Alaska's finally finished counting the ballots for its Senate race, and it appears that incumbent (and convicted felon) Ted Stevens is out of a job. Replacing him in the Senate will be Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage. Wait a second...Begich...Begich...where have I heard that name before...?
Oh yeah! Mayor Begich is the younger brother of "doctor" Nick Begich, who readers may remember as one of the chief architects of the crazy conspiracy theories about the HAARP. I don't want to get into another HAARP discussion on here because I've honestly had my fill of that particular subject for the rest of the foreseeable future, but I'll remind readers that the crazy elder Begich brother has claimed the title of "doctor"for himself because of his time at the Open International University for Complementary Medicines. The OIUC is* located in Sir Lanka, will confer "knighthood" upon its students for a $400 fee, and is so shady that it is eschewed even by chiropractors. He also thinks that HAARP, which is used to study the ionosphere, is actually a secret government plot to cause natural disasters and.or control people's minds - suggestions that are so bizarre that they're not even wrong.
Let's hope the younger Begich has a better head on his shoulders.
*Or "was". Their site doesn't seem to have been updated for several years.
Showing posts with label haarp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label haarp. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Considering the Source: A Primer
Our friend Steve has left us another vitriolic post in which he has "cast the pearls of valuable evidence before the swine" of skeptics like Jak and myself, all the while sneering that we'd never look at the valuable links that he so magnanimously Googled up for us. Well, I've checked them out and now I think it's time for a lesson. Keeping with yesterday's theme of considering sources, let's have a look at some of the websites that our friend Steve has offered up as evidence that the HAARP facility in Alaska is actually a gigantic killing machine:
EastlundScience.com - The website run under the auspices of the deceased Columbia University physicist Bernard Eastlund, who worked on concepts similar to those utilized by HAARP. (He also helped to invent the fast-drying labels of Coors beer cans.) This site expresses concerns that HAARP-like technology could be used to defeat satellites, but since this can already be accomplished using, oh, I dunno, a Ticonderoga Class Aegis Cruiser armed with Raytheon SM-3 missiles, it's hard for me to get too worked up about it. On the subject of weather modification, however, the site has this to say:
Of further note, I'd like to point out that simply having patented something doesn't actually mean that it works - the U.S. Patent Office is not in the business of determining if inventions are functional, but rather it is in the business of determining if they are ripped off. See for example this list of perpetual motion machine patents.
BroJon.org - This site is a clearinghouse of news links mixed in with in-house conspiracy essays that warn of "Media Mind Control", claim that climate change is untrue, and attempt to prove that catastrophism is the primary method of speciation on the planet. Among the other services this site offers is an "earthquake calculator"(Based on Stonehenge, they claim. According to our BroJon friends natural disasters almost always occur during full moons. Perhaps it's also a werewolf detector.) and a "remote viewing aptitude test".
FromTheWilderness.com - Run by Michael Ruppert, this site has the ostensibly noble goal of serving as a watchdog against governmental encroachments on civil liberties in the post 9/11 world. The HAARP article was written by Michel Chossudovsky an economics professor from the University of Ottawa, citing sources such as EarthPulse.com and Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a biometrics specialist who also opposes mammograms, the irradiation of food to kill bacteria, and all nuclear power. Chossudovsky is concerned that technology such as what he thinks HAARP is could be used to enforce U.S. hegemony and economic globalization, to which he is opposed.
It's worth noting that much of the to-do about HAARP seems to be generated by Bertell, Chossudovsky and a fellow named Nick Begich. (Begich calls himself a doctor because of his degree from the the Open International University for Complementary Medicines.*) These three extensively cite each other (Chossudovsky's paper cites both of them, for example.) and it is a handful of their essays that most commonly pop up when you look for scary HAARP stuff online. (In fact, one of the links we looked at yesterday took us to a paper by Bertell.) Much of what they claim is either based on their own naked assertions or citations that reference one another's naked assertions.
