A Worktime First:: Caller Brings Back the Classic Crazy

There comes a point in every skeptic's life when he is confronted by the ultimate abortion of skepticism: the conspiracy theory. I'm not talking about a 'found some wackaloon talking about this on the interwebs' kind of confrontation. No, what I'm talking about is speaking to someone who casually brings this kind of thing up as if it were fact.

Now, there are conspiracies in the real world. At the core, however, they are unglamorous, dirty affairs that crumble and are exposed by the ineptness of their fellows. Insider trading is a form of conspiracy. A religious cult is a conspiracy that may contain others. And there are conspiracies of governance as well. Say it with me: "Nixon".

But these are painfully mundane conspiracies. They're limited in scope and for the truly devoted headcase, they lack the glamor and spectacle that makes the horrible mundaneness of their lives worth living. Price fixing in the oil industry is just simple greed. It doesn't make a bland middle-aged accountant the subject of attention from sinister external forces that perceive him, inexplicably, as a threat that must be observed and silenced.

Today's caller of note seemed like a regular call with a nervous new user. His new computer won't shut down, it says 'installing updates' and sits there. I informed him that the first batch of Vista updates (complete with the service pack) can take hours. Comforted and ready to wait 5-6 hours for it to update, he seemed ready to go. Until I asked him if there was anything else I could help him with.

What followed wasn't not a question, nor a statement, nor a description. It was some indescribable mutation of language that was fascinatingly insane yet completely incoherent. I will sum up the major points of the caller's delusion here:

1) Zone alarm is actually spyware, integrated into the system by the government.
2) It connects to secret cameras hidden in the computer's fan.
3) This has something to do with the systems being sent over seas for spying purposes. Or perhaps foreign governments are in on this. Like I said, incoherent.
4) These cameras are also hidden in new cars.
5) "Well, maybe I shouldn't be talking about this over the phone."

My first impulse is to debunk these hallucinations one at a time. But this guy thinks a laptop fan has a camera in it. A camera that would point away from the user, possibly down into a desk or into a lap, at all times.

Even if the government was interested in your activities, they wouldn't point the super-secret spy camera at your junk. If they want cheap voyeur shots, they'll install the camera in your shower. Then the antichrist and his one-world government cronies can laugh about your excess back hair at their leisure while plotting to control the banking system and corner the market on fezzes and tiny, tiny cars.

-Trent

Warning: Religious Ranting

Good o'l PZ's blog, Pharyngula, led me to this wonderful little tidbit: A church in Jacksonville is threatening to air a member's private sex life (a divorced person having sex with a new boyfriend, btw) in the middle of church services in punishment for her 'sins'.

What is telling isn't that a religious organization is blackmailing a member to control their actions, nor that it sees nothing wrong with this kind of bullying, nor that the victim sees the particular church, not the insipid ideas that drive it, as the source of the problem and is ready to move on to a new church in response.

What is telling is responses to the story, in which the misanthropes that support branding a woman who is not married as an adulterer (gotta love that Bible-logic) claim that this news story is a plot to paint all Christians as lunatics and whack-jobs.

Attn Churchy-Type Folks: You believe in an all-powerful voyeur who manipulates your life and simultaneously hides from all scrutiny. If you didn't have thousands of people who share this 'belief' you would be in a sanitarium. There aren't 'crazy' and 'normal' religious beliefs. There's only moderately harmless and less-than-moderately harmless variations on the crazy.

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On a second note, George Bush recently hacked off his religious base by stating that he wasn't a biblical literalist, even though that's what got them on his side. Now they feel all betrayed and tricked.

Man, what sort of religious figure would lie about religious belief to cultivate power, money and influence from the gullible?

Before we delve too deeply into that, maybe we should work on a more simple problem. Perhaps this: What sort of fish would stoop to obtaining its oxygen from water?

-Trent

Reaping the Conservative Whirlwind (Warning: Politics)

Forewarning: If you think this blog entry doesn't apply to your brand of Christendom-and/or-Right-Wing-Politics, then it probably doesn't, unless, of course, it does. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

I believe there's a bit in the Bible about 'sowing chaos and reaping the whirlwind?' It is surprising to me that this is not more frequently brought up in regard to American Christian politics in the past three decades. For years the religious have produced and backed numerous na'er do wells and have pushed to marginalize and punish those who do not cede to their will.

Now, after almost a full decade of having everything they've asked for, the conservative Christians are worried. Their zealotry has cost them their financial security, their dignity and whatever scraps of respectability they had. The free-thinkers and secularists, once scattered, are now uniting to defend themselves from theocratic skullduggery. Religious affiliations now have the average lifespan of cell phone contracts and the populace at large is beginning to see hypocrites and thieves behind every Jesus-fish bumper sticker, and rightly so.

Caught with their pants down (like so many in their leadership, zing!) they turn into a horde of Lady MacBeths, washing their hands to remove the bloodstains and denying their part in things. "We were tricked! The Republicans said they were like us!" they cry. But they weren't tricked. The right-wing philosophy was theirs from the start and still is. They just failed. They had their way and they failed and they got caught. It is the same pattern they have always followed: they prop up the bigot, the liar, the thief and the lynch mob. They cheer these villains on, sometimes loudly, sometimes silently, and when the monsters are caught, defeated and dragged into the light, they shout "PRETENDER! You are not truely one of us!" With the Judas goat duly sacrificed their sins are cleansed and they can find a new avatar to help them get what they want.

Sorry folks, you reap what you sow. Its just a pity that the punishment you brought down on yourselves affects the rest of us, too.

-Trent