mountain for 11 days. Two exchanges of gunfire resulted in the deaths of one U.S. Marshal, Weaver's wife and son, and a family dog.

Randy Weaver, who died this May at the age of 74, was a slight man from Iowa who had joined the Army during the Vietnam War, though he wasn't sent overseas, and dropped out of college to marry his sweetheart, Vicki Jordison. Vicki, a deeply religious woman, forged a family religion out of the syncretism of her childhood Mormonism, Hal Lindsey-style prophecy, and the racist Christian Identity movement. Convinced that the government was the Beast of Revelation and out to get the faithful, Weaver became convinced that the only way to keep his family safe from a corrupt world was to move into the wilderness and live in isolation. So in 1982, the Weaver family bought property on top of a mountain in northern Idaho, where Randy built a ramshackle cabin for them to live in.

The shocking truth about the basic necessities of life

I used to make a hobby out of reading and collecting examples of various kinds of crackpottery. At some point, though, I lost interest. I think I just became overwhelmed (and not a little bit discouraged) at the sheer volume of anti-intellectual nonsense that floats around on the Internet.

My latest thing to follow in that vein is Vani Hari, aka The Food Babe. Hari is a crusader against all kinds of foodborne injustice. She is arguably best known for her campaign that pressured Subway into removing the additive azodicarbonamide from their sandwich bread. However, this additive decomposes when baked into gases such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide—all of which are harmless when eaten—as well as a harmless amount of ammonia gas. Hari is not a food scientist, medical doctor, nutritionist, dietician, or any other sort of expert in the field, and it shows. Her recent tirade against Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte complained that it contained "[a]bsolutely no real pumpkin in ingredients." (Of course not: it is flavoured with pumpkin spice, the spice mixture used to flavour pumpkin pies: typically some combination of allspice, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.) To date, however, her most hysterical raving has been against microwave ovens, in which she decries "unnecessary daily exposure to radiation": "Afer all, human cells are made of molecules and molecule bonds are broken and destroyed when exposed to radiation." She clearly does not understand the difference between ionizing (e.g. X-rays, gamma rays) and non-ionizing radiation (e.g. microwaves, radio waves, visible light).

Another site that similarly takes the cake is Realfarmacy.com, which exposed the "horrifying fact" that Big Macs contain, of all things, cellulose. You may never want to eat a vegetable again.

Health sites may very well raise legitimate concerns about the food we eat. Fresh food prepared yourself is probably better for you, and fast foods do contain a lot of salt, sugar, and fat that we can all probably do without, at least on a regular basis. But all too often, any legitimate concerns get buried in a sea of pseudoscience that takes a number of forms, including:

• "Chemicals" are bad for you, and if you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't eat it. (Never mind that even a fresh, organic fruit will naturally contain as many, if not more, unpronounceable "chemicals" as part of its intrinsic makeup, as anything you buy at a McDonald's.)
• This substance has been proven toxic to rats. (But usually in amounts that are orders of magnitude beyond what humans will come in contact with. Also, remember that substances that are toxic to animals might still be safe for humans: daylilies are harmful to cats, but edible for people; chocolate is awesome for humans, but very dangerous for dogs.)
• A food substance or additive is also used in the manufacture of non-food items, e.g. azodicarbonamide used in commercial bread is also used in the manufacture of yoga mats. You don't want to eat something that someone's sweaty butt has rubbed all over, do you? (This particular argument commits the logical fallacy of division: that each component part of a whole shares the same properties as the whole. Just because eating a yoga mat is bad for you, doesn't mean everything used to make the yoga mat is bad for you. For example, the puffed corn starch used to make biodegradable packing peanuts is the same stuff used to make cheese puffs.)
• A food substance or additive can also be found in other non-edible or unpleasant substances. (Cellulose is found in wood, therefore Big Macs are really bad for you. Cellulose is a structural component of plant cell walls; want to bet that a Big Mac's cellulose comes from the lettuce, onions, and pickles?)
• A food substance or additive is derived from non-edible or unpleasant sources. For example, shellac (used to make candies or pharmaceuticals shiny) comes from bugs, and the musk glands of beavers have been used as a source for natural vanilla flavouring. (Here, at least, we have a somewhat legitimate concern: if you are squeamish about eating insect secretions or beaver butts, you would be wise to read the label. However, keep in mind that the source of something does not necessarily determine how safe it is to eat.)
• This food is, or contains, a genetically modified organism (GMO). (Never mind that a comprehensive study of 100 billion animals has found no issues with a diet of genetically engineered feed.)