Crystalinks.com - Run by Ellie Crystal, "psychic and reiki master" and her mystical companion "a spirit named Zoroaster", this site is, frankly, a big concentrated pile of woo-woo. She claims to hold a "Ph.D. in metaphysical studies" but lists no university in her biography. Actually, there are two biographies on her site and only one mentions the Ph.D. - the other only says that she has a Masters of Psychology from NYU. This is extra confusing because both of these biographies are on the same page. She has an enormous number of articles, most of which are apparently culled from Wikipedia - Her HAARP article is essentially just a cut and paste job from the Wikipedia entry, right down to the section headings. Also of note is her "Predictions for 2001" page, which claims to have an extremely detailed prediction of the September 11th attacks...too bad the Web Archive shows that this page didn't exist before 2005.
What does all of this mean? Well, for one thing it means that our friend Steven suggests that we should trust the word of conspiracy theorists and pseudo-psychic hucksters rather than, say, the independent scientists that actually run HAARP. However, I imagine that the information given on the HAARP website won't be considered valid by our friend because, as he has noted repeatedly, the government might be lying. Now, I have no doubt that the government has lied, does lie, and will lie again, but that doesn't mean that we should embrace as canon any conspiracy theory that we can conceive of as possible. It also doesn't mean that we should trust a psychic to tell us how a sophisticated ionospheric research program works, nor does it mean we should place all of our faith in half a dozen papers with inbred citations from a handful of scholars who are working far outside of their fields.
Sorry Steve, I remain skeptical.
*The University's website it is here, though it apparently hasn't been updated since 2005. This "university" may no longer be in operation and is decried even by freakin' chiropractors for being shady.
EastlundScience.com - The website run under the auspices of the deceased Columbia University physicist Bernard Eastlund, who worked on concepts similar to those utilized by HAARP. (He also helped to invent the fast-drying labels of Coors beer cans.) This site expresses concerns that HAARP-like technology could be used to defeat satellites, but since this can already be accomplished using, oh, I dunno, a Ticonderoga Class Aegis Cruiser armed with Raytheon SM-3 missiles, it's hard for me to get too worked up about it. On the subject of weather modification, however, the site has this to say:
One of the reasons weather modification is not a science is that scientists have made what they considered to be reasonable assessments of the relative size of forcing technologies (such as wind generators, microwave heaters, or explosions) and determined that the large size of weather systems make it useless to attempt to change weather patterns with human intervention.Nonetheless, Eastlund apparently really did think that weather manipulation was ultimately possible, but the site also notes that the HAARP antenna array is far too small for such endeavors. Furthermore, nowhere even in the most far-fetched possibilities listed on this site is man-made earthquake technology even mentioned. That being said, regardless of what Eastlund may or may not have thought, the official HAARP website states the following:
The HAARP facility will not affect the weather. Transmitted energy in the frequency ranges that will be used by HAARP is not absorbed in either the troposphere or the stratosphere - the two levels of the atmosphere that produce the earth's weather. Electromagnetic interactions only occur in the near-vacuum of the rarefied region above about 70 km known as the ionosphere.The ionosphere is created and continuously replenished as the sun's radiation interacts with the highest levels of the Earth's atmosphere. The downward coupling from the ionosphere to the stratosphere/troposphere is extremely weak, and no association between natural ionospheric variability and surface weather and climate has been found, even at the extraordinarily high levels of ionospheric turbulence that the sun can produce during a geomagnetic storm. If the ionospheric storms caused by the sun itself don't affect the surface weather, there is no chance that HAARP can do so either.
Keep in mind that even if the ionosphere did have an effect on surface weather, HAARP causes fluctuations in the ionosphere that are vastly weaker than the naturally occurring fluctuations it experiences every day because of the sun.
Of further note, I'd like to point out that simply having patented something doesn't actually mean that it works - the U.S. Patent Office is not in the business of determining if inventions are functional, but rather it is in the business of determining if they are ripped off. See for example this list of perpetual motion machine patents.
BroJon.org - This site is a clearinghouse of news links mixed in with in-house conspiracy essays that warn of "Media Mind Control", claim that climate change is untrue, and attempt to prove that catastrophism is the primary method of speciation on the planet. Among the other services this site offers is an "earthquake calculator"(Based on Stonehenge, they claim. According to our BroJon friends natural disasters almost always occur during full moons. Perhaps it's also a werewolf detector.) and a "remote viewing aptitude test".
