Conspiracy Theories – Page 4

Those Crazy Creationists

2014-07-23 2014-07-23 Conspiracy Theories / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

I know, I know, it’s the proverbial fish in a barrel when you critique creationists. They are just so easy to mock. But how can you help yourself when someone like Ken Ham opens his mouth in public? The media just love to pounce all over him. He must take his lessons in PR from Ann Coulter. And like with Ann, the controversy probably helps sell his books. (And, from what I see, selling books is really what Ken is all about. But that’s not the point of this post.)* Ken’s latest foray into looniness – a territory he has already explored well ……… click below for more ↓

Chemtrails: yet more conspiracy claptrap

2014-07-21 2014-07-21 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery5 Comments

A bit of simple math was used to debunk the chemtrail nonsense conspiracy recently. Over at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’s website there’s a great piece explaining why there simply aren’t enough pilots, planes or chemicals for the chemtrail silliness to be true: A typical crop duster might use seven ounces of agent diluted in seven gallons of water to cover one acre of land. Chemtrail “people dusters” would use a similar concentration to cover the entire United States, just to be safe. For 2.38 billion acres of land, the pilots would then need—for just one week of spraying—120 billion ……… click below for more ↓

Sometimes Our Opinions Just Don’t Matter

2014-05-09 2024-07-12 Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

The headline for this piece comes from a recent article in Time Magazine: “Dear CNN: Sometimes Our Opinions Just Don’t Matter.” The article isn’t – as you might have thought – about local bloggers. It’s about critical thinking. Or rather, the lack of it, on CNN’s part.The lack of it on the part of local bloggers I’ll save for another day. CNN has been running almost non-stop coverage of the plane’s disappearance, repeating in endless loops the same, paltry information they have, then trying to spin that into yet another story. It’s obsessed with the disappearance, to the point where ……… click below for more ↓

The dangerous idiocy of the anti-vax movement

2014-04-08 2014-04-08 Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology2 Comments

Measles is on the rise in Canada. There have already been many cases in 2014: in PEI, London, Ottawa, southern Alberta, Regina, Qu’Apelle, Calgary, Fraser Valley (320 cases), Hamilton, Halton, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Nanaimo and other locations. Eleven cases in Ontario this year alone. Nine in Alberta. That ancient, deadly foe we recently believed we had conquered, is coming back. And it’s going to kill children again, this time with the complicity of their parents. Fifty years ago, science found the cure and made a vaccine for it. In 2000, the United States optimistically declared ongoing measles transmission had been ……… click below for more ↓

Conspiracy Theories: 2014 Update

2014-02-28 2014-02-28 Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Municipal Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

It’s time to update a piece I wrote in December, 2012, outlining the secret deals, backroom negotiations and “barbecue politics” that our council has been involved in since that date, more than a year ago. So here comes the update, the emperor without his clothes: Secret meetings: none Backroom negotiations: none Barbecue deals: none Sorry, I know this is a disappointment to local conspiracy theorists and bloggers, coming hard on the failure of the world to end as per the Mayan Calendar, or the failure of any number of predicted ends of the world, coupled with the lack of any ……… click below for more ↓

Debunking the Adam Bridge

2014-02-01 2014-02-01 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery6 Comments

A story popped up on the internet in late 2013, recycled in early 2014, claiming “NASA Images Find 1.7 Million Year Old Man-Made Bridge.” Claptrap. It’s not a bridge. It’s simply a natural tombolo: “a deposition landform in which an island is attached to the mainland by a narrow piece of land such as a spit or bar.” The conspiracy theorists and some religious fundamentalists disagree. It’s been called the Adam bridge, the Rama, Sethu (also Rama Setu – setu is Sanskrit for bridge), Ramar and the Hanuman bridge, and Setubandhanam. According to the legends in the Ramayana, ……… click below for more ↓

Pyramids in the Ice: Hoax

2013-12-04 2013-12-04 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

What is it about pyramids that excites the imagination? Their shape? Their size? Height? Age? The complexities and difficulties in their building? Or the sheer grandeur of them? And what is it about them that get the cranks and conspiracy theorists so fired up? What is it about these constructions that convince some folks they’re made by – or for – aliens? Or that there’s some bizarre coverup by governments to keep people from knowing the “truth” about them? This week I noticed some odd search terms showing up in my stats page: “antarctica” and “pyramids” in the same line. ……… click below for more ↓

