Can't tell if dumb bigots... or trolling (actually, I'm pretty sure it's trolling)

A few days ago while lurking around one of several skeptic Facebook groups that I belong too I came across this article from a website called Pink News.

The article was in concern over a flyer that was being posted around Clintonville, Ohio for... well, you can see for yourself:

Weirder things have happened, i suppose. Straight White Guy Festival, anyone? http://t.co/0mQKcItnOS pic.twitter.com/kib7tlx9hz
— Lauren Bagley (@TheREDison) July 18, 2014

Yes... you're reading that right. It's a flyer for a Straight White Guy Festival.

Now, I know many of you are probably thinking "this can't be real, right"?

Well it could be real because despite our society's advances in the field of race relations, there are still racist people in this country, but I don't think it's real, and I have several reasons why I believe this is so.

Lets take a look at what is not on this flyer that most would have had.

First, there's no contact information of any kind on these flyers.

Most racist groups would have placed on such a flyer either a mailing address, or a phone number, or an e-mail address. At the very least they would have put a website name on there inorder to help promote their group if they were unwilling to place on the flyer direct contact information.

The second thing that caught my eye is that the flyer doesn't say who is putting on and sponsoring this festival.

Any racist or bigoted group that was putting on and sponsoring such an event would not have left their name off. Most hate groups want people to know that they are sponsoring such an event in hopes of recruiting people into their group.

At the very least they would have put the name of a front group on the flyer in an attempt to hide who is really organizing this so called festival, while at the same time trying to recruit new members.

Now lets take a look at what the flyer does say on it.

First is the title of this "event" Straight White Guy Festival.

The name of this alleged festival looks more like something a dumb college frat boy would have created and doesn't realize that this sort of thing is racist and bigoted as hell, rather than a person that is part of a racist and bigoted group.

Now before anyone says it I'm very well aware that bigots are not known for their intelligence, but atleast they would try to come up with something a little more creative than that.

Second thing I noticed about the flyer was that it contradicted itself.

The flyer says "Come help us celebrate our enjoyment of being straight white and male" but it also says "Everyone welcome".

If this festival is intended for straight white males then how come the flyer is also saying that anyone who is not straight, white, or male can attend?

A racist and bigoted group would never have put "Everyone welcome" on such a flyer. They either would have put nothing on there, or they would have made it very clear that only straight white males would have been allowed to attend (or atleast straight white people).

The final thing about this flyer that leads me to believe that someone is trolling in real life is that while there is a location for this "festival", a date, a time, and that beer will be available, according to WBNS-10TV no permits have been taken for such a festival, and while I'm not sure of the local laws concerning festivals at local parks, most places would make you apply for a permit to hold such an event, and to sell beer at it.

Taking all these things into consideration I can only come to the conclusion that this is some kind of joke.

I'm not sure if the person that created these flyers intended on them being racist or anti-racist, but it's still pretty offensive either way.

Ofcourse it could be real and some racist group is intending to hold a festival without getting or knowing they have to get permits first, as well as not knowing how to make a proper flyer.

If they have their festival they'll find out the hard way that you need to have the proper permits.

10 Lies Anti-vaccers tell

The anti-vaccination has caused alot of harm over the years with their fear mongering and lies. These lies have caused parents to become to afraid to vaccinate their children, and themselves as well, despite the danger in not doing so.

The following is a list of ten lies the anti-vaccination movement has told, and why they are just bogus:

10. Studies indicate that vaccines cause autism.

While there are "studies" that claim that vaccines cause autism, only one of these so called studies have been published in a well respected, peer reviewed scientific and medical journal. That study, the Wakefield study (which was published in The Lancet in 1998) was retracted in 2010 after it had been discovered that the main author of the study, Andrew Wakefield, had committed fraud. On top of that the findings in the study itself had been long since discredited and disproved before the formal retraction.

The studies that followed since the Wakefield study that claim that vaccines cause autism have never been published in any credible medical or scientific journals. The only places that these studies have ever been published are either in non-credible pay-for-publish journals, or websites that promote alternative medicine and/or conspiracy theories.

9. Signs of autism show up in children only after they have been vaccinated.

As the old skeptics' saying goes "correlation does not equal causation".

Just because a child starts to show obvious signs of autism after they have had their vaccinations, it's far more likely that they were showing signs of autism before they received their vaccinations and that no one noticed simply because the child was to young to show any noticable signs of autism to anyone but trained professionals.

8. Adverse reactions to vaccines are common, often severe, and can cause death.

Actually only about one out of every 300 people will have adverse reactions to vaccines. Most of the time these adverse reaction are mirror, short lived, and are more annoying than debilitating.

Occasionally a person will have a severe adverse reaction to a vaccine, some of which can be fatal, but these types of adverse reactions are very rare, only about one to two out of every million people. You have better odds dying in a car wreck to get a vaccination than you from the vaccination.

7. Vaccines have never been shown to be effective against reducing the spread of disease, and has even been shown to increase the spread.

I'm sure smallpox and polio would disagree. Actually alot of diseases would disagree because it's been proven time and time again that anytime vaccines were in wide spread use the rate of infections of a disease that the vaccines are meant to protect against will go down dramatically, sometimes even eliminating a disease in an area.

6. Natural immunity is superior to immunity via vaccination.

If you try to get natural immunity from a disease (i.e. getting infected and sick from said disease) there is a pretty good possibility that the disease that you hope to make yourself or your child immune from will actually kill you or your child, or atleast cause a permanent disability. Also in many cases it takes several weeks for this form of immunity to happen, during which time you will be sick as heck.

On the other hand immunity via vaccination is much faster, doesn't leave you sick, and is far, FAR less likely to kill you than getting immunity from a disease by getting infected by that disease.

5. Vaccines contain aborted fetuses.

This is completely false and is a distortion of the fact that the weakened forms of some viruses in vaccines are grown in a culture of cell lines derived from fetal tissue of fetuses aborted in the 1960's.

There are no fetal cells at all in vaccines.

4. Vaccines cause shaken baby syndrome.

No, rapidly shaking a baby back and forth and causing their head to flop around causes shaken baby syndrome.

This isn't even just a bold faced lie, this is child abuse apology.

3. Vaccines contain high amounts of toxic ingredients.

While vaccines do contain chemicals that in high enough amounts are toxic to humans, the amounts of these toxins in vaccines are so low that it wouldn't hurt anyone even if they took that chemicals by itself.

As the old saying goes "the dose makes the poison" and no vaccine contains enough of a certain chemical to make it poisonous.

2. Vaccines cause SIDS.

While DPT/DPaT vaccines have been suspected of being one of the causes of SIDS in the past, current studies into SIDS point to that abnormalities in the development and function of medullary serotonin may be the more likely cause of SIDS, and that vaccines do not cause SIDS at all.

1. Most diseases meant to be prevented by vaccines are rare and mostly harmless, and thus there is no reason to vaccinate.

Most diseases prevented by vaccines use to be rare, but a few diseases such as measles and mumps are making a comeback due to people not getting their children the MMR vaccine. Outbreaks of more common diseases such as the flu and whooping cough are made worse if large groups of people do not get vaccinated.

Also, while many people can get over these diseases they are far from harmless and can kill, especially if the person is very old, or very young, or has something wrong with their immune system and they are unable to fight off the disease.

Even if a disease is rare there is still no reason not to vaccinate against it, as vaccinating will help guarantee that disease remains rare, and may even wipe out that disease.

And down goes the DMCA hammer... or does it?

As many of you are probably aware of one of my favorite skeptics and debunkers, Myles Power, is being harassed by the creators of the HIV/AIDS denialist film, House of Numbers, by filing false DMCA takedown notices on Youtube concerning a set of five videos that Myles has made criticizing and debunking that film and showing the world just how deceptive it is.

