Applied Epistemology

...I mean, how many cops can say they've arrested sorcerers?

The WSJ has the scoop.

Apparently the Kitty Genovese murder is at least partly an invention.

The NYT profile on Ron Paul contains the following vintage fantasy:

Victor Carey, a 45-year-old, muscular, mustachioed self-described “patriot” who wears a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones on it, drove up from Sykesville, Md., to show his support for Paul. He laid out some of his concerns. “The people who own the Federal Reserve own the oil companies, they own the mass media, they own the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they’re part of the Bilderbergers, and unfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”

The NYT reports on a lavish exercise in futility. Prof. Kevin Padian of Berkeley may have the distinction of introducing the word "crap" (a technical term in this context, I agree) into the pages of the Grey Lady: "[we were] just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is."

FoxNews has the story on the posthumous Roswell testimony.

This page has been blogged by several sites, but it must be seen to be believed. Certainly, it's better than actually going there and enduring the hurricane-force crap-storm in person.

Readers may recall my earlier bafflement that multiple students would defend the patently false doctrine that "if you believe it, then it will come true". I had chalked it up to the lingering cognitive rot left behind by asshat films such as What the Bleep Do We Know? But apparently the ultimate engine behind The Secret is the same crackpottery kiln which inflicted Dr.

The latest find in my occasional explorations of the sustained nuttery which is religion. It's only a dollar per teaspoon. The tin container was from Heaven, too. Couldn't God make it out of adamantium, though?

Have questions? Be not afraid, there's an FAQ. (Could maybe God also put up a website with bullet lists?

I continue to learn about new authors through my students: to wit, Zecharia Sitchin.

And from one of Sitchin's rivals, a book ready to take up the mantle of Ice: The Ultimate Disaster.