This may be old news (about a month) but it is still worth posting.   A poll was recently conducted by Public Policy Polling of Americans on the topic of conspiracy theories.   The number really do not surprise me very much.  If anything, it shows a few conspiracy theories are LESS popular than I might have expected.   Then again, the numbers are still soberingly high.

Via the Atlantic Wire:

Conspiracy	Percent believing	Number of Americans believing
JFK was killed by conspiracy	51 percent	160,096,160
Bush intentionally misled on Iraq WMDs	44 percent	138,122,178
Global warming is a hoax	37 percent	116,148,195
Aliens exist	29 percent	91,035,072
New World Order	28 percent	87,895,931
Hussein was involved in 9/11	28 percent	87,895,931
A UFO crashed at Roswell	21 percent	65,921,948
Vaccines are linked to autism	20 percent	62,782,808
The government controls minds with TV	15 percent	47,087,106
Medical industry invents diseases	15 percent	47,087,106
CIA developed crack	14 percent	43,947,966
Bigfoot exists	14 percent	43,947,966
Obama is the Antichrist	13 percent	40,808,825
The government allowed 9/11	11 percent	34,530,544
Fluoride is dangerous	9 percent	28,252,264
The moon landing was faked	7 percent	21,973,983
Bin Laden is alive	6 percent	18,834,842
Airplane contrails are sinister chemicals	5 percent	15,695,702
McCartney died in 1966	5 percent	15,695,702
Lizard people control politics	4 percent	12,556,562

The margin of error of the poll is 2.8 percent. As with any poll, it’s important to remember that the margin of error may not reflect the true accuracy of the poll, as it can depend on factors like how careful the pollsters were in selecting an appropriate demographic cross-section of the US.  It’s very easy to get skewed results with polling, because telephone surveys tend to get more responses from certain demographics, such as retirees, the unemployed and others who are more likely to be home and willing to answer questions.   Still, the numbers certainly seem plausible and are in line with other polls that have been conducted.

Of course, one also wonders how many people might say yes to certain conspiracy theories while only harboring a slightly sarcastic belief in them.   As with any such numbers, it’s hard to be sure who is a hard-core believer and who has only a passing belief.   One can certainly hope that they might be lower.

You can read more about the poll here. According to Public Policy Polling, the total respondents were 1,247 all of whom were registered voters.   That’s a reasonably good size sample.  The questions were also direct and avoided bias.   The figures also show the breakdown between Republican and Democratic-registered voters.  As one might expect, Republicans tend to be more prone to believing things like Bin Laden is alive, while Democrats are far more likely to think Bush lied about WMD’s.

It’s not surprising that the Kennedy Assassination ranks at the top of the poll.  If anything, it’s surprising it is not higher.   The Kennedy Assassination has always fascinated me, because, despite being a relatively straight-forward shooting, it spawned the single most widespread and enduring conspiracy theory in the US.   There are many reasons for this, including the efforts of those like Oliver Stone and the fact that the events were shocking and the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald seemed so anti-climactic for such an event.

The Kennedy Assassination is unique in that the conspiracy theories have transcended the normal conspiracy theory subculture and become entirely mainstream.  A large number of Americans did not accept the Warren Commission report as soon as it was published in 1964.  That number continued to climb after a second investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations and with the production of numerous books and documentaries supporting conspiracy theories.

The most dangerous of all these conspiracy theories, however, is likely to be the 20% number for autism being connected to vaccines.   This is directly responsible for a number of outbreaks in the US.  Indeed, this belief is hardly just American.  Fear of vaccines has become a major problem across the industrial world.   It goes to show that more effort still needs to be mounted against these harmful myths.

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We recently lost Roger Ebert, who had been struggling with cancer since 2002.   Although modern medicine did manage to give him another decade, he lost his ability to speak and eat normally due to surgery on his throat and jaw.  Roger Ebert is best known as a film critic, but he was also a great editorialize, a humanist, a skeptic, a promoter of the arts and, of course, a champion for the great artistry of cinema.