FromTheWilderness.com - Run by Michael Ruppert, this site has the ostensibly noble goal of serving as a watchdog against governmental encroachments on civil liberties in the post 9/11 world. The HAARP article was written by Michel Chossudovsky an economics professor from the University of Ottawa, citing sources such as EarthPulse.com and Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a biometrics specialist who also opposes mammograms, the irradiation of food to kill bacteria, and all nuclear power. Chossudovsky is concerned that technology such as what he thinks HAARP is could be used to enforce U.S. hegemony and economic globalization, to which he is opposed.
It's worth noting that much of the to-do about HAARP seems to be generated by Bertell, Chossudovsky and a fellow named Nick Begich. (Begich calls himself a doctor because of his degree from the the Open International University for Complementary Medicines.*) These three extensively cite each other (Chossudovsky's paper cites both of them, for example.) and it is a handful of their essays that most commonly pop up when you look for scary HAARP stuff online. (In fact, one of the links we looked at yesterday took us to a paper by Bertell.) Much of what they claim is either based on their own naked assertions or citations that reference one another's naked assertions.
Crystalinks.com - Run by Ellie Crystal, "psychic and reiki master" and her mystical companion "a spirit named Zoroaster", this site is, frankly, a big concentrated pile of woo-woo. She claims to hold a "Ph.D. in metaphysical studies" but lists no university in her biography. Actually, there are two biographies on her site and only one mentions the Ph.D. - the other only says that she has a Masters of Psychology from NYU. This is extra confusing because both of these biographies are on the same page. She has an enormous number of articles, most of which are apparently culled from Wikipedia - Her HAARP article is essentially just a cut and paste job from the Wikipedia entry, right down to the section headings. Also of note is her "Predictions for 2001" page, which claims to have an extremely detailed prediction of the September 11th attacks...too bad the Web Archive shows that this page didn't exist before 2005.
What does all of this mean? Well, for one thing it means that our friend Steven suggests that we should trust the word of conspiracy theorists and pseudo-psychic hucksters rather than, say, the independent scientists that actually run HAARP. However, I imagine that the information given on the HAARP website won't be considered valid by our friend because, as he has noted repeatedly, the government might be lying. Now, I have no doubt that the government has lied, does lie, and will lie again, but that doesn't mean that we should embrace as canon any conspiracy theory that we can conceive of as possible. It also doesn't mean that we should trust a psychic to tell us how a sophisticated ionospheric research program works, nor does it mean we should place all of our faith in half a dozen papers with inbred citations from a handful of scholars who are working far outside of their fields.
Sorry Steve, I remain skeptical.
*The University's website it is here, though it apparently hasn't been updated since 2005. This "university" may no longer be in operation and is decried even by freakin' chiropractors for being shady.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Harping on HAARP...
A fellow named Steve recently posted a comment on here lambasting me for being, shock of shocks, an ignorant, close-minded skeptic who resorts to ad hominem attacks. He was referring to this post, in which I made fun of a Youtube conspiracy crank because she forgot that rainbows exist and thus posted a video in which she blamed the mysterious appearance of a rainbow in her sprinkler on a far-reaching government conspiracy. In all honesty I'm not going to claim that I didn't for example, call her...let's see...an "internet weirdo", a "conspiracy nut", and ...actually, I think those were the only pejorative terms I used. On further consideration, I'll add "loon", "wingnut" and "smacktard" to the list. (Alas, being spotlighted by PZ Myers has led this particular oddball to make many of her videos private, which makes it difficult to explain her claims without sounding like I'm exaggerating. Go to her profile if my video links don't work.)
There are issues of contention between skeptics and True Believers™ that are deserving of measured and carefully laid out arguments. Attributing rainbows to the evil machinations of the New World Order is not one of them. Nor is the belief that sun glare reflecting off of the hoods of cars is actually a "HAARP laser". Nor is the assertion that the moon is a giant mirror. Stupidity on that order of magnitude is not deserving of well measured refutation so much as simple derision. Granted, there's a sense in which I feel bad for the True Believers™ like this lady who have "fallen down the rabbit hole" of their own delusions so far that they can no longer see the light of day, but my sympathies don't extend nearly far enough to make me pretend that such lunacy represents anything close to an actual position worthy of consideration.