These fallacious arguments are often accompanied with (and made palatable by) attractive-looking graphics. I've wanted to try my hand at building infographics for some time—so, I thought, why shouldn't I get in on the scaremongering game? Behold the infographic that will completely change your life! You'll be shocked at what you put in your body over 20,000 times per day.

The worst thing about air, however, is this: It isn't even organic or vegan.

Wi-Fi Luddites in Ottawa (Aaaah, they're closing in!)

Oh, brother.

Some west Ottawa parents are speaking out about their concerns with wireless internet connections in their children's school.

For both Ruth Ann Semple and Jessica Van Hees, the unknown is frightening. They believe there is not enough known about the dangers of long-term exposure to Wi-Fi, but the school board plans on making all their schools fully equipped.

"Our children should be dissecting rats, they shouldn't be functioning as lab rats," Van Hees said, "And this constitutes as a massive experiment on children."

[Full Story]

This story twice in a week? I see the stirrings of an extraordinary popular delusion on the horizon. Either that, or CBC is trying to manufacture a crisis.

Remember, folks: a typical Wi-Fi router puts out 0.021 watts in toto of low-energy microwaves. Stand out in the sun and receive more than 100 watts of high-energy light, including ionizing UV radiation. No one is calling to ban the sun.

The Luddites ride again

Arguably my favourite moment in the movie X-Men comes toward the end, when Magneto has the X-Men trapped in the Statue of Liberty.

"Fry him," team leader Cyclops orders Storm, who controls weather.

"Oh, yes, a bolt of lightning into a huge copper conductor," retorts Magneto. "I thought you lived at a school?"

I get the same feeling as Magneto when I read this news article:

An Ontario teachers' union is calling for an end to new Wi-Fi setups in the province's 1,400-plus Catholic schools.

The Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association says computers in all new schools should be hardwired instead of setting up wireless networks.

It also says Wi-Fi should not be installed in any more classrooms.

In a position paper released on Monday, the union—which represents 45,000 teachers—cites research by the World Health Organization.

Last year the global health agency warned about a possible link between radiation from wireless devices such as cellphones and cancer.

[Full Story]

I can only guess that there are no science teachers in the OECTA. There are so many things wrong with this statement that I hardly know where to begin.

Dear "markshriv"

Thanks to your repeated spamming of my blog with John MacArthur-related comments having nothing to do with the subject matter of the posts, you are now officially persona non grata here.

Continue, and I will take the matter up with Blogger.

That is all.

It's time I had some time alone

0
HOUR

!!!

So . . . anyone feel that earthquake?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!

1
DAY

 . . . DIE

Update: On last evening's Open Forum program, Harold Camping made his swan song. There will be no program tonight, as he will (understandably) be spending it with his loved ones. No doubt it's a few hours of respite before the arduous task of watching the Mother of All Rolling Earthquakes unfold on CNN. The Rapture will be televised, after all.

Whether Camping will return to the airwaves after his inevitable humiliation, however, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, you might find it interesting to watch the YouTube videos of EzekielThirtyThree3, who has been documenting Harold Camping during these last few weeks of the world. The quality of the documentary is actually pretty good. But I can't decide whether he is sincerely chronicling the end of the through the eyes of its chief prophet, or if he's a disgruntled Family Radio employee documenting the last gasp of an old fool who didn't learn his lesson from his first failure in 1994. The over-the-top, dramatic low camera angles of Captain Camping preaching from a large pulpit look to me like some kind of Triumph of the Will pastiche.

Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline

2
DAYS

 . . . GONNA . . .

A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies

3
DAYS

 . . . ALL . . .

Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn

4
DAYS

 . . . WE'RE . . .

World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed

I'm going to listen to Open Forum every day this week. It's bound to be quality entertainment . . .

5
DAYS

THIS IS IT . . .

Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get caught in foreign towers

My friend Ian directed me to this TV news item that was broadcast only a few days ago.

So, Harold . . . we can know the day and the hour?

Captain Camping is hilariously specific: he says that Judgment Day will begin at 6 pm starting at the International Date Line.

Cool. So God's eschatological timetable respects modern time zones, including an imaginary (and completely arbitrary) line, devised because on a spinning globe, it has to be the next day somewhere. I guess that makes Sandford Fleming a prophet. Who knew?