Of course, as a film critic, Roger Ebert had to sit through many movies that he would not have watched by choice and did not exactly find much to like about.   One of his greatest talents was his ability to putdown movies which were sorely in need of it.   It’s an often unrecognized talent, requiring creativity, wit, masterful communications and an excellent vocabulary of insults.  Ebert was able to quickly, in just a few words, capture the sheer awfulness of two hours of garbage and communicate it to his audience in a way that was sharp and on point.  His insults not only captured the very stench of the crap he had to review, but were clever and funny in their own right.

As someone who so often reviews crap online, I find Ebert to be a high standard to aspire to for his ability to cut down those who need it.

Here are a few of my favorites:

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It never ceases to amaze me what otherwise functional adults can believe.   Mind you, this video was produced by someone with enough of a grasp on reality to understand how to operate video editing software.  In fact, it probably involved more than one person.   These are the people who live along side each of us in society.

Okay, so now the reptilians are not simply the leaders but also their body guards?   That’s a new one.  I was under the impression that the evil alien overlords ruled but that their slave minions were humans.   One would think, in any case, they could keep the true shape-shifters hidden away from public events and use one of their human shills instead.   But then again, this does not need to make sense.

A few observations:

1. The Secret Service acts as the presidents body guards and are basically paid to be paranoid and constantly on edge that he will be attacked.  Some hide it better than others, but if an agent is standing in a crowd looking around a lot, that’s because he’s doing his job.  crowds are dangerous because anyone could easily pull a gun, and although there are usually metal detectors, they are not foolproof.
2. That looks to me like a tall, slender guy with a bald/shaved head.   Am I alone in this?
3. Video cameras and compression are designed such that small details, normally not important to the picture, are lost in order to increase efficiency.  One of the things that many video systems have is a smoothing filter, which removes random noise from the image to improve compression.   It can make faint background details appear smooth.   This can happen a lot in areas that are darker than most of the image or where contrast is high.  The effect is increased by zooming. Of course, you can’t just crop and zoom and get an accurate picture.  The image has a finite resolution.  Any zooming beyond that is just pixel scaling.
4. Do I seriously need to even

Recently stories have been making the rounds about how Japan is coping with the aftermath of the tsunami and the partial meltdown that occurred two years ago.  It is as sad as it is predictable that the fears of radiation would become the most lingering and harmful effect.   Even as the radiation itself has faded to background levels for most of the effected areas, public anxiety remains high.   This is exactly what happened with Chernobyl and other incidents.

Via the Associated Press:

Stress Emerges As Major Health Issue In Fukushima
MINAMI-SOMA, Japan (AP) — Japan’s radiation nightmare has turned the lively home that truck driver Takahiro Ishitani once shared with his wife and three sons into a cluttered bachelor pad.

A coffee mug full of cigarette butts, a towel and other odds and ends sit on a low table in the apartment’s small living room. He offers a visitor a takeout box lunch, his main source of sustenance these days. Laundry hangs inside so it won’t absorb the radiation that remains in the ground, two years after an earthquake and tsunami caused meltdowns and explosions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) to the south.

To escape this lonely weekday existence, the 42-year-old Ishitani drives three hours up winding roads every weekend to see his family, which has moved away because of fears that radiation could harm the children.

“If it really is safe, I want them to come back,” says Ishitani, a stocky man with a small beard on the tip of his chin. “But it’s hard to know. Different people say different things, and that adds to my stress. I don’t know whom to trust.”

Just as with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, mental distress could be one of the biggest health issues to emerge from this disaster, experts say. While attention has focused on the potential cancer risks, they remain unclear. What is clear is that the uncertainty and the upheaval it’s caused in people’s lives is already exacting a very real and pervasive psychological toll.

“It’s one of the biggest problems,” said Seiji Yasumura, a professor of public health at Fukushima Medical University.

Ishitani collapsed on the street with an ulcer nine months into the disaster. He was hospitalized for three days and still takes stomach medicine. The slightest tremor wakes him at night, and then he can’t back to sleep as he worries about the future.

Will his youngest son, 8-year-old Ryusei, ever be able to play in the woods and catch crawfish in the river as Ishitani did as a child? How long can his family continue this divided life? Will his now half-deserted hometown of Minami-Soma even survive — or shrivel and die?