Steve then goes on to defend our rainbow-fearing friend as a "conscientious, truth-seeking individual" rather than a "self-proclaimed skeptic" like your ol' pal Skippy. He then accuses me of buying into the "pablum being fed [to me] by our nation's (dis)information sources". That is, I'm afraid, a rather typical argument. I'll note with no small sense of smarmy self-satisfaction that I predicted in the very post that Steve takes issue with that I would be accused of "buying into the government's line instead of going down the rabbit hole."
He then claims that "there exists far more evidence to support HAARP's military/black-ops uses than you have even begun to touch" and urges me to "get to work" because I have "the entire internet' with which to uncover the truth. Pardon me for questioning the internet as the final arbiter of reality, but for the time being let's overlook the whole "no fact-checking or editing" thing and just roll with it. I plugged "HAARP weapon applications" into Google. The first link that came up is from 9/11 "Troofer" James Rense. It also offers a link to explain "how the Zionists hijacked Christianity", but at this point Rense is more concerned with whining about Barack Obama. The second link is from good ol' Jesus-Is-Savior.com, a mirror site for Jesus-Is-Lord.com which many of you will remember from my Poe's Law post. The third link is a video from Ben Fulford, a pal of Rense, which decries HAARP as one of the evils of "Zionist occupied America".
Thus far we're three for three on articles coming from foaming conspiracy theorists who are preoccupied with the idea of a global plot by the Jews. That right there is some objective freakin' research. It's also worth noting that the article on Jesus-Is-Savior article is copied from EarthPulse.com, which is also happy to tell you about "laser acupuncture" and "USSR Hypnosis at a Distance". Perhaps, just perhaps, some of the "research" that conspiracy theorists have done on HAARP is actually something more along the lines of agenda-driven fear mongering or just plain and simple silliness.
On the other hand, when it comes to HAARP being able to cause massive scary weather effects and earthquakes, one thing I do know is this: The HAARP antenna is capable of sending a signal into the ionosphere that is not even 1/200 as powerful as the random fluctuations that the ionosphere experiences daily. You see, the ionosphere is affected primarily by the ultraviolet energy produced by the sun. It seems to me, reading articles by the conspiracy buffs, that they think that the government has somehow managed, for a mere $250 million, to build an antennae array capable of overpowering the energy output of the freakin' sun, which is, frankly, hilarious.
Likewise, the idea that earthquakes can be caused by ionospheric disturbances is kind of out of left field. While it is apparently the case that earthquakes of sufficient size can cause certain atmospheric effects (including effects that can be detected before the quake itself "begins"), I can't find anything that indicates that the reverse is true. Well, that is to say, I can't find anything that indicates the reverse is true when I'm looking at real science websites or journals. What I can find are plenty of naked assertions that ionospheric effects can cause earthquakes on sites like, say, AwakeFromYourSlumber.com and PropagandaMatrix.com. (The former is also concerned about the "Zionists" - a recurring theme, it seems.)
Our friend Steve, who doesn't, I should note, actually claim himself that HAARP causes earthquakes, may do well to remember the old cliche about considering the source. Now, I'll go out on a limb and say that maybe HAARP-based technologies could potentially be used to screw with various forms of communications, but that's not what the majority of conspiracy crowd is going on about. They tend to talk about HAARP as an earthquake-generating doomsday weapon or some kind of laser device (for some reason), which is just plain isn't. There's a difference between keeping a healthy eye on the government and becoming a member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade, and from what I've seen most, if not all, of the HAARP conspiracy buffs fall into the latter category.
They might be better off if they actually studied up on the issues that concern them, looked at the best available information, and did their best to base their positions on observable reality. Then they could look at new claims through a filter of reasonableness and plausibility, using this process as well as further study to help them determine if the claim should be accepted or rejected. Furthermore, they would do well to remain open-minded...but not quite so open-minded that their brains drip out. You know, kind of like a skeptic.