Now, the creators of House of Numbers have made the killing blow and filed a forth DMCA takedown notice that will get his channel deleted in about a week from now.

This is wrong on so many levels. It is censorship of the worst kind. The makers of this film are trying to suppress the truth about their film and this can not be allowed!

Fortunately one of his friends, Science of Sarcasm, has uploaded all five videos on another video sharing website.

Now you can go to SoS's website and watch the videos there, or you can watch all five videos right below:


Debunking House of Numbers Part 1 by scienceofsarcasm



Debunking House of Numbers Part 2 by scienceofsarcasm


Debunking House of Numbers Part 3 by scienceofsarcasm


Debunking House of Numbers Part 4 by scienceofsarcasm


Debunking House of Numbers Part 5 by scienceofsarcasm

You if have a program that will allow you to download these videos (I'm using YTD Downloader myself, just incase you don't have a program that will let you download from Dailymotion, I recommend this one) please do so and reupload these videos on ANY of the popular video sites.

Do not let these people get away with this! Let them find out what the Streisand effect is, and let them find out just what happen when you try to silence free speech on the internet, or anywhere.

I hope that Myles fights this, and that he continues making more videos debunking House of Numbers, and Myles if you are reading this on behalf of the skeptics community we are with you!

Update: Petition asking Youtube to lift the DMCA takedown notices against Myles Power

A petition has been started on Change.org asking Youtube to lift the DMCA takedown notices. I ask everyone here to please it and tell Youtube to lift these notices against Myles and to stop these false DMCA takedown notices being brought against him!

https://www.change.org/petitions/youtube-lift-the-dmcas-filed-against-myles-power-powem1985-by-knowledge-matters-llc

Update: Parts 1, 2, & 3 are back up

I just check out Myles's Youtube page and parts one, two, & three are back up. Part five is still down, but you can still find that everywhere on Youtube, just search for "debunking House of Numbers" and you should easily find it.

Hopefully part five will be back up soon and that Myles will be able to finish what he started, but atleast his page is no longer in danger of being taken down.

Update: Part 5 is back up

Part Five of Debunking House of Numbers is finally back. All five videos are back up for all to view.

Obama ordered $1 billion worth of disposable coffins for use in FEMA camps? More BS fear mongering.

Reblogged from Is that a FEMA Camp?

Recently the old FEMA camp myth has once again reared it's ugly head around internet, this time making it appear that President Obama has ordered $1,000,000,000 worth of "disposable coffins", as you can clearly see from this screen shot below:

And from this article here.

When I was reading the article one of the first things that clued me in that this was just a bunch of BS and anti-government fear mongering were the pictures.

All of these pictures have been spreading around the internet for years now in various conspiracy theorist websites and forums.

Despite what the website wants you to believe, these pictures are actually pretty old. Infact they've been around since the George W. Bush administration, as have these claims.

The pictures were also taken at a storage facility for Vantage, a company that manufactures plastic coffin liners, not some government storage facility. If it was a government storage facility the people who took the photos would most likely not have been given access to the facility for various security and liability reasons, or at the very least they would have been escorted around the facility to make sure they didn't hurt themselves or damage something.

Also, these so called "disposable coffins" are neither disposable nor coffins. They're meant to hold to coffins, and they're meant to stay in the ground for who knows how long.

While some coffin liners are bought by the government for things like military funerals, most of these purchases are made by funeral home to be used in private funerals.

The second thing I noticed about the article was the total lack of any references to back up all the claims made. All there was were some old pictures, an old video from 2 1/2 years ago that shows nothing but a few documents that means nothing and also has no links to the documents that are mentioned, and some ignorant people who clearly do not know that a coffin goes inside a coffin liner, and also makes up some outrageous claims without any sort of documents or evidence to back up these claims.

The fact is that there is nothing new about this story. This type of "story" has been floating around in one form or another for years and predates President Obama.

President Obama didn't order $1,000,000,000 worth of coffins, and Marshall Law is not about about to be implemented. All this is is more classic fear mongering being promoted by people who are very paranoid, or who hate the government, or (usually) both.

10 reasons why the Anti-GMO and the Anti-vaccination movement are a lot alike.

The Anti-GMO movements and Anti-vaccination movements are probably two of the biggest and most well known pseudoscience movements out there, with millions of people that adhere to their claims.

Besides the fact that both groups do have millions of proponents world wide and promote pseudoscience, both groups are a lot alike in other ways as well. Infact I've come up with about ten different reasons why they are so much alike, starting with the fact that...

Proponents of both get very emotional when you criticize and/or debunk them.

Ever get into an online discussion with someone whom either promotes Anti-vaccination or Anti-GMO nonsense, and you start to tell them what they claim is BS, and tell them why what they are claiming is BS? If you've answered yes then you know what usually ends up happening, and that is that they tend to go off the deep end and use all of these made up "facts" and logical fallacies and conspiracy theories, and in the end threats and accusations of being a shill are often made.

A proponent of one tends to be a proponent of the other.

It shouldn't be to surprising, but usually if someone is an Anti-GMO proponent, they usually tend to be an Anti-vaccination proponent as well, and vice-verse.

While this isn't necessarily true many websites that promote Anti-vaccination nonsense also tend to promote Anti-GMO nonsense as well. Infact some websites that claim to be "natural health" websites promote both equally instead of one overshadowing the other. Also, another thing about proponents of both are...

They tend to promote alternative medicine.

It shouldn't be to surprising that people in the Anti-vaccination movement are big proponents of alternative medicine, but it shouldn't also be to surprising that people in the Anti-GMO movement are also big proponents of alternative medicine as well.

Infact many people in the Anti-GMO movement will, besides just promote the usual alternative medicine nonsense, claim that organic foods can heal you of just about anything and everything as well (including stuff that doesn't even exist).

The only papers they've ever had published in creditable scientific journals have been debunked and retracted.

There are lots of studies that have been published over the years about the "dangers" of vaccines and GMO foods, and while the number of papers published may look impressive to some the reality is that it isn't, especially when you consider the fact almost all of these papers are published in "scientific journals" that a person pays to be published in.

Infact the only Anti-vaccination and Anti-GMO papers that I know of that have ever been published in credible scientific journals are the Wakefield study (published in the Lancet) and the Séralini study (published in Food and Chemical Toxicology) both of which have been formally retracted by the respective journals that they were published in after it was found that both studies data was founded off of both unethical experiments and fraudulent data, and they were only retracted long after both studies had been thoroughly debunked.

They both claim the same things about the products in terms of health effects.

Both the Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements not only claim that both GMO foods and vaccines are bad for you and cause a large amount of health problems (all of which have been proven to be untrue), but they also claim that they cause the same health problems!

Both most notably are claimed to cause autism, but both are also claimed to cause the spreading of diseases, and increases in infant mortality, and sterility, and cancer, and who knows what else. It almost seems like Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements are claiming that GMO foods and vaccines causes something new every week.

They both claim that the products have ingredients in them that they do not.

One of the biggest and most obvious BS things that both the Anti-vaccination and the Anti-GMO movement tend to do is that they both claim that the respective products that they believe are bad for you also contain ingredients that infact they do not contain at all.

For the Anti-vaccination movement they sometimes claim that vaccines contain the remains of aborted human fetuses (they do not) and the Anti-GMO movement claims that GMO foods contain animal DNA in them (they do not). While these are the more outrageous claims made by both respective movements, both also claim that the products that they are protesting against contain other chemicals in them that infact they do not.

Both groups claim that there is little to no regulation in either industry.

One of the main "claimed" reasons by so many people in the Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements is that they believe that GMO foods and vaccines are dangerous because they believe that there is very little to no testing and safety regulations what so ever in either industry.

