Behold
Glenn Harlan Reynolds' evidentiary standards: At
USA Today, he deduces a level of PR damage to the government due to the IRS "scandal" (i.e., the taxmen having the nerve to review
Tea Party claims that they weren't political organizations) from the findings of "a tax symposium at Pepperdine Law School." Then he speculates that this directly affects how the American People think about the NSA revelations, which apparently would have been perfectly acceptable to them otherwise. (Of course the large number of commentators who switched from
pro-surveillance to anti-surveillance around January 20, 2009 would have had nothing to do with it.) Then:
Spend a little while on Twitter or in Internet comment sections and you'll see a significant number of people who think that the NSA may have been relaying intelligence about the Mitt Romney campaign to Obama operatives, or that Chief Justice John Roberts' sudden about-face in the Obamacare case might have been driven by some sort of NSA-facilitated blackmail.
Unfortunately there's no way to compare this "significant number of people" to the percentage of the population who believe in flying saucers, but I'll bet it's roughly equivalent.
A year ago, these kinds of comments would have been dismissable as paranoid conspiracy theory.
And to normal people they still are. But normal people are not the Perfesser's audience:
But now, while I still don't think they're true, they're no longer obviously crazy. And that's Obama's legacy: a government that makes paranoid conspiracy theories seem possibly sane.
To recap, some people believe crazy shit because Obama has made it believable, and the proof is the crazy shit some people have believed all along. It's a perfect loop of bullshit. Like Salieri with the mediocrities at the end of
Amadeus, the Perfesser is absolving the wingnuts. Did you believe in
birtherism? The
Whitey Tape? The Hillary Clinton
constitutional crisis? That
Sarkozy called Obama nuts? That Obama campaign workers
beat up Ashley Todd? That Obama
apologized for World War II? Wrote a
treasonous college thesis? Wanted to
make veterans kill themselves? Bill Ayers
wrote his book? That he's a
Mooslim, or a
Muslin? Or a
Socialist? And/or a
Fascist (indeed,
Hitler)?
Whatever total nonsense you peddled, it's okay -- because Obama. Now, on to the next wave of hearings over the people the Kenyan Pretender murdered at Benghazi!
Instacracker should open up a comments section and see what a significant number of people think of the 'Cracker.
ReplyDeleteA "significant number of people" believe Bush was complicit in the destruction of the Twin Towers. I guess that's "no longer crazy," either.
ReplyDeleteAnd what was that Iraq war about anyway? Talk about fodder for conspiracy theories.
I'll bet it ends up like the NRO disqus section, wherein people such as meself are BEING CENSORED and thus having our 1ST AMENDMENT RIGHTS taken away!!1!
ReplyDelete~
"while I still don't think they're true, they're no longer obviously crazy"
ReplyDeleteThis is what they call moving the Overton window far enough to the right that no one can see you're not wearing clothes
A couple months ago, the Times had a long article about a possible murder in Florida that had been deemed a suicide. The usual bullshit was present: no reason for suicide, overheard argument, cop boyfriend, gun held upside down and fired several times at her head before she 'shot' herself successfully, lots of identical-looking white cops saying white cop boyfriend would never do such things to his girlfriend because he loved her, etc. .
ReplyDeleteBut there was a tiny tidbit in the article that kind of goes back to the conservative source-code...the coroner who happily ruled that the death was a suicide was also a big-time wingnut, known for his forensic theories about how Ron Brown was really assassinated and then the plane crash was just a cover-up or something.
I think this is the model for the Reynolds of the world. There's just basically no way you could be more of a white male conservative than by using your power to cover up an actual crime and then building up a bullshit fantasy world where you are surrounded by people doing the same. I don't know if Reynolds likes to snoop on his neighbors, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's staring at his computer at 3 a.m., watching surveillance footage from his hidden cameras, meanwhile spinning theories about how Obama is out to get him.
He's got the pulse of America by reading Twitter and Internet comment sections. Yes, he's nuts.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of flying saucers, I've noticed that in the age of ubiquitous smart phones with cameras, sighting have gone down to virtually nothing. What's with that?
Unfortunately there's no way to compare "a significant number of people" to the percentage of the population who believe in flying saucers, but I'll bet it's roughly equivalent.
