Category: General

Jammy keys

My current lack of posting comes down to three things; I have internet issues, I have work to do and I have a Cold.

The last seems self-explanatory; the other two not so much.

Internet issues: Sometimes the Internet and its peoples frighten me. I was just reading a post on NZConservative about how lesbian mayors are ruining morality for the rest of us and it made me want to cause damage to the peoples who `live’ in such a space. I suspect I am in an angry place at the moment and thus easily annoyed by even the most trivial and banal stupidities expressed by people who you think could know better. I suspect a lot of this anger comes from the Cold; bad sleep, bad breathing; bad mood.

Work: I’m a little behind on my work at the moment, although I seem to be catching up again. The current chapter is taking longer to write up than I anticipated, mostly because I keep encountering issues and writing on them when I should really be leaving them for other sections of the thesis. I’m getting stuck on material that I don’t need to be currently stuck on and occasionally that only becomes apparent when you start writing a concluding paragraph and realise you’ve jibbed when you meant to tack.

I also have the presentation to prepare for the Skeptics Conference. I’m a little too used to the material and am constructing a newer version of the presentation that assumes the audience knows less than I usually think they do. Not because I think my audience will be morons but because I don’t want to be accused (as I have been here ((Because I am not on the `Facebook’ (and am not currently enamoured of the idea of joining) I have no recourse, it would seem, other than engaging in the academic version of speaking very slowly and loudly)) of crimes epistemological. It also gives me reason to update a few examples and build new slides.

I like slides.

09/16/2008

Competition

Well, today I received a package of `Skeptic Magazines,’ ten in all, in which my article doth appear. I’m going to give one of them away. If you want it, well, you’ll have to earn it.

I want, in fifty words or less, a fictional Conspiracy Theory that suggests some incredible explanation for a totally mundane event. Something like ‘The Atlanteans are responsible for the English alphabet having only twenty-six characters.’

Except in more words.

Deadline: September 5th.

If no one enters I might just randomly send out a copy. If only one person enters… Well, that’s just sad (on my part).

08/29/2008

He’s back with (New) Zeal – Part 1

Well, Trevor Loudon is back in the blogosphere. As regular readers (if there are any) will know, I dissected a paper by Loudon and Bernard Moran ((‘The Untold Story behind New Zealand’s ANZUS Breakdown’ by Trevor Loudon and Bernard Moran, National Observer, No. 74, Spring 2007, p. 21-36, ISSN# 1442-5548)) a while back (I’ve since used this paper in my course on Conspiracy Theories, seeing that it advances a rather lacklustre rival to the received/official history of New Zealand).

I’m watching Loudon’s blog with some interest; he’s been over in the States helping in the attempt to derail Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Loudon, like some of the other members of the extreme right, fears Communism like nothing else, and he seems to equate `Socialist’ with `Evil,’ `Right-wing’ with `angelic’ and `Anarchist’ with `depraved.’ I’m fairly sure he’s never read a left-wing press release that he hasn’t seen a sinister plot in.

Loudon’s style is hardly argumentative; he lists character traits and associations and lets your prejudices do the talking/reasoning. For example, take his `Obama Files;’ given that Loudon’s readership is afeared of Communists all he has to do, it seems, is show that there are connections between Barack Obama and socialist movements (and insinuate the tactics normal in politics are malign in the hands of anyone who is left-wing) to demostrate that Obama should not be president.

Mere scaremongering.

I mentioned earlier that I’ve used his ANZUS breakdown `article’ (I use the term loosely) as a teaching aide; it was rather interesting to gauge the reactions of my students to the piece. They were, by and large, representative of the `ordinary New Zealanders’ Don Brash tried to appeal to in the last election (although I suspect one of my students to be an anarchist) and none of them found Loudon’s scaremongering alternative history at all convincing. I do wonder who does.

Yet (as I’ve also ruminated on in previous posts) the NBR and Investigate ran with the story. Actually, I don’t know why I put ‘Yet’ on the front of that sentence; it makes it sound as if that’s quite shocking (when it isn’t). I have theories about this; I think a lot of people, suffering from a paucity of critical thinking skills, didn’t really notice the lack of an argument in the article whilst other wanted to find it convincing because they really do want to believe that contemporary Socialism (and the Green Movement) is old-style Soviet Communism dressed up ((I’d say ‘If only!’ but I’d probably be taken as endorsing evil, or something like that.)).

I will give Loudon his due; now he’s back in action his blog has become a great resource to finding out what’s happening on the left-wing front here in Aotearoa; he updates his readers as to talks being given by, for example, Sina Ana Brown-Davis and the like. Given that I might not have found out about that talk I am thankful to Loudon for putting information my way. Not that think Loudon wants his blog to be aiding me in my left-wing tendencies, but, as they say, what’s he going to do?

Answers on a postcard.

Next time, in `He’s back with (New) Zeal,’ `The Urewera 17.’

08/29/2008

A Gentle Reminder

Just a reminder to those who, in feeling victorious about the Owen Glen letter, are saying “He has no reason to lie!” Aside from the fact that this shows a decided lack of imagination it also sets a dangerous precedent.

It means that we might be required to entertain the ramblings of Edgar Mitchell or Walter Haut.

And I’m not sure that you really want to bite that bullet ((I should point out that I don’t think Winston Peters is being evenly vaguely honest in this matter but it is still possible that Owen Glen is not being all that honest either)).

08/28/2008

An (over?) reliance on secondary sources…

I read a lot, I watch a lot, I go to talks a lot, and yet I still can’t do any of these things in sufficient quantity (let alone quality) to claim I have a grip on everything that is `going down’ in Conspiracy Theory research. Thus I’m fascinated by this review-cum-commentary on Ron Suskind’s book The Way of the World.’

Suskind quotes Inkster (who liaised with key Iraqi defector Tahir Habbush, head of intelligence no less) as saying, quite clearly, that both the Bush and Blair regimes knew, before the invasion, that Iraq had no WMDs. Again, no surprise here, and backs up a point we at 9/11 cultwatch have long made, that the fabrication of WMD evidence leading to a spurious war is in itself a sufficient reason, if you are so inclined, for both Blair & Bush to be arraigned as ‘war criminals’–you don’t need imaginary fairytales about 9/11, the War in Iraq is sufficient to make them (metaphorically) swing from the yard arm.

This is, of course, a Conspiracy Theory (it, at least, presents a rival to the received view that the UK and USA administrations went into Iraq believing there were WMDs being produced and stored by Saddam Hussein’s regime), but because it’s a widely held Conspiracy Theory we’ve begun to treat the official account as the epistemically dubious one and, and this seems important, we don’t like other (epistemically dubious?) Conspiracy Theories to detract from the one we all seem to agree upon.

I’m sure there’s more to be said about this but now is not the time; I have to get ready to teach the last lecture in my `Conspiracy Theories’ course.

08/27/2008

Sheldrake on Skepticism

I disagree with the end of the penutimate paragraph, for a variety of reasons, but I quite like this piece on Skepticism/Scepticism, by Rupert Sheldrake.

In practice, the goal of skepticism is not the discovery of truth, but the exposure of other people’s errors. It plays a useful role in science, religion, scholarship, and common sense. But we need to remember that it is a weapon serving belief or self-interest; we need to be skeptical of skeptics. The more militant the skeptic, the stronger the belief.

08/18/2008