In fact this couldn't be further from the truth for either one. Both the vaccine industry and the GMO foods industry are heavily regulated and go through numerous testing stages, and have to go through numerous government agencies before they are able to put their products onto market.

Both groups make claims of a conspiracy.

Both the Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination movements claim that the respective industries that they are protesting are involved in some kind of conspiracy. These conspiracy theories range from the plausible, but still disproven corporate greed and not caring about the health of others and putting out a product that has very little to no testing type of conspiracy theories, to some type of New World Order mass depopulation type of conspiracy theory (which if true then they've done a horrible job at it).

Also both groups claim that there is a conspiracy to suppress "information" (i.e. Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination claims) about the "truth" about GMO foods and vaccines. If this happened to be true then whoever is suppose to be suppressing this "information" has clearly done a terrible job at it because there are thousands of Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination websites, not to mention multiple groups that promote their beliefs.

Both groups have caused deaths.

One of the dark yet well known little secrets of both of these groups is that both groups have caused the deaths of thousands of people.

For the Anti-GMO movement the deaths caused by their propaganda comes in the form of people in developing countries starving to death because the leaders in some of these countries refused to accept food donations because they believed that the donations contained GMO foods (wouldn't matter if it did or didn't) and believed the Anti-GMO movement's claims that such food were poisonous.

For the Anti-vaccination movement the deaths caused by their propaganda comes in the form of children who's parents believed the Anti-vaccination movement's claims and didn't vaccinate their children, and their children got an infection from a disease that was completely preventable if they had been vaccinated, and the child died from that disease. Also the deaths are by children who were to young to be vaccinated, or couldn't be vaccinate for some medical reasons, but got a disease from a child that was infact old enough to be vaccinated but wasn't, and they died because of some other parent's carelessness.

While this fact about both groups are often ignored by both groups, it is not however ignored by skeptics and critics of the Anti-GMO and the Anti-vaccination movements.

Both groups don't talk about the good things what they protest have done.

Both groups just love to talk about all the "bad" stuff (i.e. made up stuff) about GMO foods and vaccines. What they don't tell you is all of the good things that GMO foods and vaccines have brought us, such a extending our life expectancy, and suppressing and even eliminating certain diseases, and over all improving our quality of life, as well as helping prevent people from dying.

Infact talking about all of the good things about GMO foods and vaccines almost seems like a kind of blasphemy to these Anti-GMO and Anti-vaccination groups...

Was an alien spotted near where I live?

The other day I was searching through Youtube looking for "alien caught on camera" videos (I actually do look for that stuff when I'm bored) one thing lead to another and I eventually came across this article about an alleged alien encounter that occurred not only in my home town... but also about only a mile or so from my home (although it happened over two years ago and nothing like this has occurred near here ever since).

Suffice to say that if I believed that this close encounter of the third kind actually did occurred (read about it here) I might be scared out of my mind. Of course I don't believe it. I believe it to be a hoax, and I'll explain why:

First, lets examine the description of the "alien" by the eye witness:

• There was a grey figure, about 6'5" with very long fingers, no eyes, mouth or nose that I could see. The grey color of it was lighter on the bottom, and faded into a darker shade towards it's chest. And it's fingers were at least 10" long.

Now that's a very detailed description of this creature. What detail that was not given was how far away this person was from the creature, or where exactly was this creature was (I'm well aware of the area and how it looks like having lived here all my life and driven past this place hundreds of times, so I can tell you after reading the report that the person gave is that either the person is a local as well, or has passed through that section of road enough times to remember what it looks like)? Was the creature on the hill in the wooded area, or in the middle of the road, or across the street at the little pond next to the apartments that are at that intersection, or on the side of the road?

Also it was at 2:00 PM in the summer time, and according to the report given, it states that:

• Traffic was at a stand still as there were at least 7 cars stopped as we watched it walk up a hill into the forest on the side of the road. Eventually a couple of Roanoke county police came, and one went into the woods, only to come out pale and shaking.

So there are atleast nine other eye witnesses to this incident, and probably a lot more than that, yet this is the only report about this alleged incident that I can find, and no one there (including the person whom made this report) had enough sense to take a picture of this creature? In fact why hasn't more people come forward and said that they saw something? I can understand maybe a few people not wanting to have anything to do with this incident, but certainly there must have been atleast more that one person willing to come forward and tell what they saw?

Now there is actually one alleged picture of this creature, and it was taken at night via a trail camera:

Photo Taken by Game Cam of Unknown Creature in Roanaoke, VA.

Photo Courtesy of Unsolved Mysteries and Paranormal Society of Virginia.

http://www.paranormalsocieties.com/view_society.cfm?id=1528 

Now besides the fact that this photo is blurry and really doesn't show anything (and before you point out that the year is wrong that really is not that significant as the person who set up this camera could have set the year wrong) there is no way of knowing if this photo really is from Roanoke, or from the area which is being talked about? This is the only photo provided and as far as I'm concerned it provides no proof that this incident even occurred at all, or that it's in any way connected with it.

Another thing that makes me believe that this is a hoax are the last to sentences of this report:

• I have searched all over the local news to see if there has been any reporting on this incident because where it happened is a very populated area about half a mile from Tanglewood shopping center (at the intersection of Ogden and Colonial Road). I have found nothing in the local news.

My question isn't why wasn't this in the news, but why didn't the person whom made this report tell the local news stations themselves? I would have if I thought it was real and not just a hoax, and that there were multiple eye witnesses, and that it was in the middle of the day time...

In conclusion I believe this to be a hoax. While the details of the creature is very descriptive, there's very little other information (such as where exactly the creature was when the person first spotted it, and how far away the person believes that they were from the creature). This, combined with the fact that no one else has come forward to back up this story, nor did the person themselves report this to the news, and the lack of a follow-up interview the try to get more information (and a note in the report did state that the person did provide full contact information) has lead me to conclude that this is a hoax.

Could the pyramids be 28 million years old? Answer, no.

Recently I read an article on a website that promotes Ancient Aliens and trying to rewrite history in the strangest way possible about how the Pyramids in Egypt are 28 million years old (read the article here).

Now the article tries to link a comet that allegedly exploded over the region 28 million years with the creation of the pyramids, but really when I tried to read it, it just sounded like a bunch of nonsense. Infact most of it made no sense what so ever and was actually hard to read at points.

At the end of the article it makes it sound like aliens might have built the pyramids due to the sheer fact that humans were not around 28 million years ago (atleast they got the fact that humans weren't around 28 millions years ago right).

So, are the pyramids 28 million years ago?

Not a chance.

First, if these structures were 28 million years old, then the only parts that would be left of them would be the foundations, and what ever was underneath the pyramids. Everything above would have eroded away by now.

Infact many of these pyramids are in various states of erosion due to where they are located and are almost gone. Some of them don't even look like human made structures anymore, and look more like hills or small mountains out in the middle of the desert.

Pyramid of Amenemhat III (Dahshur)

And while others are in far better conditions then the one pictured above, even they are visibly eroding away. One day they will disappear. It might take 10,000 years, or it might take 20,000 years, but they will erode into nothing one day.

Besides all this, if these structures were 28 million years old, they would most likely be in far better condition than what they are today (not only are they suppose to be surviving erosion, but also climate change, continental shift, and a whole lot of other stuff) nor would they have been built out of limestone, or any stone at all.

The article is nothing more than a prime example of what pseudoscience, and is nothing than a bunch of nonsense that tries to make it sound like aliens built the pyramids, and that they are far older than what they are when say a person with even a junior high school level of science education could debunk this.