ReplyDeleteOk Roy that's scary because http://www.livescience.com/21216-americans-ufo-belief.html
:)
So bullshit is topologically equivalent to a Möbius strip? I'm betting it's more lke a Klein bottle.
ReplyDeleteThat's because they're all looking at their phones and not paying attention to what's around them, I tell you. The aliens probably seeded the internet with cute cat videos to distract everyone from their invasion.
ReplyDeleteThey still pop up. A few months ago, a video of a "strange light" floating over on the Westbank here in New Orleans, and people online were convinced it was proof of UFOs. What it was was a prayer lantern, one of those things that float up due to heat convection and offered to dead loved ones. New Orleans has a large Southeast Asian community, and that's what that blurry, slow-but-erratically moving light was. In Athens, Ga, just after I moved away, it was fireworks. On the Fourth of July. I swear to God.
ReplyDeleteThere's a significant community of people that believe no one was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last year, and that the whole thing was staged by Obama in order to steal their guns. These patriotic Americans feel like they saved the republic by shitting all over the parents who lost their children.
ReplyDeleteSo he's Gladys Kravitz then, is what you're saying.
ReplyDeleteSpend a little while on Twitter or in Internet comment sections
ReplyDeleteand you'll start praying for an asteroid. Unless you're the Perfesser, in which case you'll use it as material for a column.
One conspiracy theory that has actually burgeoned in the age of cell phone cameras is people taking pictures of jet condensation trails and normal clouds and somehow thinking it's a vast conspiracy to poison us all.
ReplyDeleteOr moving it downward so no one can see your tinfoil hat.
ReplyDeleteI should have specified claims of seeing actual spaceships; if they existed, then we'd have the pics.
ReplyDeleteAh, that explains it. thanks.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I attended a reunion of a bunch of Yalies, which climaxes in many of them filling balloons with helium, affixing them to hunks of French bread, planting a candle in each hunk, lighting it, and sending the result floating off across the valley. It was v. serene and beautiful, all the more so when you realized that, sooner or later, the balloon would pop, and some schmuck on the ground would think he (or she) was being attacked by UFO's dropping French bread on them.
ReplyDeleteOnce you get the bullshit in, it's impossible to wash it out.
ReplyDeleteI spend a bit of time looking at the monkeys on conspiracy theory boards and UFO sites because I hate myself and want to torture my soul, but trust me, the lack of evidence acquired by cell phones and posted on Instagram hasn't stopped them. They've come up with various excuses, from quantum mechanics to Obama.
ReplyDeleteShorter Perfesser: What does it MEAN, that paranoid conspiracy theories have proliferated during Obama's tenure in office?
ReplyDeleteAnswer: It means, Glenn, that the Internet has enabled the usual lumpen, mal pensant morons available in any society, to find each other, reinforce each other, and disseminate their lunacy far and wide--aided and abetted by career liars and bullshit purveyors such as yourself.
A further thought, sorry. You've got something with specifying actual recognizable spaceships. Frankly, if an advanced civilization travelled bill-yuns and biiiiiilll-yuns of light years to observe and/or eat us, I'd think they'd put a little more effort into looking like something other than a vague, blurry, unidentifiable thing. And if they're trying to hide, they're obviously stupid and not to be concerned with.
ReplyDeleteOn Freerepublic, the Birthers are wondering if Obama killed the woman who worked at the Hawaii Department of Health and signed off on his birth certificate -- 700+ comments:
ReplyDelete☞ LINK
FYI she died of a heart attack when the engine of the small plane she was in failed and the plane went down in the water.
Oh god, they're not wearing clothes, remember? They'd better not move it too far down.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Obama should have the same 'heart attack ray' he used to kill Breitbart, the 50ish out of shape former cocaine abuser who had a history of heart disease and rage issues. It's completely mysterious to them how that guy had a heart attack while out walking.
ReplyDeleteSo I was browsing the YouTube comments, and I noticed that a significant number of people seem to hate the gays and blacks, just like me, thus proving that the so-called popular support for gay marriage is just an Obamedia fabrication!
ReplyDeleteyou'll see a significant number of people who think that the NSA may have been relaying intelligence about the Mitt Romney campaign to Obama operatives
ReplyDeleteAnd yet despite all that NSA intelligence about Mitt Romney and the power of Obama's "weaponized IRS," we still never got to see Romney's tax returns for the past decade. Damn. That is one piss-poor conspiracy. It's like believing there was a second gunman at the Cheney assassination.
