Ya, it's been far too long since I've written anything. For now, I wanted to share one of my new favourite podcasts, and share episodes from two other podcasts because the topics and discussions are deeply fascinating and important.

This Week in EvolutionAdmittedly the topics and discussions are very science-heavy and can get rather technical - ( Read more... )

I don't even know what to say about this. Maybe I don't need to say anything, because it speaks for itself.
The reason I am posting this is because the same sort of thing can be said about so many other conspiracy "theories" (read: myths) about the government (or whoever) having complete and total control over information on some topic or other ( Read more... )

Finally sitting down to watch All the President's Men - forgot I even had it.
Goddamn. It may have been made in '76, but movies today just can't compete with this.
If you have not seen this film, then do so.

On the one hand, our advancements in robotics are downright amazing. On the other hand, keeping in mind that these are clips of robot successes and not fails - of which there are plenty! - we are clearly nowhere near the kind of robots that conspiracy mythology would have you think.

( Video behind the cut… )

Well, try this on for size:

Billionaire business entrepreneur and sci/tech philanthropist Yuri Milner just announced what will be the biggest ever project for the search for intelligent alien life and it will be 100% open to the public and using only open source software:
The program will generate vast amounts of data. All data will be open to the ( Read more... )

National and international scale, systematic and deeply organized secrecy permeating several aspects of society is, as we all know, an essential feature of contemporary conspiracy "theories". I've already brought up the issue of how thoroughly implausible such secrecy is, but a thought suddenly hit me and I had to share: Even the CIA and the NSA, ( Read more... )

In fact, I daresay that the more intelligent you are, the greater your risk of falling for conspiracy mythologies. Because one of the features of intelligence is the ability to hold several things in your mind and see the relations between them, whatever those relations are, as well as seeing where there aren't relations, and then to draw ( Read more... )

Part I
Part II

Picking right up where I left off:

V. Biology Lessons: Understanding Viruses; and Conspiracy Mythology Biology Fail

A significant source of fodder for conspiracy mythology that has anything to do with anything biological is just a lack of knowledge and understanding of the relevant biological information, especially the kind of ( Read more... )

Part I
Part IIII want to discuss one particular conspiracy myth, because it has to do with a very serious topic that hits several deep nerves in me. I was also motivated by having learned that someone I know whom I care a lot about has bought into this particular conspiracy mythology; and while I know that he buys into some others, if I had to ( Read more... )

Is it just me, or does it seem a bit odd that 9/11 truthers tend to be basically anti-Semitic, and that Osama bin Laden was definitely anti-Semitic ( Read more... )