There are issues of contention between skeptics and True Believers™ that are deserving of measured and carefully laid out arguments. Attributing rainbows to the evil machinations of the New World Order is not one of them. Nor is the belief that sun glare reflecting off of the hoods of cars is actually a "HAARP laser". Nor is the assertion that the moon is a giant mirror. Stupidity on that order of magnitude is not deserving of well measured refutation so much as simple derision. Granted, there's a sense in which I feel bad for the True Believers™ like this lady who have "fallen down the rabbit hole" of their own delusions so far that they can no longer see the light of day, but my sympathies don't extend nearly far enough to make me pretend that such lunacy represents anything close to an actual position worthy of consideration.
Steve then goes on to defend our rainbow-fearing friend as a "conscientious, truth-seeking individual" rather than a "self-proclaimed skeptic" like your ol' pal Skippy. He then accuses me of buying into the "pablum being fed [to me] by our nation's (dis)information sources". That is, I'm afraid, a rather typical argument. I'll note with no small sense of smarmy self-satisfaction that I predicted in the very post that Steve takes issue with that I would be accused of "buying into the government's line instead of going down the rabbit hole."
He then claims that "there exists far more evidence to support HAARP's military/black-ops uses than you have even begun to touch" and urges me to "get to work" because I have "the entire internet' with which to uncover the truth. Pardon me for questioning the internet as the final arbiter of reality, but for the time being let's overlook the whole "no fact-checking or editing" thing and just roll with it. I plugged "HAARP weapon applications" into Google. The first link that came up is from 9/11 "Troofer" James Rense. It also offers a link to explain "how the Zionists hijacked Christianity", but at this point Rense is more concerned with whining about Barack Obama. The second link is from good ol' Jesus-Is-Savior.com, a mirror site for Jesus-Is-Lord.com which many of you will remember from my Poe's Law post. The third link is a video from Ben Fulford, a pal of Rense, which decries HAARP as one of the evils of "Zionist occupied America".
Thus far we're three for three on articles coming from foaming conspiracy theorists who are preoccupied with the idea of a global plot by the Jews. That right there is some objective freakin' research. It's also worth noting that the article on Jesus-Is-Savior article is copied from EarthPulse.com, which is also happy to tell you about "laser acupuncture" and "USSR Hypnosis at a Distance". Perhaps, just perhaps, some of the "research" that conspiracy theorists have done on HAARP is actually something more along the lines of agenda-driven fear mongering or just plain and simple silliness.
On the other hand, when it comes to HAARP being able to cause massive scary weather effects and earthquakes, one thing I do know is this: The HAARP antenna is capable of sending a signal into the ionosphere that is not even 1/200 as powerful as the random fluctuations that the ionosphere experiences daily. You see, the ionosphere is affected primarily by the ultraviolet energy produced by the sun. It seems to me, reading articles by the conspiracy buffs, that they think that the government has somehow managed, for a mere $250 million, to build an antennae array capable of overpowering the energy output of the freakin' sun, which is, frankly, hilarious.
Likewise, the idea that earthquakes can be caused by ionospheric disturbances is kind of out of left field. While it is apparently the case that earthquakes of sufficient size can cause certain atmospheric effects (including effects that can be detected before the quake itself "begins"), I can't find anything that indicates that the reverse is true. Well, that is to say, I can't find anything that indicates the reverse is true when I'm looking at real science websites or journals. What I can find are plenty of naked assertions that ionospheric effects can cause earthquakes on sites like, say, AwakeFromYourSlumber.com and PropagandaMatrix.com. (The former is also concerned about the "Zionists" - a recurring theme, it seems.)
Our friend Steve, who doesn't, I should note, actually claim himself that HAARP causes earthquakes, may do well to remember the old cliche about considering the source. Now, I'll go out on a limb and say that maybe HAARP-based technologies could potentially be used to screw with various forms of communications, but that's not what the majority of conspiracy crowd is going on about. They tend to talk about HAARP as an earthquake-generating doomsday weapon or some kind of laser device (for some reason), which is just plain isn't. There's a difference between keeping a healthy eye on the government and becoming a member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade, and from what I've seen most, if not all, of the HAARP conspiracy buffs fall into the latter category.