That's not an attack, that's a delicious gift. Thanks, aliens! (Thaliens.)
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with believing "crazy shit", as you call; it? I've lived to see a non-white person become President of the US! Anything is possible, the only limit is our imagination and good will, and we've got plenty of both!
ReplyDeleteBaguettes away!
ReplyDeletelumpen mal pensants morons
ReplyDeletevery interesting polyglot insult
"various excuses, from quantum mechanics to Obama.""
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely ridiculous! If your quantum is broke go here,
Just think how many aliens got right in amongst us as we marveled at the dog who moves the chair, opens the oven, and gets the chicken strips! It's on You-Tube.
ReplyDeleteFirst thing my eye caught on that page was something about a "New insurance scheme" and that got me to thinking about a bunch of insurance execs coming up with "quantum insurance", and given the level of understand at just what "quantum" should and shouldn't mean, it scared me a bit.
ReplyDeleteThe NSA showed up the Oval Office with a whole dossier of confidential strategies they'd hacked from the Romney campaign's computers and offered it to Obama.
ReplyDeleteHe looked at the unopened dossier, stubbed out his cigarette and said, "Guys, it's Mitt Romney. I'd be a sorry sonovabitch if I needed to cheat to beat him, despite the terrible economy. Hell, I'm thinking of doing the first debate on mushrooms. Just throw that in shredder on your way out.
"But Mr. President, he plans to tell almost half the country they're stupid moochers...."
"I got this. Good day."
Schoedinger's deductible is kind of a gotcha. You don't know how ,much it costs until you make a claim.
ReplyDeleteI think I've figured it out:
ReplyDelete1) The more stories there are out there about Obama's secret and nefarious activities, the more likely it is that at least one of them is true. This is just good old common sense, like saying the more Lottery tickets you have, the greater the chance that one of them is the winning ticket.
2) Therefore, if we can generate an infinite number of such stories, it becomes a virtual certainty that one of them will be true. (If you have all the Lottery tickets, you must have the winning ticket.)
3) If one of these stories is true, it becomes more likely that all of them are true, because if Obama has done evil deed A (which has been established in step 2; we just don't know the precise nature of A, but it must be evil), it would be the height of naivete to assume that he would not be equally likely to do evil deeds B, C, D, etc.
4) Thus, the best way to ensure that you are right to suspect Obama of murder, treason and buttsecks is to promulgate such stories 24/7 for the rest of your life
A year ago the idea that zzzttt zzzttt Obama is a Kenyan Muslim intent on zzzttt zzzttt enforcing Sharia Law in
ReplyDeleteAmerica would have been zzzttt zzzttt
[adjusts tinfoil hat] dismissible as a paranoid conspiracy theory.
But now, while I still don't think that’s true zzzttt zzzttt, it’s no longer obviously
craz-zzzttt-zzzttt-y.
[Readjusts tinfoil hat] And that's Obama's
legacy: a government that makes zzzttt
zzzttt paranoid conspiracy theories seem possibly zzzttt zzzttt sane zzzttt
zzzttt.
A significant number of people pay less attention to Instapundit than the consistency of their most recent bowel movement. I don't know what that means, I just thought it was important to point out.
ReplyDeleteThe Rightbloggers' Overton Window will never, ever be a basement window, because Cheetos, PJs, pile of used tissues...
ReplyDeleteOh brother.
ReplyDeleteYe Olde Perfesser was doing this exact song and dance back in 2008, when The National Enquirer was running with a "Obama's gay sex scandal" storyline. "Well heh indoodily obviously I don't think this is true, but that people are bringing it up, homina homina it's Obama's fault."
The HehIndeedler's intellectual cowardice knows no limits.
There's also a burgeoning business in treating artifacts of digital cameras as Mysterious Phenomena themselves, such as "Orbs" and "Rods". Are ghosts trying to speak to us through our YouTubes? What are scientists trying to hide?
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting casualty of the smartphone era has been cryptozoology. One million backpackers, hikers, and campers with cameraphones, and where are the sasquatches? The yeti?
4) Treason, hmmmm?
ReplyDeleteFlorida House candidate Joshua Black calls for hanging of President Obama
"I'm past impeachment," Joshua Black wrote on Twitter. "It's time to arrest and hang him high."