It's a bit confusing what Captain Camping meant, though. Did he mean that the Rapture would occur all over the world at that time? In that case, it will be 2 a.m. in the morning on May 21 here in Ottawa (and the rest of Eastern Daylight Time), and we'll all miss it, unless we go barhopping and drink to the Millennium. Or did he mean that God will do the Wave across the globe, laying down earthquakes at 6 pm local time? That, at least, will make for 20 hours of interesting news before it's our turn.

If nothing else, it's clear that Camping is still making this garbage up as he goes along. Hilariously, he insisted that there is no possibility of being wrong this time. I wonder what he'll be saying on May 22?

Meanwhile, it's still

13
DAYS

until
Captain Camping
Crashes
Calamitously

Left of west and coming in a hurry with the Furies breathing down your neck

Can the
Camping Cultists
Climb Up from
the
Chaos and Confusion
of the
Certain Confutation
of
Captain Camping's
Calculator-Crazy Claptrap?

Find out in
13
DAYS

13 days until May 21, 2011. That's a very unlucky number - for Harold Camping, the pretend prophet who just can't predict the end of the world right, even on the third try. On May 22, the world will see him for the fraud he is, when the Rapture fails to happen on schedule.

Tell you what, Harold. If you're so convinced of your numerological noodlings, write up a binding contract to sell me all the assets of Family Radio on May 22 for the sum of one dollar. If you really have the courage of your convictions, you already believe that you'll need neither the money nor the radio network. Right?

The fact that, so far as we know, no one has made such a deal yet, speaks volumes about Camping's honesty. I think that deep down inside, he knows better than to believe his own drivel.

It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)

I don't know how great it is, or whether it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplanes, but as of today, it is:

25
DAYS

until the
Coming Credibility Collapse
of the
Credulous Cult
of
Captain Camping

Why 25 days? Because 25 is 5 squared, and a square has 4 sides just like there are 4 gospels, and 5 is the number of fingers on a hand, and it was a giant hand that wrote on the wall that Belshazzar's days as king of Babylon were numbered, just like the world's days are numbered, and since Jesus spoke in parables, you should just shut up and take my word for it since it is so obviously biblical.

Also I accidentally overlooked 40 days (which is biblical), then 30 days (which is an even month), and 28 days (which is 4 weeks), so I had to get back on track somehow. So we'll just ignore that.

Are you wondering what the heck I'm going on about? Harold Camping is a Christian radio teacher based in California, who has become notorious for predicting the end of the world. First it was going to happen in September 1994. When that didn't pan out, Camping claimed he had corrected his calculations and it was actually going to be in 1995. The outcome was predictable. Meanwhile, he started teaching that the Holy Spirit had departed from organized churches, and that the only true believers were the ones who stayed at home and listened to him on his radio station, Family Radio.

While Camping's earlier prognostications pretty much slipped under the radar (apart from an unfortunate appearance on the Larry King Show), he has now become infamous for his latest prediction: the Rapture will take place on May 21, 2011, with the end of the world to follow in October. His notoriety this time around is largely due to his followers, now unencumbered with churches, spreading his gospel in public and on social media, which of course did not exist back in 1994. (The commercialization of the Internet is probably the one thing most responsible for levelling the playing field and giving crackpots an equal voice amongst the sane.)

But a .000 batting average predicting the end of the world hasn't stopped his most devoted followers from preaching his gospel of the coming judgment by renting billboards, handing out tracts, and plastering tacky signage all over their recreational vehicles. One billboard even encourages you to "Save the Date!" That's right, you should mark the end of the world on your calendar, just like Fred and Nancy's wedding. (Which you will not be attending after all, as it is unfortunately on May 28th.)

How does Harold Camping come up with this crap? It defies description, but is basically an extreme form of allegorization that involves a lot of number-crunching. Since, as he argues, "Jesus spoke in parables," apparently that means that all the normal rules of hermeneutics are out the window, and he can interpret the Bible to say whatever he wants. I call him "Captain Camping" for his superpowered ability to twist the Scriptures with his bare hands. I've posted previously about the oddball way he arrives at his conclusions. James Swan also posted yesterday on Alpha and Omega Ministries' blog about the apparent backstory behind Camping's "depart out" teachings concerning the churches.

Of course, I have complete confidence that if indeed the Rapture were to happen on May 21, it has nothing to do with the correctness of Captain Camping's convoluted calculations. And if God indeed has the sense of humour that he is so often credited with, I'd like to think that he'd already have nudged the date a few years down the road anyway, just to spite old fools who don't know when to keep their mouths shut.