They can and should move back now. The tiny increase in radiation is trivial compared to the amount of damage this has done to the social fabric of the areas effected. Sadly, very few seem to be advocating this while many continue to cash in on the tragedy as a way of promoting their own agenda, often through fear-mongering. More efforts to inform the public are definitely necessary. Sadly, they seem to be lacking

You may remember Arthur Fishtenberg.   Back in 2008, I described him as “The Jackass in the foil hat” for his various antics against various municipalities who dared to allow wireless devices to be used in their buildings.   According to Fishtenberg, a dental X-ray in 1982 somehow transformed him into an elector-hypersensitive and perpetually tortured victim of all things wireless.   Apparently he bounced around various communities in the US pulling this claim out to anyone who would listen.

Firstenberg has written several articles and a book about the dangers of wireless devices.  He has founded groups and is cited on a number of websites as a crusader for the rights of those who supposedly are harmed by these devices.  He has also filed many many lawsuits.

Apparently, in more recent years, Firstenberg has decided to take his battle directly to the individuals who dare to use RF-emitting devices in their own homes.  That’s what happened in 2010 when Raphaela Monribot had the misfortune of renting a home next to Arthur Firstenberg.   Miss Monribot, a graphic artist, didn’t do anything to cause conflict with her new neighbor other than daring to own a cell phone and a laptop computer.

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I am sure most readers know this by now, but Pope Benedict has announced he will resign on February 28.

This is very unusual.   The last time a pope resigned was Pope Gregory XVI in 1415.  The vast majority of popes serve until their death.   Church law was revised in 1983 to make it more clear how a papal resignation could be handled.   In modern times, as life-extending medicine has improved, it has become more clear that it was only a matter of time before a Pope reached a mental and physical state that would necessitate their resignation some time before death.

Via the New York Times:

VATICAN CITY — Citing advanced years and infirmity, but showing characteristic tough-mindedness and unpredictability, Pope Benedict XVI shocked Roman Catholics on Monday by saying that he would resign on Feb. 28, becoming the first pope to do so in six centuries.

Speaking in Latin to a small gathering of cardinals at the Vatican on Monday morning, Benedict said that after examining his conscience “before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of leading the world’s one billion Roman Catholics.

The statement, soon translated into seven languages, ricocheted around the globe.

A shy, tough-minded theologian who seemed to relish writing books more than greeting stadium crowds, Benedict, 85, was elected by fellow cardinals in 2005 after the death of John Paul II. An often divisive figure, he spent much of his papacy in the shadow of his beloved predecessor.

I do question his reasons for resigning. While he is not a young man, the 85 year old pope has not had any very serious health problems and popes have served in much more frail and elderly states.

It’s possible that the resignation may be due to the division and the criticism that has followed this pope. Seeing how this pope has dealt with the church sex abuse scandal and various social issues has made me long for John Paul II41
who, by comparison, seemed to be very liberal and reasonable. Granted, at the time, he didn’t seem it, but compared to the current pope, even John Paul II looks good.

I should add that I am from a Catholic family. For those who are not, it’s hard to even begin to explain what a big deal this is to the world’s Catholics. To members of the Catholic Church, the pope is beloved, almost as a family member, and also a superstar. Catholics will no-doubt, be glued to their televisions as the Vatican begins its elections for a new pope. When one is chosen, it will be a big event across the world.

For those who are not Catholic or not religious at all, the importance of the pope should not be dismissed. He is the official head of the Vatican state and the leader of the single largest centrally-organized religion on earth. The pope’s word is so revered that it can alter the habits and actions of Catholics from the United States to Europe to Africa and India. It is especially potent in the most Catholic regions of the world, such as Poland, Ireland and Latin America. The Catholic Church distributes billions of dollars to affiliated organizations and the size of the Catholic voting block makes it a power player in the politics of many countries.

While I am sure that I will not agree with the next pope on all issues, I very much hope someone can be elected who will do a better job than Benedict XVI at bringing the Catholic Church into the 21st century and helping to end some of the most offensive practices, especially coming down hard on those who protect abusive priests.

I hope that other secularists and non-religious individuals will withhold their judgement on the next pope, at least until we see what kind of policy stands he takes. Clearly anyone who rejects religion is not likely to find any pope very agreeable, but we can at least hope to find one who will help bring things forward.