They might be better off if they actually studied up on the issues that concern them, looked at the best available information, and did their best to base their positions on observable reality. Then they could look at new claims through a filter of reasonableness and plausibility, using this process as well as further study to help them determine if the claim should be accepted or rejected. Furthermore, they would do well to remain open-minded...but not quite so open-minded that their brains drip out. You know, kind of like a skeptic.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Odds, Ends, and HAARP Conspiracy Cranks...
I wanted to post a few quick updates this afternoon, so here we go. Firstly, I'm toying with the idea of setting up a Facebook profile, mostly because I've gotten a couple of "friend requests" from people I know who use the service. When and if I ever get that set up in any presentable way I'll add a link to it in the sidebar, but honestly social networking sits just aren't my cup of tea.
Secondly, I've not heard a word from Phillip O'Donnell since early last week, so I guess that means we won't be debating. Rumor has it that he's had some experiences in the past wherein he tried to do some online debates and simply got dog-piled by a hostile crowd and thus he's not very interested in doing any more public debates. Nonetheless it's absolutely amazing to me that he would come onto my blog and challenge me to a debate, then refuse to actually do it. Readers can feel free to mosey over to Living Dinos and prod him a little.
Thirdly, Your old pal Skippy's girlfriend is in Baltimore and the moment and will be there for the better part of the week because of Otakon. (Some kind of anime convention, apparently.) That's all well and good: she's apparently having a great time and I get to be the master of my castle for a few days. The only problem is that she's got the laptop with her so she can update her blog, which means that typing updates over on my end is temporarily dependent on my desire to sit around in the bedroom and work at the desktop PC while her multitudinous cats chew on my feet. Thus far I've not been able to muster up a whole lot of desire to do so, which is lame because this has been an interesting week for internet weirdos.
Among other things, there was an amusing post over on Pharyngula that highlighted a bizarre a video by this lady. She's some kind of conspiracy nut that thinks some kind of evil government plot is responsible for, among other things, rainbows. (Not kidding. Watch the video.) Her main area of interest in HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, which she seems to think is some kind of weather-controlling, laser shooting, earthquake causing doomsday device like a James Bond villain might use. The poor woman is clearly daft, as should be evinced by this video, in which she has recorded sun glare coming off of passing cars under the mistaken impression that they are actually laser weapons, and this video, in which she notices the phenomenon of earthshine and comes to the conclusion that the moon is actually a giant mirror. She's also a proponent of the tired old "ChemTrail" conspiracy, which holds that airplane contrails are actually some sort of high altitude chemical dispersion device towards some unknown end. (Step 1: Blanket the atmosphere with airborne chemicals. Step 2: ? Step 3: PROFIT!)
For the record, HAARP is a project run by the University of Alaska and contingent of other universities and is being built using technology from APTI and BAE Systems*. The program is also affiliated with the U.S. Navy and Air Force. It's meant to study various natural processes of the ionosphere and to utilize these processes to develop new communications technologies. It's pretty cool stuff and it's completely non-classified - there are even open houses in which the public can tour the facility a couple of times a year. HAARP is not in anyway associated with the development of weapons, though there was talk in 1990s about using similar technology as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative. (Interestingly, some anti-HAARP conspiracy books have been released by the Adventures Unlimited Press, the publishing house of living dinosaur and ancient astronaut proponent David Hatcher Childress.)
HAARP conspiracy theories are usually so far removed from anything that HAARP actually does that it's almost difficult to know where to begin in debunking them. In a way that's almost a rhetorical advantage to the conspiracy nuts - if you point out, for example, that HAARP has abso-freakin'-lutely nothing to do with causing manmade earthquakes, they'll accuse you of buying into the government's line instead of actually "going down the rabbit hole". Perhaps it would be better to let readers peruse our friend's other videos so they can see the raving craziness for themselves.
I also want to point out that that some conspiracy buffs are loudly crowing about the $250 million price tag that has been attached to HAARP, apparently to show that the government is throwing so much money into the project that it must be some kind of crazy ray gun. The line of thought seems to be that the government wouldn't be putting that much money into something that isn't a weapon. Frankly, that's silly. No one with any sense of scale when it comes to military development costs would honestly think that a global doomsday device could be manufactured for $250 million. For example, F-22 interceptor aircraft cost over $135 million apiece, and that's just fabrication costs for something that has already been designed.** To claim earnestly that a superweapon on par with the Death Star has been developed for a mere quarter of a billion dollars is as revealing a display of ignorance by the conspiracy buffs as one could hope for.