Yeah, there's a word for that, it's on the tip of my tongue...
Blahblahblah arglebarglegargle Gleeble-Fwap! yadda-yadda hummina-hummina WHEEEEEEE! BZZZZZZT
He also proclaimed on the site that "Republicans have a serious communication problem."
Roger that...
or that Chief Justice John Roberts' sudden about-face in the Obamacare case might have been driven by some sort of NSA-facilitated blackmail.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the idea that Reynolds' core belief is that jurists have fixed ideas on outcomes and that arguments are besides the point. A hack like Roberts should stay bought! And a hack law professor so outraged and amazed by the hack Justice's decision that IT MUST BE THE WORK OF THE NSA BECAUSE DUH!
Does Schroedinger (or his kitteh) have a way to get the deductible dropped? Y'know, a waive function?
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you immediately associate hanging a black man with lynching shows that you're the real racist![/wingnut]
ReplyDeleteNever gonna happen because teh Perfessor's reasoning abilities are so poor that he'd be unable to defend anything he posts.
ReplyDeleteIt takes some crust to pull a stunt like that!
ReplyDeletePSSST! Ixnay, that's what the ossbay does for an ivinglay...
ReplyDeleteSure, but it's not used with much frequency.
ReplyDeleteHe also proclaimed on the site that "Republicans have a serious communication problem."
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah, in that they sometimes accurately communicate what they really think in un-obfuscated plain speech, which is invariably a PR disaster.
Yeah, the ultimate joke to that story is not that crazy people think Obama had Breitbart killed, but that they think Breitbart was important enough to be killed.
ReplyDeleteThey're all busy thinking up and practicing BDSM moves on their captive humans, so the Bigfoot porn writer will have more fodder for her next ebook.
ReplyDeleteBetter yet, he wasn't even 50ish. I say better, because death at 42 gave him 8 less years of making the world a much worse place.
ReplyDeleteLaugh all you want, but I miss the days when the conspiracy-minded focused on Bigfoot, alien abductions, and demonic possessions rather than sovereign citizensip, armed revolt, and de-legitimizing democratic elections.
ReplyDeleteAsk anyone who ever worked at Walgreens developing film. There were a *lot* of pix of "vague, blurry, unidentifiable things", and most of 'em were relatives of the photographer...
ReplyDeleteThe way that they drag that damn Overton window all over the map, you'd think they'd have been able to catch a glimpse of some titties besides Lena Dunham's.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Didn't that queer commie godless muzzie satanist Obama's mother ever teach him?
ReplyDeleteThis theory actually explains much more than you've even outlined here.
ReplyDeleteI've been saying for 10 years (ever since I turned 40) that being over 40 is all about getting over yourself. That's kind of what the decade of your 40s is supposed to impart to you, if you haven't learned it before then - that you aren't the special snowflake the world revolves around. I hope I never was quite that bad even in my 20's, but there is I think for most people a certain amount of self-absorption associated with being in your 20s and 30s - perhaps part has to do with a greater sense of invulnerability and being at the peak of your physical health, but I know most of it for me was in looking around the table of people I was working with on important stuff with statewide or national implications, and realizing that I was a good 10 or 15 years younger than anyone else there. Then one day, you look around the table and there's a sharp kid 10 or 15 years younger than you, and some of that "specialness" vibe dies a little death.
In any case, no one can ever become a real adult without realizing that in fact, their shit stinks as bad as and perhaps worse than everyone else's and that they are but a speck in the flow of life and the world; that if they matter to even a small handful of people such that those people would actually notice if they weren't around anymore, then that's the best that can be achieved anyway, and that it is more than enough.
Anyone who doesn't figure out those things is destined to be a misery to everyone who has to share the planet with them for the duration.
Now, tell me, does this not describe the wingnut to a tee?
I have to say if there's one thing I thank God for, Breitbart didn't die before this masterful little coda.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't invent Theater of Depersonalization but he was one of the best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o
This 1-2-3-4 is gold: it's both ridonkulus and true. During the waning years of the Clinton Administration, I had a roommate who read lotsa political "books." She believed them all, as long as they revealed a hideous truth (Vince Foster, etc), and her favorite saying was "Where there's smoke, there's fire!" With this phrase, she'd tell me it didn't matter if I debunked one allegation -- I'd never debunk them all, and the fact that they were all out there meant one of them had to be true. Which meant they all might as well be, including whatever one I'd just debunked. She was fascinating.