And now, presenting what may very well be the stupidest question ever...

Just tweeted this evening by a self-described "prochoice Christian":

If chastity and abstinence works [sic], where did Jesus come from?

No, seriously.

You need a license to drive and own a gun, but anyone with a computer can use the Internet. Explain that.

A fresh case study in KJV-only dishonesty

A few years ago, I wrote a post about the history of my exposure to KJV-onlyism: especially the way I have seen the movement's nonsensical claims, when left unchecked, tend to escalate into greater heights of foolishness.

This post generated about 9 or 10 comments. For a relatively low-traffic blog such as mine, that's a pretty decent number. Of course, being a low-traffic blog, once a post disappears from my front page, by rights it's pretty much forgotten, even by me.

Nonetheless, every so often a new comment will pop up on even a 3-and-a-half-year-old post like that one. This happened about two weeks ago, when a poster calling himself/herself "KT" (I assume the latter) wrote:

Oh just thought someone might like to know that in the book The Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft (I know I shouldn't have it...) the Hermes Club is noted and it was clearly occultic through and through and praised in this secular book. W & H [i.e. B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort] were members according to your article. I don't think from the looks of things they were doing too much stuff on Greek and Roman culture in this club!!!

The second edition of The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft¹ is available from Amazon.com and has a limited preview of the contents available. While it did not include any pages from the H's, it did at least have the complete index, so I was able to look up any references to the Hermes Club. There were none, although there are multiple references to Hermes, Hermes Trimestigus, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This aroused my suspicion. Nonetheless, that didn't mean the book said nothing about the Hermes Club, only that it hadn't been indexed.

A quick check of the local public library's online catalogue confirmed that it holds both the first and second editions of The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, so I requested both, and waited for them to be transferred to my local branch. I had the opportunity yesterday to sit down with these volumes and inspect them for myself.

I wasn't surprised with the results. Neither edition mentions the Hermes Club of which B. F. Westcott was a member while an undergraduate. There are multiple mentions of the Greek god Hermes, of course, usually in an entry on some aspect of Greek pagan mythology: not at all surprising in a book on this subject matter. But how can The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft note that it was "clearly occultic and praised through and through" if it doesn't mention it at all?

The following excerpt, however, is notable information from the entry on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which may shed some light on how KJV zealots think:

The key founder of the Golden Dawn was Dr. William Wynn Westcott, a London coroner and a Rosicrucian. In 1887 Westcott obtained part of a manuscript written in brown-ink cipher from the Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, a Mason. The manuscript appeared to be old but probably was not. From his Hermetic knowledge, Westcott was able to decipher the manuscript and discovered it concerned fragments of rituals for the "Golden Dawn," an unknown organization that apparently admitted both men and women.

Westcott asked an occultist friend, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, to flesh out the fragments into full-scale rituals. Some papers evidently were forged to give the "Golden Dawn" authenticity and a history. It was said to be an old German occult order. Westcott produced papers that showed he had been given a charter to set up an independent lodge in England. The Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was established in 1888, with Westcott, Mathers, and Dr. W. R. Woodman, Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian Society of Anglia, as the three Chiefs. The secret society quickly caught on, and 315 initiations took place during the society's heyday, from 1888 to 1896.²

Well, there you go. Guiley says nothing about the Hermes Club co-founded by Brooke Foss Westcott, but it has plenty to say about the Hermetic Order co-founded by William Wynn Westcott. Obviously our friend KT is not telling the truth. Whether she is lying, or reporting unreliably because of sloppy reading, I leave to the Loyal Readers to decide for themselves.

But KT is merely following in the footsteps of KJV-only high priestess Gail Riplinger, who never met a fact she couldn't distort. Gail the Ripper also cannot keep her Westcotts straight. She attempts to connect B. F. Westcott with occultic practices, writing: "Westcott took the wand and relayed it into the 20th century."³ In a lengthy footnote, she then explains how

[t]he articles on Hermetic doctrine in Blavatsky's Theosophical Dictionary "were contributed at the special request of H. P. B. by Brother W. W. Westcott." She mentions B. F. Westcott, the subject of this last chapter, several times in her other books. B. .F. Westcott's son points out that his father's signature was almost always read as W., not B., preceding his last name. . . . The similar identity of these two is not a matter of historical record.