Anti-Intellectualism: The New Elitism

2013-10-27 2013-10-27 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Science & Technology11 Comments

There’s a growing – and disturbing – trend in modern culture: anti-intellectual elitism. The dismissal of art, science, culture, philosophy, of rhetoric and debate, of literature and poetry, and their replacement by entertainment, spectacle, self-righteous self ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. These are usually followed by vituperative ridicule and angry caterwauling when anyone challenges the populist ideals or ideologies. As if having a brain, as if having any aspirations to culture, to art, to learning – or worse, to science – was an evil, malicious thing that must be stomped upon. As if the literati were plotting world domination by quoting ……… click below for more ↓

Why do so few Canadians get a flu shot?

2013-10-10 2013-10-10 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Internet & Social Media / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

That’s the headline for a recent Toronto Star story. It suggests that as few as one third of Canadians get a flu vaccine, and in some place the number may be as low as 20 percent. This despite Ontario having the world’s first universal free flu shot program, introduced in 2000. The 2013-14 vaccine is on its way to doctors’ offices now. It’s also available at pharmacists’ offices. It’s free, easily accessible, it prevents and helps stop the spread of many kinds of influenza, it can save the life of anyone at risk – so why don’t people get one? ……… click below for more ↓

Chemtrails redux: the attack of the tin-foil hat brigade

2013-09-21 2016-11-18 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

My earlier post on the nonsensical chemtrail conspiracy has generated quite a lot of activity recently (more than 1,000 views in a few days – thanks!). So much so that I decided to look online again to see why – had this silliness abated? Were people waking up and laughing at their former craziness? Or was it spreading more among the hard-of-thinking and the anti-science crowd? Sadly, it seems the latter is the case. And after a bit of research, I became deeply distressed that it seems to be spreading rapidly. Or maybe the overall number of gullibles is simply ……… click below for more ↓

$35 Million Costs Confirmed in Report

2013-09-17 2014-10-09 Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Municipal Politics4 Comments

I was told recently that the $35 million projected capital costs for the Central Park redevelopment had been called a “red herring.” That’s verifiably untrue. The actual total amount shown in the final report is $35,251,965.11. This isn’t a made up number, an inflated number or an imaginary number. It isn’t a council number, either. In fact the two council PRC representatives did not even attend those steering committee meetings that came up with that figure. Thirty-five million dollars is what the steering committee calculated and approved themselves, working in conjunction with several consultants, planners, architects and engineers over more ……… click below for more ↓

Casinos redux

2013-07-12 2013-07-12 Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Municipal Politics / Provincial PoliticsOne Comment

First let’s clarify the terms. A “casino” was never really in the discussion, although just about everyone used that term. What the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) offered was a “gaming facility” as they euphemistically called it. A gambling joint, others said. It was to be a warehouse-like, windowless building with up to 300 slot machines. No keno, no gaming tables for poker or blackjack, no roulette. Up to (and maybe less than) 300 slot machines. No guarantees on the number, just up to 300. The OLG decides how many: not the town, not the operator. The town can’t ……… click below for more ↓

Racism and the US Civil Rights movement retold

2013-07-07 2016-06-12 Conspiracy Theories / Media Issues / Personal Reminiscences / US Politics3 Comments

As I read through Rick Perlstein’s book, Nixonland, about American politics and life in the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement and the reaction to it by white Americans, the narrative astounds me. Such anger, such violence. Such sadness. It seems like such an alien place, dystopian, almost fictional, like an Orwellian novel. I was, it seems from my reading, not really aware, not fully cognizant of just how bad it was. But then, it looks eerily familiar – some of the photos look just like those taken during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Am I merely juxtaposing my ……… click below for more ↓

The CAO Conspiracies

2013-07-04 2015-06-07 Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Humour & Satire / Municipal PoliticsOne Comment

Collingwood has appointed an interim CAO, John Brown, former city manager of Brantford, St. John’s and Oshawa, to help the town’s administration and governance during the interim while we search for a full-time CAO. This will, of course, send the bloggers into a frothing tizzy of frenetic accusations and conspiracy theories. So to save them the effort of having to explain this, I have written some plausible conspiracy theories for them to consider for their own use: 1. It’s actually Paul Bonwick, cleverly disguised by cosmetic surgery to look shorter, older and bald. Paul was last seen boarding a plane to the ……… click below for more ↓