ReplyDeletealso, florida.
ReplyDeleteThis is just good old common sense, like saying the more Lottery
ReplyDeletetickets you have, the greater the chance that one of them is the winning
ticket.
As always, the devil is in the details. Wiping your ass with card stock and calling it a lottery ticket doesn't actually make it into one. Which is to say, you need slightly less goddamn stupid conspiracies to make large numbers actually work for you, guys. Remember the cautionary tale of the boy who cried magenta space panda?
Ab-nuh!
ReplyDeleteWiping your ass with card stock and calling it a lottery ticket doesn't actually make it into one.
ReplyDeleteYes, but it does have roughly the same likelihood of having the winning number printed on it.
"Where there's smoke, there's fire!"
ReplyDeleteOccam's electric razor?
I enjoy the idea that Reynolds' core belief is that jurists have fixed
ReplyDeleteideas on outcomes and that arguments are besides the point.
Well, as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, he's currently at least 33% correct in this belief.
Hmm. We *have* been getting an awful lot of snow since Obama was elected. Could he be a yeti as well as a gay muslim marxist fascist?
ReplyDeleteIt's like the argument that Obama is divisive because they hate him.
ReplyDeleteHear, hear, Jenn! I personally had my own crisis of specialness early -- it began at 33, and by 36-37 it was all over: I fully accepted I was sort of a normal person. But also that even normal life is amazing, and the most important thing is to help the people around you have a good time here. Well, that's the conclusion I came to...
ReplyDeleteThe conservatives I've talked to don't seem to have shrunk their worries down to the personal. They want to situate themselves astride the flow of history, still, and Influence Events. Which is really hard to do! And that becomes the fault of... of Democrats! With all their leveling programs! Taking away the Individual American's specialness, treating him like a stat who needs help, or a cog in a machine!
They do genuinely worry that the arc of history is bending the wrong way. They see us heading toward a vast chaos. I'd argue this pending collapse is an externalization of their own death, manifesting as blacks and immigrants and moochers -- but whatever it is, it amounts to a failure to accept limits on your responsibilities and powers. And corollary to this failure, in a feedback loop with it, there grows a belief that before our present era of certain doom, we inhabited an orderly, Athenian USA, 1776-1963 -- which they glimpsed only the tail end of, when they were in their brightest youth and the world promised them grand destiny.
I could be wrong. This does sound a little like my own conspiracy theory, I suppose.
ORBS ISREAL!
ReplyDeletehttp://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hjwyi1tzeT4/Uldoqu-MIkI/AAAAAAAAM9Q/Dws4Jhif2fM/s1600/October+2013+f+A710+011.jpg
~
Reynolds' column is nothing but an exercise in pushing conspiracy theories into the spotlight to sow suspicion about Obama under the guise of being an impartial observer.
ReplyDeleteIts' the old Fox News standby "Some people say...." with an added "and I don't blame them!"
This describes about 80% of his writing. He is an Iago for second-rate minds everywhere.
Shouldn't that be Freedom Bread :)
ReplyDeleteOr DMOP strangled OP in his sleep and is writing his column clothed only in his fat.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying I believe that, but ...
There you go again, playing the race card!
ReplyDelete...but a lot of people say that, and can you blame them?
ReplyDeletewhile out walking drinking. Fixed it.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you guys happen to watch the Super-Bowl, you may see a message which will tell you: You can be special, in fact, you can attain complete freedom!
ReplyDeleteYup, Scientology bought a couple of spots for the Super-Bowl!
Oh silly just ask Deepak chopra - he knows everything about quantum woo :)
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you say he has the courage of his lack of conviction?
ReplyDeleteHow else do you explain Republicans, well aside from generations of inbreeding that is
ReplyDeleteAnd you can't know just where it is, or where its' going.
ReplyDeleteDon't tell me it's gonna turn out like that goddam piece of toast, or tortilla, or whatever it was...
ReplyDelete"I got this. Good day."
ReplyDeleteAnd goes on: "You can leave now, you've covered your ass..."
Sometimes, where there's smoke, there's smoke and mirrors.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add that "Occam's Electric Razor" would be a good name for a band.
And almost any browser gives them the opportunity to correct their spelling, but they never do.
ReplyDeleteHeh. You take that, I'll take "Occam's Aftershave."