Frankenbull: GMOs run amuck, or a deception of the Anti-GMO movement

Recently I saw an article on a conspiracy theorist website concerning what they claimed was a genetically modified bull called the Belgian Blue (read the article here).

As you can clearly see that is one right big bull (although most bovine species do tend to be big creatures) and looks like a result direct genetic manipulation. Also, the way the article is worded (and the fact that the title of the article is "FRANKENBULL: GIGANTIC GMO BULLS Are Now A REALITY") makes it sound like the species was only recently developed, and that is was the result of direct genetic manipulation. This is not true for either one.

While the species is the result of a kind of genetic manipulation, it is not however the result direct genetic manipulation (which involves directly manipulating a life form's DNA) but instead indirect genetic manipulation through the use of selective breeding.

Infact the breed itself was first identified in the early 19th century, and the modern beef breed was developed in the 1950's through the use of artificial insemination. So it is not a new breed, and was not developed by messing with it's DNA (which is technology that scientists did not have back then). The article ofcourse doesn't mention any of this.

Heck, one of the photos in the article is also clearly not a modern photo either, and appears to be from atleast from either the 50's or the 60's:

Now by the standards of the Anti-GMO movement this freakish looking bovine is not a GMO animal because it's genetic manipulation is not the result of manipulating it's DNA, but the result of genetic manipulation through selective breeding (which almost all other species of domesticated plants and animals that are used for food are the result of in one form or another) and by their standards is okay to eat (which apparently it is).

The article is clearly being deceptive, and was only posted inorder to scare people away from GMO foods by making it appear that if scientists are willing to create something like that through direct genetic manipulation, then who knows what they are willing and able to do with the rest of our food. Infact you'd pretty much have live off the land and eat nothing but wild plants and animals inorder to have a diet that consisted of no foods that are the result of genetic manipulation of one form or another.

If the anti-GMO movement is so blatantly willing to lie about something like this that was so easy to find the truth about and debunk, then who knows what else they're willing to lie about inorder to make GMO foods look dangerous?

Of Elves, Abductions, and fake News Stories

The other day I came across this very strange "news" story on an blog that's been going around the internet about a Danish anthropologist by the name of Kalena Søndergaard, whom had apparently been abducted and held for seven years in Iceland.

Now normally this would be a tragic and horrible story, except the strange fact that (at least according to author of the story, C. Michael Forsyth) her abductors were elves (read the story here).

That's right, I said elves.

Obviously I'm skeptical of the story, and for good reason (mostly being that it is ridiculous as hell, and that the story itself written by a horror fiction writer).

Besides the obvious fact that the story was written by a horror fiction writer, and that it just sounds fake, the story itself has no links or references what so ever to show to show that this woman had ever been listed as missing, a major red flag telling that it was fake.

Infact when I did a Google search on her the only thing I could find out about Kalena were just copied and pasted portions of the story (or the whole story in itself) written by C. Michael Forsyth.

The second red flag that shot up for me was the fact that in the story there was information in there about the Homo floresiensis, a diminutive hominid that was very closely related to modern humans, and according to the story was a major part of the woman's doctoral thesis... about elves and how they might exist.

While I found the information to be interesting, the fact is that it had nothing to do with the story, and seemed to have been added in to attempt to prove that elves exist, or atleast give the possibility that elves exist more credibility.

The third red flag that shot up for me was the photos.

First the two photos showing a naked woman trapped on a cliff. I'm not sure whom that woman is, but I can tell you these two things about those photos: they are not of Kalena Søndergaard, and they weren't taken in Iceland. Infact they are of a nude sunbather who got trapped on a cliff while trying to get to Black's Beach in San Diego, California. The story itself is 2 1/2 years old and has nothing to do with Kalena (read story here).

The third photo of whom is suppose to be her shows a head shot of "Kalena" taken some time before here abduction. Now I'm not sure who that woman is either, but I can tell you one thing about her: She is not Kalena Søndergaard!

Again I did a Google search on the image found it to have no relation to Kalena except to the original story written by Mr. Forsyth. Infact the photo appears to be a stock photo as I have found this photo in numerous other websites that make no mention of Kalena, including Russian bride sites...

Now if the things that I mentioned above don't scream that this story is fake, the final piece of evidence does, and that is immediately after the end of the story there is an advertisement for the latest horror novel written by Mr. Forsyth. Not only is that very odd to me, it also seems very unethical as well to do something like that when concerning something as serious as this, and that the only type of person whom would do something like that is someone whom didn't take the story seriously.

Considering all the evidence here, and the fact that Mr. Forsyth is a fiction writer, I can only come to one conclusion: The story is completely fake.

If the Government is shut down, then who is paying the shills?

It's been a week now since the part of the federal government shut down due to lack of funding because Congress can not agree on a budget.

Since much of the government has been shut down due to funding there is a question I have for conspiracy theorists: Who is paying the shills?

Now according to many conspiracy theorists shills are apparently anyone who goes around the internet spreads what they consider to be "dis-information" to discredit their conspiracy theories (which for some reason is often times backed up with facts and logic).

Basically, skeptics and debunkers (those people claim to be volunteering their time to debunk conspiracy theories on the internet, but according to many conspiracy theorists, are being paid by the government to spread dis-information, and who's only "evidence" they have to prove that they are shills is simply that they disagree with the conspiracy theorist).

So if the government is shut down, then why do shills like myself (according to conspiracy theorists) still have their sites up, and are still posting blog articles debunking conspiracy theories?

Sure there are some Federal agencies still up and running, and their are still some government employees who are considered essential for running the government who are still working (granted many of them aren't actually going to be paid until after Congress comes up with a budget that gets approved by the president).

Now certainly spreading "dis-information" over the internet couldn't possibly be an essential part of government, could it? I can't see any logical reason why it would be.

Maybe the shills are being paid by the [insert some dark and shadowy group here] and that's the reason why they are continuing to spread their facts and logic based "dis-information".

Or, perhaps skeptics and debunkers really aren't shills, and they're not being paid by the government to spread what conspiracy theorists consider to be dis-information.

Perhaps what they are really spreading is research based facts and logic, and that they are doing it on their own and are not being paid by anyone.

Perhaps the real reason why conspiracy theorists believe that skeptics and debunkers are shills aren't because they are, but because they can't accept the fact someone has looked at the facts of some conspiracy theory and have concluded something different, and thus in their minds the only "logical" conclusion that they can come up with is that those people who are saying that a conspiracy theory is bogus is that the person whom is claiming that the conspiracy theory is bogus is being paid to say so.

Be skeptical of what you see on the Internet

Recently on my Facebook page a couple of people posted a very disturbing photo showing a heavily tattooed white male in what appears to be in his 20's apparently forcing a cute little puppy to drink a bottle of vodka. I was even asked by one of the people whom posted the image on their page to post the photo on this blog in hopes of actually finding the person and getting the person arrested, because allegedly that person had not been arrested yet.

I decided not to post the photo for two main reasons:

First, I considered the photo to be just to disturbing and graphic and might not just turn people away, but could result in people sending complaints to Blogger.com over the contents of the post, which could result in this blog having restrictions placed against it, or have the post pulled and removed.

And second, I don't know story behind that photo.

For one thing the person might have been making a very distasteful joke and only made it look like he was pouring vodka down the puppy's throat when in reality the bottle was already empty or sealed (it didn't look like there was any liquid in the bottle, or at least that any liquid was leaving the bottle), or, he could have been taking the bottle away from the puppy after it got a hold of it (and if you've ever puppy, you know they will get a hold of anything they can).

As it turns out, that's exactly what happened [read here]. The person in the photo wasn't trying to hurt the puppy, he was trying to prevent the puppy from accidentally hurting itself.