Never underestimate the lengths some conspiracy theorists will go to in order to fulfill their deluded desire to become some kind of warrior against the evils they imagine.   Of course, violence against their critics is always a danger, since these people generally believe their detractors are part of the evil conspiracy.   Now, in a new twist, a 9/11 conspiracy-obsessed woman in France has defaced a priceless and iconic painting shortly after it went on display at the Louvre-Lens museum in Lens France.

The painting, Liberty Leading the People is shown here:

Via the Guardian:

Delacroix painting at Lens Louvre gallery defaced with permanent marker

A woman has been arrested after defacing a painting by Eugène Delacroix at the Louvre satellite museum in Lens. The 28-year-old told police she had scrawled “AE911” with an indelible marker on the painting, Liberty Leading the People, to draw attention to an organisation that appears to believe the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy.

On Friday, after an art expert was dispatched from Paris to examine the painting, completed in 1830 to celebrate the July 1830 revolution, a museum official said the work had been cleaned and had suffered no lasting damage.

The 30cm graffiti tag had been removed from the lower right of the canvas without damaging the work, the official said. “The painting remains intact. The inscription was superficial; it was on the surface of the varnish and hadn’t reached the paint layer.” The cleaning operation had lasted two hours and had been done with the painting still on the wall. The wing of the gallery, closed for the emergency restoration, was expected to reopen on Saturday .

Delacroix’s work shows a bare-breasted woman personifying Liberty brandishing a French tricolour in one hand and a bayonetted musket in the other, leading the people forward over the bodies of the fallen.

Philippe Peyroux, the local prosecutor, told AFP that the woman held by police appeared to be “unstable”. He said he had requested that she be examined by a psychiatrist. He added that she had a “French-sounding name”, but her reasons for vandalising the painting were not clear.

The woman’s identity has not been released. The fact that she has a “French sounding name” is the only information. It would imply that she is probably a French National and not someone from elsewhere. This would make sense given that the city of Lens is a relatively small city and not prone to drawing the kind of international visitors that Paris might. However, no other details of her background are known.

In this case the art world is lucky to have avoided a catastrophe. Painting restoration experts have developed a wide array of special cleaners and solvents that are capable of removing surface contamination without harming the original paint. The painting is composed of oil-based paint on canvas, with a top coat of varnish. Art restoration experts were able to clean off the superficial ink from the surface without causing damage to the painting.   The use of a permanent marker would appear to indicate that the woman intended to irreversibly deface the painting, though she failed.

Had the woman used another method of defacing the painting, for example, if she had attempted to scratch the message into the canvas with a nail, cut it into the painting with a knife or burn it in with a lighter, it would not have been so easily remedied and would have left the painting forever damaged.

The shooting that occurred in Newtown, CT took the lives of 27, plus the shooter himself.  Most of the victims were young children.   For a small town in a small state, the loss and grief is enormous.   In time, the event will fade from the headlines, but for the community, the tragedy will linger much longer.  It will likely be more than a year before the town even begins to return to normal and the shooting stops dominating the lives of those who live in the area.  Of course, for those who lost loved ones, things never really will return to normal.  The grief will be life-long and time will only dull, but never remove the sense of loss.

Unfortunately, the process of recovering from the horrible tragic events of December 14 has only been made worse by the rise of conspiracy theories and the invasive and disrespectful actions of conspiracy theorists and self-pointed “investigators.”

The conspiracy theories basically claim one of three things:

1. Adam Lanza was somehow under the control of the government or that his actions were the result of government influences
2. Adam Lanza was not the murderer.  He was just a scapegoat and the deaths were actually purported by the government.   Some claim Adam Lanza was not even a real person or that he had died some time ago and the identity was assumed into the fictional character created to be the perpetrator.
3. The shooting never happened.  It was all staged.  The victims may not even be real people at all, but just characters made up for the false story.

The motives put forward for such a conspiracy are predictable: that the massacre would result in an outcry for more school security, more gun control and more law enforcement powers and that this would allow the government to take away rights from the people to a degree that would not otherwise be accepted.  Some claim that other recent shootings, such as the one in Aurora Colorado are proof that the government has begun a program of planned or staged massacres with the intention of convincing the public to submit to greater government authority, ultimately leading to all out fascism.