Only at the end of this footnote (and never in the main body of the text) does Riplinger admit:

The connection between B. F. Westcott and the activities attributed to the possible allonym W. W. Westcott are speculation on my part.⁴

Well, there you have it. In the alternate universe where KJV-onlyists spend their waking hours, similar means same. What matters is not factual accuracy, but how well a factoid supports KJV-onlyism. Supporting the system trumps integrity. So what if the lives of Brooke Foss and William Wynn Westcott are well known, and there's no way they are the same person. Hey, close enough.

So what was the Hermes Club? If we are to believe Riplinger, it was an occultic secret society, as she writes in a section titled "Hermes: Alias 'Satan'":

As a Cambridge undergraduate, Westcott organized a club and chose for its name "Hermes." the designation is derived from "the god of magic . . . and occult wisdom, the conductor of Souls [sic] to Hades . . . Lord of Death . . . cunning and trickery." . . .

Author of the Occult Underground cites Hermes as the entry point of scholars and philosophers into the occult. Westcott's "Hermes" club met weekly for three years from 1845-1848, discussing such topics as, the "Funeral Ceremonies of the Romans," "The Eleatic School of Philosophers," "The Mythology of Homeric Poems," "the Theramines" [sic] and numerous undisclosed subjects.⁵

Sounds spooky, until we realize that Riplinger is trumping up charges again. All too frequently, reality is quite boring, which is why we need conspiracy theorists to invent a more interesting one. Riplinger frequently cites the biography of Westcott written by his son - usually wildly inaccurately, but I assume she at least takes it seriously as a reliable source. Here is what Arthur Westcott has to say about the Hermes Club:

Westcott's most intimate friends during his career as an undergraduate were J. Llewelyn Davies, C. B. Scott, and David J. Vaughan. These four, together with W. C. Bromhead, J. E. B. Mayor, and J. C. Wright, were the original members of an essay-reading club, which was started in May 1845, under the name of "The Philological Society." At a later date the society took the name of "Hermes." The society met on Saturday evenings in one or other of the members' rooms, when a paper was read, and a discussion, not infrequently somewhat discursive, ensued. The following were the subjects of papers read by my father: - The Lydian Order of the Etruscans; The Nominative Absolute; The Roman Games of (or at) Ball; The so-called Aoristic Use of the Perfect in Latin; The Funeral Ceremonies of the Romans; The Eleatic School of Philosophy; The Mythology of the Homeric Poems; The Theology of Aristotle; Theramenes." . . .

At times the philosophic gravity relaxed, as witnesses the following entry in the minute-book under date 8th May 1848: "Mr. Vaughan having retired to his rooms, and Mr. Davies within himself, the rest of the society revived the ludus trigonalis [i.e. a Roman ball game], and kept it up for some time with great hilarity." Presumably Westcott took his share in this hilarious revival, though it did not form part of the discussion on his paper concerning Roman Games of (or at) Ball. . . .

The last recorded meeting of the society took place on 15th May 1848. . . . Whether the society survived to discuss the character of Philopœmen or not is not apparent. Probably not, for the four faithful members of the club had now graduated. There is an entry in the minute-book which indicates that in March the end was near. Above the initials B. F. W. occur these words: "Let me here offer my heartfelt tribute to a society from which I have derived great pleasure, and, I trust, the deepest good - not least under the feelings of today." The subject that evening had been "The Condition of Women at Rome"; but the discussion had wandered over a wide field, and, in its latest stages, was concerned with a comparison of Plato and Aristotle.⁶

Well, that's a lot less spooky. The Hermes Club was simply an essay-reading club, formed by some schoolmates, to discuss topics of interest to classics students. When most of them had graduated, the group dissolved. Of course, essays on Roman ball games and Latin verb tenses don't quite convey her negative sentiments, so she simply omits them from her citation.

Riplinger's latest tree-slaughtering missive, Hazardous Materials, promises more of the same. The Highland Host has been reading it (under duress, I am certain) and posting some of his impressions. In his latest, he accurately notes that Riplinger's usual modus operandi is simply to cast her enemies in as bad a light as possible. The general thrust of this new book appears to be to try and discredit any study of the original biblical languages. The most recent issue of the Riplinger Report, her email newsletter, touts HazMat thusly:

Learn about the corrupt source of new versions and the problems with: . . . Greek-English Lexicons by Moulton, Thayer, Danker, and Liddell. . . .