It literally took me two minutes to find out the truth behind that photo. All I did was take the photo, and dragged and dropped it into Google Image search, and as fast as my internet connection could take me, I found multiple pages that clearly show that the person was not abusing the puppy, which is why the guy was never arrested, because he never committed a crime.

This is a lesson for everyone when they see something like that photo on the internet and they're asked to repost it: do your research first on the subject at hand before you go and repost such a thing. It may not be what it seems, and all you may be doing is bringing unnecessary harm and grief to a person who doesn't not deserve it. Or the person or people may have already been caught and tried and convicted, and thus it would be pointless to repost such a photo.

Besides all of that, if the person is innocent (as this person is) you could be opening yourself up to a potential lawsuit from that person.

The lessons here are always be skeptical when you see something on the internet that outrages you, and do your research first before you repost something. It may not be what it seems.

Chemtrail Detox Spray: Another BS product

A few weeks I was shown a website about some type of spray called "Chemtrail Detox Spray".

When I first saw the name alone it made me think "what the heck?" Then I saw just what type of spray it was, and I went from thinking "what the heck" to "what a freaking sham!" and it made me think "can people really be this stupid?" Then I remember just how stupid of a statement that is because if people really are dumb enough (or crazy enough) to believe in chemtrails, they might just buy a spray that "detoxs" chemtrail "stuff"...

The claims made on the website are as follows:

• Chemtrail Detox Spray offers relief from the effects of Chemtrails.

Actually it can't offer "relief" from the effects of chemtrails because chemtrails do not exist.

There is no scientific evidence what so ever that shows that chemtrails exist, and that what conspiracy theorists believe to be chemtrails are actually just contrails and clouds. Even if they did exist they wouldn't be effective anyways because they would be sprayed way to high up in the atmosphere to have any affect on us, not to mention the fact that there just aren't enough planes to make such things effective on a global scale.

Also, all the claims of what chemtrails are suppose do are completely bogus as well.

The next claim made says that it is a:

• Non Chemical Homeopathic Remedy.

"Non Chemical Homeopathic" to me is sort of redundant. The reason I say this is because homeopathic medicine is a fraud medicine that is basically just water, and doesn't contain any chemicals in it...

It would be cheaper to fill up a spray bottle with water and spray it into your mouth than it would to buy this product. Heck it would be better to that anyways because the water in that spray bottle would be fresher than it would be in the Chemtrail Detox Spray!

The next thing the makers of this product says:

• Indications for relieving a broad spectrum of chemtrail induced states including:

And those would happen to be:

• sinus irritation,

Which is also a symptom of a cold or allergies.

• lowered immune system,

What exactly do they mean by thiss? Could it mean "feeling icky"? There are a number of things that can make a person feel icky. Heck, being outside in the heat and sun to long can make a person feel icky. The flu can make a person feel icky.

They really need to be more specific here, because generally when I think of "lowered immune system" I think of HIV and AIDS.

• body aches,

That could be a sign of the flu, or an injury, or aging.

• radioactive heavy metals,

If we really were being sprayed with radioactive heavy metals there would be no way to hide that! And if you do have radioactive heavy metals in your system, then you need to check yourself into your local ER ASAP (and you should consider not living next to a nuclear power plant).

• memory loss,

That could be due to stress, or aging, or an early sign of Alzheimer's.

• fatigue,

That could be caused by not getting enough sleep, or working to much, or it being cold outside, or not drinking enough coffee in the morning, or not drinking enough water when it's hot out, or eating a bunch of junk food.

• infections,

Infections are caused by bacteria and viruses, not chemicals.

• mental/emotional health

If you're having mental and emotional problems an expensive little spray bottle filled with water isn't going to help. What you need to do is go see a psychiatrist. Not only can they help you with your mental and emotional problems, they could also help you get over your belief in chemtrails.

Now the directions on how use this stuff is surprisingly very simple:

• Spray 1 dose directly in mouth as needed until symptoms improve.

Hey, that's great! I don't have to worry about dosages (not like I would anyways with this). I can just spray this into my mouth until I feel better, or it's gone (probably the latter).

Lets face the facts about this Chemtrail Detox Spray. It's nothing more than an over priced little spray bottle filled with water that's been deceptively labeled to make it look like it is real medicine in order to trick paranoid people who think that chemtrails are real into buying it!

Fortunately the site itself has been taken down from it's web hosting site Wordpress (although you can still see the site's claims here and here) and while I don't know why the site was taken down, my best guesses is that it was either taken down by the owner of the site due to the negative attention of trying to sell a sham product, or by Wordpress itself due to the fact it was selling a sham product.

5 Things I've noticed about... 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

A few months ago I did one of these "5 Things I've noticed about..." articles on the people in the 9/11 Truth Movement, and it had me thinking to myself "what about the conspiracy theories that the people in the 9/11 Truth Movements promote?"

So what about those conspiracy theories, and what are some of the biggest things about them that just stand out? Well, I've noticed a lot of things about them, and I've narrowed them down to five different things.

So here are five things I've noticed about 9/11 conspiracy theories:

5. There are a lot of them.

Probably one of the biggest problems with the 9/11 conspiracy theories is that there are more than one of them, instead of just one that the people who believe in and focus on.

For some people these can be confusing not only because they are all very different, but they are mostly not even connected to one another.

Not only can they be confusing, but they are also progressively more bizarre as well.

There is the let it happen theory, the controlled demolition theory, the drone plane theory, the nuke theory, and even the no plane/space lasers (which is so bizarre a person in the 9/11 Truth Movement debunked it).

I guess you say that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are a lot like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories in that not only are there more than one theory to what happened, but also because...

4. There is apparently more than one perpetrator.

Besides there just being more than one 9/11 conspiracy theory, according to these conspiracy theories, there is no solid conclusion on who the "real" perpetrator is.

Some people claim that it was Al-Qaida, it's just that those in the government allowed them to attack. Some people say that it was a collaboration between the government and Al-Qaida. Some people believe it was just the government, or Israel, or the Illuminati, or someone else entirely.

It just seems like none of these conspiracy theorists who claim that 9/11 was an inside job can agree upon who did it, and how they did it. Of course that isn't very surprising to me, because...

3. The biggest promoters of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are kooks.

Now I'm saying that all people who believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theories are kooks, but the biggest promoters of these theories are.

There's Alex Jones, whom constantly promotes conspiracy theories on his radio program, thinks everything bad that happens is a false flag attack, and just starts yelling and making incoherent rants.

There's Mike Adams, a promoter of pseudoscience and medical quackery (especially dangerous types of medical quackery), as well as other conspiracy theories.

Finally, there's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran, whom in addition to promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories, is also a holocaust denier, and is antisemitic.

They are of course not the only one's who promote the 9/11 conspiracy theories, but they are some of the biggest ones, and many of the other promoters of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are just as nutty (or possibly fraudulent) as these guys.

2. They contain a lot of bigotry.

Many conspiracy theories contain forms of bigotry within them, and 9/11 conspiracy theories are no different.

A lot of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are antisemitic, either indirectly by blaming several prominent Jews of being involved in the attacks, or blatantly antisemitic by blaming Israel, and that all the Jewish people who worked at the World Trade Center were in on it.

Besides the antisemitism within these conspiracy theories, these conspiracy theories are also racist as well, because many conspiracy theorists try to justify their belief that someone other than some people from the middle east had to have done this because people from the middle east (and Arab people in general) are not mentally capable of planning out and doing such a thing, or if they did, then they would have had to have had help from either white people or Jews, or have been allowed to do this.

1. They've all been debunked.

Every single 9/11 conspiracy theory has been debunked. From the "let it happen" theories, to the controlled demolition theory, to the really crazy no plane theories, not a single one has ever been proven to be true, or have been shown to hold up to any sort of evidence, or even hold up to logical arguments.