ReplyDeleteThere's all kinds of entertaining conspiracy theories on the internet.
ReplyDeleteMy current favorite is the idea that the moon is a hologram. Some people even think the entire sky is some kind of projected image.
No kidding!
Everyone knows the best place to get a "feel" for public opinion is in YouTube comments.
ReplyDeleteI'd be scared of causing a fire. But I guess the mid-west and east coast aren't worrying about fires at the moment.
ReplyDeleteIt would be irresponsible not to speculate...
ReplyDeleteI think you've just outlined the plot for the next Bigfoot porn ebook.
ReplyDeleteEnemapundit: letting your thoughts flow!
ReplyDeletealso, florida.
ReplyDelete"Where there's smoke, there's fire!"
ReplyDelete... or a smokescreen.
I've heard that one a lot.
ReplyDeleteI usually respond with the fact that Abraham Lincoln was just as divisive for the same reason.
"Highlander II" ?
ReplyDeletesighting have gone down to virtually nothing
ReplyDeleteThey mask themelves as Orbs.
No fair! My date didn't apologize after she suggested Paranormal Activity 3!
ReplyDeleteAnd then of course they may or may not pay your clai...holy crap, it's real!
ReplyDeleteLess filling, tastes great.
ReplyDeleteLess taste, great filler.
ReplyDeleteAt least he's not taking America's Temperature. That would totally squick America out.
ReplyDeleteOccam's Depilatory Cream.
ReplyDeleteAren't you the one who told us in the previous thread that Bigfoot hadn't gone away at all but rather was being franchised into a porn series of ebooks?
ReplyDeleteAlso: the more likely it is that one of them could be a winner--but unless you manage to go from one lottery ticket to nearly all of them you increase your odds without actually getting the winning ticket. The argument that if you imagine enough scandals one day one is bound to be true makes as much sense as arguing:
ReplyDeleteObama's a Zombie
Obama's an egyptian Mummy
Obama's a reincarnated vampire from Bulgaria
Damn it, if I just keep this up long enough I'll figure out what kind of dead but reanimated non human creature Obama is.
Its out there and it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Or, in my favorite line of all time from The Quiet Man, when the Priest is asked to lie and push a false story about a possible marriage:
ReplyDelete"I can't say its true and I won't say its not--but there's been talk!"
Wiping one’s ass with card stock is how wingnuts make Valentine’s Day cards. So don’t open anything from Ben Shapiro, ok?
ReplyDeleteExcept for the apostrophes, dammit...
ReplyDeleteFirst DIY UFO I ever heard of was a dry-cleaning bag with two crossed sticks in the open end, holding a little Sterno dish or candle. Requires a reasonably calm night, with just enough of a breeze to waft the thing slowly across the backyards of the neighborhood, without putting the candle out.
ReplyDeleteNever tried it, but I think now a little tinfoil twirly of some sort above the candle would increase the effect...
Unidentified Food Objects!
ReplyDeleteOccam's Nair.
ReplyDeleteOccam's laser hair removal.
ReplyDelete"Let me just put this in terms that I know that all y'all will get, because you're always trying to claim that y'all need to play World of Warcraft on the job: if you need to go into god mode to beat this game, just hang the fucking controller up, son."
ReplyDeleteYes. Yes I was.
ReplyDeleteLink to Bigfoot porn in my last comment above.
I used to know some people who were absolutely total true believers in the "orbs" thing. They got really annoyed with me when I just started repeating "sensor artifact, sensor artifact, sensor artifact, you need a better digital camera," at them, sopping wet-blanket that I am...
ReplyDeleteEwwww...
ReplyDeleteThat's actually called 'copping a feel' for public opinion.
ReplyDeleteNEVER FORGET: SASQUATCH ISRAEL
ReplyDeleteAccording to someone who did in fact work in the Walgreens photo department, there were a number of occasions in which they wished that the things were unidentifiable, IYKWIMAITYD.
ReplyDeleteWent to a MUFON seminar once, for the hell of it. Odd assortment of people there. Oddest, I thought, was the guy hawking Capricorn-One-was-a-documentary shit out in the lobby, at a meeting hall full of people who believe in spaceflight. Then I thought, well, alien spaceflight, maybe...