All Greek-English New Testament lexicons plagiarize the first Greek-English lexicon written by Scot and Liddell. He [sic] harbored the pedophile author of Alice in Wonderland (who yet today remains a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case). This lexicographer permitted him to take improper photographs of his daughter Alice, for whom he [sic] named the famous child's story.

I'll leave the historical inaccuracies regarding the relationship between Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, Alice Pleasance Liddell, and her father Henry Liddell to others. I shall pause only to snigger that Riplinger actually takes the claims that Dodgson was Jack the Ripper seriously. I do wonder why she sees the need to discredit Liddell and Scott, as this is the standard lexicon of classical Greek, not the koine dialect of the Bible. Perhaps she feels that studying Aeschylus in the original is just as fruitless. (I wonder which translation of Seven Against Thebes is the inspired one?) But go back up to my citation of the Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, and note that W. W. Westcott consulted with a Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

Spooky. Is there a relationship? Can Riplinger trump one up quickly enough for her next book?

Hey, close enough.

Footnotes

¹ Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft (New York: Facts on File, Checkmark, 1989).

² Ibid., 156.

³ G. A.  Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions (Munroe Falls, OH: AV Publications, 1993). I do not own a paper copy of this work. Shortly after its publication, and presumably with the approval of the author, a KJV-onlyist fan of Riplinger made an electronic copy of NABV available on his bulletin-board system, which was active for most of the 1990s. Any page numbers I refer to therefore correspond to the electronic copy, and I will also include a chapter number to assist in locating the source of the citation. This quotation appeared on page 852 (in Chapter 30).

Any KJV-onlyist feeling I should cite a more authoritative edition of NABV is invited to remedy the situation, at his expense.

⁴ Ibid., 866-68 n. 128.

⁵ Ibid., 809-10 (chapter 30).

⁶ Arthur Westcott, Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, vol. 1 (London: MacMillan, 1903), 46-48.

More 9/11 Truther Science! revealed

Over the past few years, I've seen a whole bunch of Science! used by the 9/11 "truth" movement to prove that there is no possible way a plane crash and the resulting fires could have caused the collapse of steel-framed skyscrapers such as the World Trade Center. These would-be CSIs have modeled the twin towers with such accurate representations as chicken wire and paving slabs, stacking desk trays, and Microsoft Flight Simulator-generated videos.

But this guy tops them all with his Scientific! prowess:

I'm no materials engineer, but I can find at least three holes with this experiement:

• Each tower of the World Trade Center was a massive, load-bearing structure of about a quarter of a million tons. A frying pan is, well, a frying pan - and it needs at least a few strips of bacon in it before it can be considered "load-bearing" in any sense.
• If that pan is like any other stovetop frying pan I've seen, it's actually aluminum, not steel.
• But assuming for the sake of argument that it is steel, notice how at about 3:45 he puts it back on the element and it rocks. I thought they manufactured frying pans flat-bottomed. Looks like fire can deform steel, after all.

Sometimes these Truthers are so out in left field with their Science!, you have to wonder whether they're some sort of pardody. Unfortunately for our educational system, this one appears to be completely earnest.

(H/T: the tireless Screw Loose Change.)

Toys for Tyrants?

There are certain places around the world that I am convinced are loci of all sorts of foolishness. Berkeley, California comes to mind as the capital of hippy-dippy weirdness, as do Idaho and Michigan, home of various "militias" and "survivalists." Another such locus is Austin Texas. It earns its wings as a Nexus of Nuttiness for housing not one, but two high-profile nuts.

One nut is Texe Marrs, who never encountered anything that wasn't a grand conspiracy meant to usher in the New World Order^TM. (For example, Marrs has actually argued that vaccinations are a ruse to inject citizens with mind-control nanobots to be controlled by low-frequency transmissions from giant dish antennas disguised as World Cup soccer stadiums. No, you weren't dreaming that you read that.)

The other nut is, of course, talk-show host Alex Jones. Like Marrs, Jones is no stranger to the grand-scale conspiracy theories - he pretty much spearheads the whole 9/11 "truth" movement, after all - but if a Marrs theory is a buffet table of global intrigue, Jones seems to prefer his conspiracies portioned out in little snacks like dim sum.

Here is an example from Friday's program. Alex tries to reveal the true purpose of the Marines' Toys for Tots program, which is to "acclimate the public" to seeing armed soldiers in the streets of the New World Order^TM:

I have to hand it to the Marine sergeant he spoke to: despite all of Jones' attempts to bait him with multiple items of conspiracy wingnuttery, he didn't bite, and managed to plug Toys for Tots about four or five times. (Talk about keeping cool under fire!)