In fact they have all been debunked for years now, and some skeptics no longer even debate and debunk the people who make these claims, either because they have determined that those people are either to stupid to figure out that none of these conspiracy theories are true, or that they are to self deluded to be able to see that what they believe to be true is not, or that they are mentally ill, or they are a liar with an ulterior motive.

The fact is that all of the evidence surrounding the 9/11 attacks point in only one direction: Al-Qaida and the 19 members of that terrorist group who hijacked those planes and flew them into the sides of those buildings, and no one else.

10 More Lies Truthers Tell

A few months I wrote an article about ten of the most common lies that people in the 9/11 Truth Movement (whether it be intentional or not) tend to tell.

While I did touch upon ten of what I considered to be biggest lies, I still felt there were more lies that people in the 9/11 Truth Movement promoted that still needed to be addressed.

So, I have put together another list of ten more lies that Truther tells:

10. Nothing hit World Trade Center 7.

Actually something did hit World Trade Center 7... a skyscraper.

To be more precise falling debris from World Trade Center 1 hit World Trade Center 7 and caused huge amounts of damage to the lower floors of the building. The combination of that, and the fact that the building had been on fire for hours caused the building to collapse.

9. Only two buildings were hit, but three were destroyed.

This is not true. In fact more than three building were destroyed that day. World Trade Center 3, 4, 5, and 6 were heavily damaged that day and what was left of them had to be torn down because they could not be repaired.

Also, many other buildings around the World Trade Center were damaged as well.

8. A nuclear bomb brought down the towers.

If this was true then this would be the easiest one to prove, as all you would have to do is go down to the World Trade Center site with a Geiger counter and one would easily find large amounts of radiation there.

Also, lower Manhattan would be uninhabitable right now due to that radiation, plus the destruction caused would have been far greater, and a lot more people would have died, either from the initial blast from the weapon, or from the radiation and radioactive fall out.

Plus, there would have been an obvious flash some what similar to the Sun when the device went, and there would have been no way to hide that.

7. The towers were reduced to dust and gravel.

Primarily promoted by followers of Judy Wood and those that believe in her theory that the towers were brought down high energy lasers, their claims are that the towers were reduced to dust and gravel by these alleged lasers.

While the collapse of the towers did create a lot of dust and gravel, it also left large chunks of concrete, long pieces of steel beams, and even places where pieces of the outer wall several stories high still stood.

6. Israel did it.

Besides the fact that there is no evidence what so ever that Israel did this, the fact is that Israel had no reason to do something like this.

The United States is Israel's biggest supporter, and President George W. Bush was one of Israel's strongest supporters at that.

To simply put, the people in charge of Israel would have had to have lost their minds to have done something like that. Not only would they have been risking losing support from the United States, but also risked going war with the United States in order to get more support from the United States.

5. No Jews were killed that day because they got a call from Israel to stay home.

While estimates vary on just how many Jews died that day (mostly because by Jewish tradition some people might be considered Jewish, but in reality they don't consider themselves to be Jewish) it's believed that somewhere around 270 to 400 Jews died that day, including five Israeli citizens.

Also, considering how many Jewish people actually worked at the World Trade Center, a few of them would have said by now that they had gotten a call telling them to stay home.

4. We're just asking questions.

Actually no. What truthers are really doing is making accusations while at the same time asking leading question in an attempt to influence others. When confronted about this they'll claim that they are "Just asking questions."

There is actually a term for this, it's called JAQing off.

3. Other false flag attacks help give credibility that the 9/11 attacks were false flag attacks.

There are two problems with this: the first one is that most "false flag attacks" that people in 9/11 Truth Movement claims to be false flag attacks are in fact not false flag attacks and have been proven so.

The second problem is that even if some of these alleged false flag attacks really could be proven to be false flag attacks, it still doesn't prove or give any credibility that the 9/11 attacks were false flag attacks, especially when all the claims about it have been all debunked.

2. New information is constantly coming out proving that the 9/11 attacks was committed by the US government/Israel/Illuminati.

No there isn't. There hasn't been any new information from the 9/11 Truth Movement since 2005!

Any "new" information that the 9/11 Truth Movement claims to have is just old information that's been rehashed and rearranged in an attempt to make it look new, but in reality is just the same old stuff that has dis-proven and debunked for years.

1. There is undeniable proof that the 9/11 attacks were an inside jobs.

No there isn't.

If this was true then members of the 9/11 Truth Movement should present their evidence to the NYPD and get the people arrested who they believe were the "real" perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. This is not done of course because they do not have any proof what so ever that the 9/11 attacks was an inside job, which they probably know, but don't want to admit.

Odds are that any "proof" that they have is going to be the same stuff that's been debunked for years and that no one outside of the 9/11 Truth Movement takes seriously any more.

Why do people lie about their belief in a Conspiracy Theory? Part 1: Fear

Why do some people continue to express belief in a conspiracy theory when they actually no longer believe in that conspiracy theory?

Yes, as hard as it might sound to some people, their are people out there that do in fact lie about their beliefs in a conspiracy theory, and there are actually several different reason why someone does this, but one of the main reasons why someone does this is fear.

In fact not only is fear a major reason why someone would claim to believe in a conspiracy theory that they no longer believe in, there are actually several different reasons (or excuses) for that fear.

What if?

Probably one of the most common reasons why a person says they believe in a conspiracy theory, even when they do not actually believe in it is the question of "what if?" as in "what if I'm wrong?"

The fear of being wrong about something is often times one of the biggest reasons why someone claims to believe in something when in their minds they actually don't (or at least question themselves) because they think it might save them in some ways if they turn out to be wrong and it actually is true...

They don't want to look stupid.

For some people whom believe in a conspiracy theory, but have since stopped believing but continue to claim to believe in a conspiracy theory, they may be continuing to claim they believe in a conspiracy theory due to the fact that they, in a way, would be admitting that they were being stupid, and maybe in their egotistical minds, would look stupid in the process.

Because of this fear, combined with their own ego, it can cause a person to continue saying that they believe in a long after they actually stopped believing in a conspiracy theory, and can cause them to continue to try to prove a conspiracy theory that they no longer believe in is real to other people.

They can also be very sensitive as well and blow up when someone questions their claims, or intelligence, or sanity.

They're afraid losing relationships.

Some people might claim to believe in a conspiracy theory not because genuinely believe in it, but because someone they are close to, or a group of people they are close to, believes in that conspiracy theory.

This relationship could be with a family member they are close to, or their entire family, and they're afraid that if they speak out and say that they do not believe in the conspiracy theory that the family member (or members) believes in, or do not even express any of the same beliefs in said conspiracy theory, they may lose what relationship they have with that family member, or their family.

The relationship lose might not come from a family member either. It could be a fear of a lose of friends.

Lets say a person has a friend, or a group of friends, who believe in a conspiracy theory. Or, maybe they even joined an organization that promotes a certain conspiracy theory, and they made friends with some of the people in that organization. Some people might continue to claim they believe in that conspiracy theory long after they stopped believing in it simply because they don't want to lose their friends.

They're afraid of being harassed and retaliated against.

While some people's fear based reasons for continuing to believe in a conspiracy theory they no longer believe in (or never really did) might be a selfishly based fear, some people's fear might be a legitimate fear, such as the fear of being harassed and/or retaliated against.

This fear is a very legitimate in fact, not only because conspiracy theorists have been known to harass skeptics and debunkers who express doubt in a conspiracy theory, or actually prove a conspiracy theory to be false, but also because it has happened before to other former conspiracy theorists too.