*BAE also makes such fine products as the M2 Bradley.
** The total cost of the F-22 program has thus far been around $69.7 billion.
Secondly, I've not heard a word from Phillip O'Donnell since early last week, so I guess that means we won't be debating. Rumor has it that he's had some experiences in the past wherein he tried to do some online debates and simply got dog-piled by a hostile crowd and thus he's not very interested in doing any more public debates. Nonetheless it's absolutely amazing to me that he would come onto my blog and challenge me to a debate, then refuse to actually do it. Readers can feel free to mosey over to Living Dinos and prod him a little.
Thirdly, Your old pal Skippy's girlfriend is in Baltimore and the moment and will be there for the better part of the week because of Otakon. (Some kind of anime convention, apparently.) That's all well and good: she's apparently having a great time and I get to be the master of my castle for a few days. The only problem is that she's got the laptop with her so she can update her blog, which means that typing updates over on my end is temporarily dependent on my desire to sit around in the bedroom and work at the desktop PC while her multitudinous cats chew on my feet. Thus far I've not been able to muster up a whole lot of desire to do so, which is lame because this has been an interesting week for internet weirdos.
Among other things, there was an amusing post over on Pharyngula that highlighted a bizarre a video by this lady. She's some kind of conspiracy nut that thinks some kind of evil government plot is responsible for, among other things, rainbows. (Not kidding. Watch the video.) Her main area of interest in HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, which she seems to think is some kind of weather-controlling, laser shooting, earthquake causing doomsday device like a James Bond villain might use. The poor woman is clearly daft, as should be evinced by this video, in which she has recorded sun glare coming off of passing cars under the mistaken impression that they are actually laser weapons, and this video, in which she notices the phenomenon of earthshine and comes to the conclusion that the moon is actually a giant mirror. She's also a proponent of the tired old "ChemTrail" conspiracy, which holds that airplane contrails are actually some sort of high altitude chemical dispersion device towards some unknown end. (Step 1: Blanket the atmosphere with airborne chemicals. Step 2: ? Step 3: PROFIT!)
For the record, HAARP is a project run by the University of Alaska and contingent of other universities and is being built using technology from APTI and BAE Systems*. The program is also affiliated with the U.S. Navy and Air Force. It's meant to study various natural processes of the ionosphere and to utilize these processes to develop new communications technologies. It's pretty cool stuff and it's completely non-classified - there are even open houses in which the public can tour the facility a couple of times a year. HAARP is not in anyway associated with the development of weapons, though there was talk in 1990s about using similar technology as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative. (Interestingly, some anti-HAARP conspiracy books have been released by the Adventures Unlimited Press, the publishing house of living dinosaur and ancient astronaut proponent David Hatcher Childress.)
HAARP conspiracy theories are usually so far removed from anything that HAARP actually does that it's almost difficult to know where to begin in debunking them. In a way that's almost a rhetorical advantage to the conspiracy nuts - if you point out, for example, that HAARP has abso-freakin'-lutely nothing to do with causing manmade earthquakes, they'll accuse you of buying into the government's line instead of actually "going down the rabbit hole". Perhaps it would be better to let readers peruse our friend's other videos so they can see the raving craziness for themselves.
I also want to point out that that some conspiracy buffs are loudly crowing about the $250 million price tag that has been attached to HAARP, apparently to show that the government is throwing so much money into the project that it must be some kind of crazy ray gun. The line of thought seems to be that the government wouldn't be putting that much money into something that isn't a weapon. Frankly, that's silly. No one with any sense of scale when it comes to military development costs would honestly think that a global doomsday device could be manufactured for $250 million. For example, F-22 interceptor aircraft cost over $135 million apiece, and that's just fabrication costs for something that has already been designed.** To claim earnestly that a superweapon on par with the Death Star has been developed for a mere quarter of a billion dollars is as revealing a display of ignorance by the conspiracy buffs as one could hope for.
*BAE also makes such fine products as the M2 Bradley.
** The total cost of the F-22 program has thus far been around $69.7 billion.
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