Jones' broader argument appears to be that frequent appearances of military personnel in uniform: in schools, at sporting events, doing Toys for Tots, and so forth, is nothing but a "brainwashing" campaign intended to get the public used to seeing the military in the streets. After the clip posted to YouTube, Jones intones, "The troops bring you toys," in a nasal, sarcastic tone, as though Marines had never collected toys for children before. Toys for Tots began in 1947 and went national a year later. The program has been going on for 60 years, so the claims made in the program that seeing uniformed military personnel in public is unusual, just don't hold water. They should be at least as familiar as a bell-ringing Sally Ann volunteer. Besides, who doesn't know at least one soldier?

Have a woo-woo Christmas and a whackadoo New Year.

Celebrating 16 years of kookiness

My last entry a few days ago got me thinking about all the various bizarre radio personalities I have listened to over the years, particularly those that have come and gone. I can still remember the first day that I sat down with a shortwave radio and heard conspiracy theorists for the first time: January 20, 1992. My roommate had just brought his ham radio from home and had been playing with it, and I wanted to see what else I could hear. After scanning the dials and hearing some foreign-language broadcasting and a few hams (naturally talking about their equipment and little else), I accidentally came across the late-night broadcast on WWCR at 7.435 MHz. And the rest was history.

A little disclaimer is probably necessary at this point. For me, conspiracy theory is almost strictly entertainment. Naturally, I believe there are such things as conspiracies, which occur every time two or more people agree to do something illegal. But conspiracy theory, on the other hand, is a worldview in which no major events happen by accident or outside the control of a shadowy group of powerful people. This I reject. However, continual listening to conspiracy radio and other kookery has had a couple of side benefits. First, it has sharpened my critical thinking skills. When someone like Alex Jones, for example, reports that Ann Coulter has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, it is important to remember that Jones habitually blows mundane facts right out of proportion. The truth is that Coulter did say so on Hannity & Colmes, but her skill with words doesn't come out nearly as well on live television as it does in writing, and she has since backtracked on that statement. This hasn't stopped Alex Jones from claiming that The Powers That Be have already selected Clinton as the winner. Second, it made me realize (a few years before learning it in political science class) that newsgathering organizations are as much about agenda-setting as they are about merely "reporting the news"; they have other, competing interests such as political axes to grind, ratings, or advertising dollars, that affect what stories are reported, and how. (And let's not forget how all the major networks have been caught red-handed at some time manufacturing the news!)

So without further ado, here are the most significant "go-to" guys that I have listened to over the last 16 years for my nightly fix of nuttiness.