This fear of harassment might not even come from people in a conspiracy theorist organization. It may come from the whole community, especially if the whole, or at least many in the community actually believes in a certain conspiracy theory and you do not. Expressing disbelief in a conspiracy theory in such a community could result in some people trying to run that person out of town.

Because of this fear of harassment and other, perhaps more violent forms of retaliation, this may keep a person claiming to believe in a conspiracy theory long after they no longer do.

They're afraid of being abused.

While most people believe in a conspiracy theory because they want to, some people only say they believe in a conspiracy theory out of the very real and legitimate fear of being assaulted by someone close to them that does.

This fear can be very real and could be the result of a spouse, or a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or even a parent whom is either intimidating, authoritarian, and/or abusive. Combine this with a belief in conspiracy theories that person might have, and it might make a person whom is on the receiving end of the abuse feel like they have no choice but to say that they believe in a conspiracy theory simply to stay safe.

Sometimes they claim to believe in a conspiracy theory not out of the fear of possibly being abused, but because they have been told by the abusive party that they will be beaten if they defy them, or actually have been beaten for defying them.

Fear of financial lose.

The final fear based reason why some people claim to believe in a conspiracy theory even when they no longer do (or never did) is because they have a real financial incentive to claim to believe in a conspiracy.

First, the person could own a business that has clientele that not only believe in conspiracy theories, but believe in it them so much so that they might not do business with someone whom doesn't agree with them (this could be based off of their own fear that a person could be a shill if they don't agree with them).

Because the owner might not want to lose that person's business, they might claim they also believe in that conspiracy theory, why in reality they really don't.

Now the other type of fear of financial lose might not come from the fear of the lose of clientele, but the fear of losing your job, either by getting fired by a manager or owner who believes in a conspiracy theory and doesn't want anyone working for them that doesn't, or a co-worker whom believes in a conspiracy theory, and retaliates and does anything they can to get a person fired because they don't believe in the conspiracy theory that they believe in.

What is a Sheeple? The Conspiracy Theorist definition, and the reality based definition.

Recently on Facebook came across a picture on my feed that, considering the group it was posted in (it was a comedy page) I thought was very... unusual, to say the least.

This is the picture that was posted in said group:

I found this picture a tad bit disturbing, not only because it was posted in a group meant for comedy, but because it clearly showed what at least some conspiracy theorists thinks about people who disagree with them or out right do not believe (and most of the time, for good reason).

In fact this description would be far more accurate if the word "Sheeple" was replaced with "Conspiracy Theorist", as many skeptics would agree that this would more accurately describe many conspiracy theorists (or at least the far more psychotic ones).

Now, a far more accurate definition for the word "Sheeple" would probably be this:

Sheeple - A derogatory word that combines the words "sheep" and "people", and is typically used by conspiracy theorists to try to describe a person whom does not believe in their conspiracy theories (see Skeptic).

Typically the word "Sheeple" is used in arguments over the internet as a blatant insult directed at a skeptic, and is also used as an attempt to intimidate a skeptic into backing down or backing away from an argument concerning a conspiracy theory, and/or even bully them into agreeing with the conspiracy theorist.

This is not to be confused with the word "Shill" which is typically directed towards people who not only do not believe in a conspiracy theory that a conspiracy theorist is presenting, but also presents evidence and/or logical reasoning to show why they don't believe in a conspiracy theory.

Both "Shill" and "Sheeple" are also used by conspiracy theorists as an attempt to end an argument over the internet while trying to save face when it becomes obvious to them that they can not win and are just making themselves appear as someone of either low intelligence and/or questionable sanity.

That would be a far more accurate description for the word "Sheeple". Basically speaking, it is just a typical insult that conspiracy theorists use to try to scare away a skeptic.

The best thing to do if someone calls you a sheeple is to ask them why they think you are a sheeple, and then explain to them why you are not one (this also works if they call you a shill). If this does not work either ignore the accusations, ignore the person completely, or (if you feel like just making them mad) tell them that they are actually conceding defeat in that they actually have nothing left to counter argue, and that they are actually trying to end the argument while at the same time attempting to make it appear as if they have actually won the argument.

Regardless of how you decide to actually handle someone who calls you a a sheeple or a shill, you just have to remember that this is typical conspiracy theorist speak, and that they're only saying it because they're mad that you don't believe them.

5 Things I've noticed about... UFOs

UFO. It's a term and phenomenon that's been around with the public for decades now and has basically the main name used when someone claims they have seen an alien spaceship.

While there are many things that I have noticed about UFOs, I've narrowed it down to five things.

So here are five things I've noticed about UFOs:

5. People use that term in contrast what it really means.

I'm sure that most people know that "UFO" means Unidentified Flying Object, but most of the time now when someone uses the term UFO they don't actually use it to describe an object in the air that they can not identify at the moment, instead it now means to most people that when a person says that they are seeing a UFO that they mean to say that they are seeing what they believe is an alien spaceship.

Even if it turns out a UFO is really a alien spacecraft, then the term UFO can not be applied anymore because the Unidentified Flying Object has in fact been identified.

4. People take horrible pictures and videos of them.

Most photos and videos of UFOs tend to be pretty bad. Many of them are blurry and don't really give much details. Some of them just look like balls of light or some other featureless object in the sky that could really be just something simple like a balloon (and yes, balloons do get misidentified as UFOs).

While there are some good photos and videos of UFOs out there that are pretty detailed, there's just one little problem with most of them...

3. The good ones are faked.

There are good, detailed photos and videos of UFOs out there that can be easily found on the internet. The one problem that all these very highly detailed photos and videos have is that they are always found out to be fakes.

UFO photos and videos have been being faked for decades now, be it either using built from scratch models used from the 1950's on up til today, to digitally altered photos and videos that have been being made since the 1990's.

People will probably continue to make these fake UFO photos and videos because they tend to get people attention, while skeptics will continue to debunk them.

2. It's big business.

Regardless of whether or not UFOs are actually alien spacecrafts, man-made objects, or natural phenomenon, UFOs themselves have become a big business.

There's numerous movies, TV shows, and video games about UFOs, and even toys designed after what most people believe that UFOs (and aliens) look like. Of course lets not forget the numerous books on UFOs too.

Lets face it, the exploitation of UFOs is a multi-million dollar, if not billion dollar industry.

1. They can be easily explained.

Many people believe that UFOs are actually alien spacecraft, but the vast majority of them can be easily explained as being either man-made objects, aircraft, natural and weather related phenomenon, or even just a trick of light (and of course outright hoaxes).

Even those that can't be easily explain right away, can be explained after some investigation. Even with the ones that can't be explained at all it still doesn't mean that they're alien spacecraft. It just means that there is not enough information to figure out what it is that was seen.

'Conspiracy theorists' sane: government dupes crazy, hostile: A flawed article about conspiracy theorists and skeptics

A few days ago I came across an article that had been published on PressTV (which is owned by the government of Iran) that was titled "New studies: 'Conspiracy theorists' sane; government dupes crazy, hostile".

The title alone made it quite clear that the article was one sided, and that it is also quite clear what the writer of the article thinks about skeptics and debunkers... and anyone else who believes the reality that the U.S. government did not stage the worst terrorist attack in history.

Let me share with you the first couple of paragraphs of this article:

• The most recent study was published on July 8th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent (UK). Entitled “What about Building 7? A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories,” the study compared “conspiracist” (pro-conspiracy theory) and “conventionalist” (anti-conspiracy) comments at news websites. 
  
  The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones: “Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist.” In other words, among people who comment on news articles, those who disbelieve government accounts of such events as 9/11 and the JFK assassination outnumber believers by more than two to one. That means it is the pro-conspiracy commenters who are expressing what is now the conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters are becoming a small, beleaguered minority. 