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Much to do has been made of the s0-called “smart meters” – electric meters that monitor the times electricity is used and transmit the data back to the utility company in order to bill customers based on the time they use electricity – charging higher rates for peak demand time and lower rates for electricity used during times of low demand.  The idea is that by doing so, they could encourage customers to better manage their electricity use and schedule energy intensive tasks for times of low demand – for example, washing and drying clothes.  This could help balance demand and lead to less need for more expensive peaking and load-following generation.   It also can supposedly save the customer money, but it often does not.

There are some valid reasons to oppose having a smart meter:

• They could be considered part of an effort to shift the burden for reliable power and grid stability to the end customer.
• Depending on your usage, they may not save you money and could result in your costs going up.
• Life is complicated enough without having to worry about scheduling your tasks around the electric price schedule.
• Once you get one installed, it’s likely to be impossible to get it removed, so if your electric company is asking for customers to volunteer for the new meters, it might be worth waiting to see if they really do end up saving money before taking the plunge.
• You can tell a lot about someone from the times they use electricity (what days of the week they work, when they get up, when they leave for work, when they get home, when they go to sleep, when they are away from home etc)  Not all utilities have been very forthcoming about how they treat the information and whether they consider it private.  A telemarketer would definitely like to know what time would be good to call and bother you.   Even if the utility company does not sell the information, the government could certainly get it, and these days, at least in the US, the authorities have been acting like search warrants are obsolete.
• The utility company may charge you a fee to install or for rental of the unit.  Not all utilities have been forthcoming about this, and it would be especially irritating if it turns out that the meter does not save you any money, AND you had to pay for it.

For all of these reasons, if my utility company were to offer the option of having a smart meter or opting out, I would opt out, at least until the meters had been installed for a few months and it was possible to find out whether other customers really did experience savings and did not end up getting targeted advertisements for insomnia medication or to have pizza delivered right at the time they have dinner.

But there is also a completely bogus reason to oppose smart meters: fears of radiation.   It’s ridiculous, not only unproven but completely out of line with decades of understanding of non-ionizing radiation.   Despite this, claims that smart meters are causing everything from cancer to headaches have become rampant.

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This may be going a bit off topic for a science blog, but this kind of thing really drives me crazy and it seems to be happening more and more.  Police and other officials are using extremely scary-sounding items discovered to pat themselves on the back for another victory against terrorism.   It could be “chemicals,” “an unidentified white powder,” “radioactive materials” or just about anything else.  The problem has become so bad that now nearly every police report of potential weapons or dangerous goods seized must be scrutinized with extreme skepticism.

In this case it’s rocket launchers showing up at a gun buyback program.  There is much less to this than it seems.

(For those who might not know, a “Gun Buyback” is an event run by local police with the aim of collecting firearms that are no longer in use or may slip into the wrong hands. They may offer money, gift cards or something else to have the guns turned in. The idea is to reduce the number of guns floating around in the population and potentially available for misuse)

Via NBC News:

Rocket launchers surface during Los Angeles guns buyback
When Los Angeles police moved up their annual Citywide Gun Buyback program to this week, they collected an arsenal that included 75 assault weapons, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns, 901 handguns and — more surprisingly — two rocket launchers.

The weapons, essentially long metal tubes once capable of firing rockets, lacked the projectiles and parts needed to fire them, but even so had no place on the streets, police said.

“Those are weapons of war, weapons of death,” said LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, according to the Los Angeles Times. “These are not hunting guns. These are not target guns. … they have no place in our great city.”

Police said the people who brought in the weapons told police that they came from family members who served in the military and no longer wanted rocket launchers in their homes, the Times reported.

LAPD was planning to check with the military to determine the origins of the launchers, police said.

As it turns out, these were not the first launchers to turn up at a gun buyback. Last May, when the event was timed for Mother’s Day, one of these large firearms surfaced in Los Angeles.

I love the way that they say ” they have no place in our great city.” It almost sounds heroic, as if a great evil has been vanquished.

There are two things left out of most of the reports. The first is that it’s completely legal to own these and the second is that if you wanted to kill someone with them, the only way you might be able to do it is by whacking them over the head.

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