• Tom Valentine was the very first person I ever heard on shortwave, apart from foreign-language and amateur broadcasts. He used to have a program called "Radio Free America" that ran from 10-midnight EST every weekday on WWCR. Although the first broadcast I heard was fairly mundane (likely about the presidential primaries then under way in 1992), it wasn't long before the bizarre nature of American commercial shortwave manifested itself: bizarre financial conspiracy theories by anti-Semitic economist Eustace Mullins, Ruby Ridge, the Waco seige, the Bilderbergers, alternative "medicine" - and, on Friday nights, junk science. "Radio Free America" was sponsored by Liberty Lobby, an organization headed by professional Jew-hater Willis Carto, and so Jewish conspiracy theories (including the so-called "Jewish tax" on kosher food) featured prominently. The most memorable program I heard was a Friday night interview about the Philadelphia Experiment, an apocryphal military project intended to render naval ships invisible that supposedly resulted in some rather horrific effects. While Valentine was generally ready to believe anything someone told him, as long as it contradicted the mainstream, the phone calls coming in that night about time travellers and similar phenomena were too much even for him. In the summer of 1993, Valentine was followed by, and he had an ongoing feud with,
• William Cooper. For a while in 1992 and early 1993, "Radio Free America" was followed at midnight by "The Hour of the Time," hosted by one Milton William Cooper. This program was the perfect midnight listening: it began with an air-raid siren, a deep voice announcing that "It is the Hour of the Time. Lights out for the curfew of your body, soul and mind," then marching feet, dogs barking, and women screaming. The program itself consisted of an hour-long monologue by the creepy-sounding Cooper on the subject of the day. The first time I heard this program, he was explaining the Illuminati code words in the Bette Midler song "The Rose."¹ Later he would also decode the occult imagery in Disney fare such as the Lion King. He and Tom Valentine had an ongoing feud at one point, with Cooper accusing Valentine of being a Freemason or Illuminist (based on a book Valentine had written about pyramidology and his supposed affiliation with an occult organization called the Stelle Group); Valentine, in return, accused Cooper of being a CIA disinformation agent. William Cooper was probably the most paranoid personality I have ever heard of. He died in 2001 in a hail of police bullets rather than be arrested, after he had threatened a passer-by with a handgun. But before that, after his radio program became inconvenient to listen to, I had started listening heavily to
• Brother Stair. R. G. Stair, the "Last Day Prophet of God," was actually one of the first personalities I ever heard on shortwave - again, on that first night, where his program came on at 2 am weeknights, after Valentine, some "prayer line" program, and low-rent Gene Scott wannabe E. C. Fulcher. In those days, Prophet Stair's program was a pre-recorded half hour, rather than the 24/7 broadcasting he would later do. But what he lacked in quantity, he made up for in intensity: the leather-lunged "prophet" would scream at the top of his lungs about the evils of women in short hair, women in pants, going to church on Sunday, living in cities, watching television, and whatever else struck him as wrong. Theologically he was a mess of Seventh-day Adventism, Branhamism, Arminian Holiness and hyper-Calvinism (no, really!), King James Onlyism, and various other incompatible belief systems. Stair would frequently proclaim that The End Is Nigh thanks to some astronomical phenomenon in the news, such as comets Hale-Bopp or Shoemaker-Levy. But he really went off the deep end in about 2002, when he got on the "Planet X" bandwagon, declaring The End Is Nigh because Planet X would cross Earth's orbit and flip the planet on its axis in May 2003. Whoops, nice try there, "Prophet." Not long after this, Stair got in trouble with the police because he couldn't keep his hands off the young ladies on his compound, and went to jail. Since reruns were boring, I moved on to
• Texe Marrs. Texe cashes in on his credibility as a former Air Force officer, university lecturer, and published author (his book Dark Secrets of the New Age was a Christian bestseller in 1988) to promote blithering nonsense in the name of Christianity. I like to quote what Phil Johnson said about him in his famous bookmarks: he never met a conspiracy he didn't like. Over the years Marrs has bought into the usual banking/New World Order/Illuminati conspiracies, but he also was banging the "Planet X" drum (which gave him yet another opportunity to hawk stored food, which no doubt had been taking up unnecessary space in a warehouse since Y2K) and other assorted nuttery. To give you an idea just how out to lunch Marrs is: in 2002 he claimed that the numerous World Cup soccer stadiums being erected were really giant antennas in disguise. Their purpose was to transmit instructions, via extremely low frequency (ELF) radio waves, to nanobots - injected into unsuspecting citizens who thought they were getting a vaccine - which would then proceed to kill the subject or control his mind. No, really: he meant this seriously.² Anyhow, my current address has lousy shortwave reception, so now I listen to
• Alex Jones. I had heard Jones on and off in the years prior to 9/11. His use of the Imperial March as theme music was unmistakable. In recent years, however, he has risen to become the King of Konspiracy Kooks thanks to his spearheading of the so-called 9/11 "truth" movement. His Hoarseness' favourite schtick is "bullhorning": like some sort of 20th-century Don Quixote, he uses an electric megaphone to tilt against the windmills of the New World Order, the 9/11 "inside job," and the extermination of 80% of the world's population so that the global elite can have life-extension technology all to themselves. In June 2006, he was detained by Customs in the Ottawa airport when he came to bullhorn the meeting of the Bilderberg group; in all fairness to Jones, he hadn't done anything wrong and being a raving lunatic isn't a crime.

I'm sure I could talk in depth about some of the other nuts that have entertained me over the years: Chuck Harder, Pete Peters, "Bo" Gritz, Ted Gunderson, Art Bell, David J. Smith, and Dave VonKleist and Joyce Riley, just to name a few. But the above are the true crème de la crème of kook radio: the ones I would give 4/4 black helicopters.

Footnotes

¹ Some say love, it is a footnote: Coincidentally, the late Aaron Russo, who produced the movie The Rose, was a tax-protesting conspiracy theorist himself: shortly before he died, he produced a "documentary" titled America: From Freedom to Fascism.

² Extremely Low Footnote: If you thought that a former Air Force officer and assistant professor of aerospace studies should have known that there is no way that a nanobot could receive ELF transmissions (where would it put the required miles-long antenna?), well, now you know better.