I can tell just by reading this that what this article is claiming is very flawed.

For one thing it's assuming that the majority of people making comments on an internet news article reflects the views of the majority of the people. Even on non-conspiracy theory subjects where the majority of people posting comments may seem like the overall majority, in reality they are just being the more vocal of the two groups.

The seconded problem is this "coded comments" thing. What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the people who did this study read comments individually and were able to establish their content and context? Because of the way it was worded it doesn't sound like it to me. It makes it sound like the people who did the study actually let a computer search for certain words and phrases that are commonly used among conspiracy theorists and skeptics, which is a highly flawed way to research something like this because computers can't understand context like humans can.

This of course isn't the only thing this article claims. It also claims that those that believe what they are calling the "mainstream views" are also display more anger and hostility towards those who don't:

• Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility: “The research… showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals.” 

I admit, sometimes skeptics and debunkers do get angry at conspiracy theorists, but actual hostility is actually pretty rare (although it this can be questionable as what some people consider to be hostility might not be considered hostility to others), and usually comes in the form of insults to the conspiracy theorist's intelligence or sanity (both of which after time becomes questionable) and rarely includes the form of threats (unless you include threats of getting banned and having your comments removed). Conspiracy theorists on the other hand engage in hostility towards others all the time, including fellow conspiracy theorists.

This paragraph is also making the assumption that just because the majority of people who comment on internet articles about the 9/11 attacks reflects the majority of the population itself. It does not. In fact the majority of the American people have never believed that the government committed the 9/11 attacks.

The next two paragraphs makes it appear that skeptics are the real conspiracy theorists:

• Additionally, it turned out that the anti-conspiracy people were not only hostile, but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well. According to them, their own theory of 9/11 - a conspiracy theory holding that 19 Arabs, none of whom could fly planes with any proficiency, pulled off the crime of the century under the direction of a guy on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan - was indisputably true. The so-called conspiracists, on the other hand, did not pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11: “For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account.” 
  
  In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist - a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory - accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it. 

This is of course another common claim and belief among conspiracy theorists in that the skeptics of the 9/11 conspiracy theories haven't done their research and just assume that the official account is correct, when in reality skeptics have done their research and have determined that the official account is for the most part correct, and that it is the claims that the conspiracy theorists make that are flawed and incorrect.

This article also makes it appear that skeptics feel like they are "rivals" to conspiracy theorists. This is completely untrue. Skeptics don't consider themselves to be rivals to conspiracy theorists because skeptics don't consider a conspiracy theorists conspiracy theory to be rival to the truth.

As it turns out this whole article is hugely cherry picked from the original article published by Micheal J. Woods and Karen M. Douglas (read here) and comes to an entirely different conclusion than what the original article did.

This article for PressTV, which was written by Dr. Kevin Barrett, a 9/11 Truther and conspiracy theorist himself, is hugely deceptive, and is nothing more than an attempt to make people who are not apart of the 9/11 Truth movement look like a bunch deluded people who live in a fantasy world, when in reality the opposite is true.

In conclusion, the article is nothing more than propaganda and dis-information.

5 Things I've noticed about... Chemtrails

Chemtrails are a conspiracy theory that the government (and the allegedly existing New World Order) are spraying chemicals on the population from air planes high up in the air. After examining these claims there are certain things that I've noticed about these alleged chemtrails.

So here are five things I've noticed about chemtrails:

5. They're not doing what they're suppose to.

While chemtrails have been accused of being sprayed around for several different reasons, one of the primary reasons by people who claim they are real is that they are being sprayed for population reduction.

If this happens to be true, then what ever that is being sprayed isn't very effective, because the world population went from 6 billion in 1999 to 7 billion in 2012, i.e. the world population increased by a billion people in a span of thirteen years.

4. They're spraying to high up.

If I was going to spray the population with a bunch of chemicals, I wouldn't be spraying from six to seven miles up in the air, because I know what ever chemicals that were being sprayed are just going to thin out in the atmosphere and wouldn't be effective.

In fact most people who do spray chemicals from planes for a living (like crop dusters) do it while they are very close to the ground (about 20 to 30 feet) because it is far more effective to spray close to the ground than from high up.

3. They look and act an awful lot like contrails.

Now there are a lot of conspiracy theorists who will claim that there is a difference between chemtrails and contrails (such as how long it stays up in the atmosphere) but really how long one of these "trails" stay up in the air does not determine what they are because atmospheric conditions can keep a contrail up in the air for quiet a long time.

With this in mind it would really be impossible to tell the difference between the two.

Maybe they're all contrails like everyone else says?

2. Some people are seriously scared of these things.

There are some people who are seriously scared of what they believe are chemtrails, and won't go outside whenever they see what they believe are a bunch of chemtrails in the upper atmosphere, and will even spray vinegar around because they think it will get rid of the chemtrails and their chemicals.

Some people have become so frighten in fact that they are making threats to shoot down planes (which has become a real fear of pilots in Australia).

Of course there is no real reason for this fear, because...

1. Chemtrails don't exist.

There is zero evidence that chemtrails exist, and that they are nothing more then a bunch of contrails, and the affects of which and how they act are very well known, and have been for decades.

The chemtrail conspiracy theories have been around since the mid 1990's, and despite the many claims by conspiracy theorists, not one shred of real evidence has ever been produced that proves that chemtrails exist at all. The only evidence that conspiracy theorists have ever been able to produced are photos of contrails that were misidentified by conspiracy theorists, and photos and videos that had been altered by conspiracy theorists.

The fact is that belief in chemtrails is nothing more than a irrational fear brought on by a dis-proven conspiracy theory that really has no reason to exist.

Still think Sylvia Browne has psychic powers?

A few days ago three women who had been kidnap from around ten years ago in Cleveland were found alive and well, and that the person who had kidnapped them the women was arrested.

This is of course a rare, but extraordinary thing to happen, as most of the time when a person is abducted by a non-family member they are, unfortunately, murdered.

In fact, the mother of Amanda Berry had been told about ten years ago that her daughter had been murdered, and the person who told her that was not a police officer...

It was psychic Sylvia Browne.

In 2004 Amanda Berry's mother came to the Montel Williams Show to ask Sylvia if she was alive:

Amanda Berry's mother asks Psychic Sylvia Browne 'Is she out there'

Sylvia Browne told the woman that here daughter was dead and that she was "in Heaven on the other side."

Fortunately, this wasn't true, and Amanda is still alive.

In fact, Amanda is being hailed as a hero because she is the one who escaped and called 911.

Sadly, her mother will never know this (at least not in this world) as she died in 2006.

Now, Sylvia Browne has commented on this, basically saying that even she is sometimes wrong, which any skeptic that has investigated her claims will tell you is greatly exaggerated. She really had no choice but to comment on this anyways because her Facebook page been flooded with people posting links to her failed psychic reading (among the people calling her an outright fraud).

This isn't the first time she has been incorrect on criminal cases like this one. In fact she has made readings for well over 100 missing persons and murder cases, and she has been correct for not one of them (which now includes this one).

I don't blame Amanda Berry's mother for going to Sylvia Browne and asking her if her daughter was alive or not. Her daughter had been missing for a over a year at that point, and she just was desperate to know what happened to her.

I know that, statistically speaking of course, that these types of missing person cases don't end well, and that Sylvia Browne knew this, and that she told Amanda Berry's mother that her daughter was dead not because of some clairvoyant viewing, but was based on what is basically an educated guess...

Of course, it doesn't even matter if Sylvia Browne was actually right and that Amanda Berry was in fact dead, the fact is that her "predication" would had been based on nothing more than a guess!

Clearly, she guessed wrong, and it's a good thing she did too.

And it's the only thing she did good in this case.