ReplyDeleteWell, 'special' is a double-edged sword as a concept. I'm loath to dismiss it as a security blanket for narcissists. It's partly personal: I had undiagnosed depression for two or three years: it's getting better now, but I think I could have heard 'you matter' a few more times without it going to my head. And I don't mind, particularly, people thinking they're the star of their own movie: to an extent, that's how the human mind works in a lot of ways. We're not a collective consciousness.
ReplyDeleteWhat drives me a lot crazier are the people who think they're the unique/special one, and no one else is. There are way, way too many people out there who see everyone else as the Teeming Masses, and treat them accordingly. And that sort of thinking is just as common among wingnuts these days, too.
Glenn Reynolds' America's Rectal Thermometer.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you can't use it to shit all over grieving parents, what is the first amendment even for?
ReplyDeleteEight years ago Reynolds was promoting ABush Derangement Syndrome, i.e. Bush is divisive because liberals are psychotic.
ReplyDeleteAnd then tidal patterns are...?
ReplyDeleteFeck, logged on as "Guest" so can't edit that.
ReplyDeleteEight years ago Reynolds was promoting Bush Derangement Syndrome, i.e. Bush
is divisive because liberals are psychotic.
Magnets do it. It's the fucking magnets.
ReplyDeleteThat fluid looks a bit like urine, so if you could just put an upside-down crucifix in it, you would have the supergeeked out version of Serrano's Piss Christ. You could call it Piss Christ 3000!
ReplyDeleteScience can't explain it!
ReplyDeleteI admit that I appreciate some of the wackier conspiracy theories. It's like hearing a really well-constructed but ultimately corny pun. And when people click 'out of focus' and 'sepia filter' on their facebook selfies and call themselves artists, it's good to know there are there's people there who still put some work into their craft.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, that's why Reynolds and the like are such boring tools. There's never any creativity there, no elaborate Pynchonian storycraft, not even an X-Files 'I want to believe' frisson. Just endless rounds of 'Obama. Heh. Know what I mean? Heh.' They give a bad name to guys like David Icke and Gene Ray. They're just, like you say, garden-variety liars and bullshit purveyors.
On the subject of the Orbs, I always feel sad for Tom Constable who was recording lens flares and developing glitches sky-dwelling energyzoa back in the 50s, and hardly ever gets credit.
ReplyDeleteHAWT.
ReplyDeleteKudos++ for "Iago for second-rate minds"...wherefore art thou Othello?
ReplyDeleteThere must be a God because I don't know how things work.
ReplyDelete--Stephen Colbert
Occam's accidentally-setting-beard-on-fire-with-candle. But perhaps I have said too much.
ReplyDeleteWell, Bill O'Reilley says they can't be explained.
ReplyDeleteI actually enjoyed Capicorn One; I thought it was a pretty good movie.
ReplyDeleteBut a documentary? That, I can't believe.
Or "where there's an unending, high-pitched shriek, there's a broken smoke-detector."
ReplyDeleteYou needed a colon (see what I did there?) after "Glenn Reynolds" -- not an apostrophe.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen it in so long I forgot it was about a faked *Mars* landing...:)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this is the kind of shit I was referring to.
So is your ex-roommate happy and fulfilled at WorldNet Daily?
ReplyDeleteSo don’t open anything from Ben Shapiro, ok?
ReplyDeleteThat's what she said.
Well done, synykyl. Bringing the yeti into it is clearly the work of a Great Intelligence.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to believe that there is not only intelligent life in outer space, but also a wide variety of French bakeries.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'm no James Inhofe, but I try ;-)
ReplyDeleteThe hollow earth. There are holes that allow the seas to flow in and out of the hollow center of the earth. As it rotates, which holes the water flows into and which it flows out of alternate.
ReplyDeleteROFL. That is amazing.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I had forgotten that it wasn't about a moon landing as well. I only meant that I can't believe in that kind of conspiracy theory.
ReplyDeleteFun stuff, though.
Yes, a broken smoke detector is an extraordinarily good metaphor.
ReplyDeleteThese political conspiracy theorists are exactly like that.
This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
ReplyDeleteHey, that's pretty good.
ReplyDeleteMystery Piss Christ 3000.
ReplyDeleteAhhhh, Ward Bond.
ReplyDeleteALL HE WANTED WAS A PEPSI!
ReplyDeleteBest explanation yet of whatever the hell happened in that first debate.
ReplyDelete