feedback

1
60 | NewScientist | 13 April 2013 FEEDBACK CONSPIRACY theories and delusional systems, Feedback has long observed, are as prone to fashion as are… clothes. We recall receiving, back in the days when we started out in journalism, an inch-thick wodge of mostly illegible 10th-generation photocopies purporting to show that Marilyn Monroe had been assassinated by gangsters working for the CIA to cover up its secret experiments with hallucinogens. In the years that followed, we received plaintive pleas for help from those whose minds were being controlled by microwaves from the Soviet Embassy. Then alien abduction became the delusion of choice. And so on, sadly. Now the advent of the interwebs has apparently allowed for cross-decade fertilisation. How else to account for the portmanteau conspiracy that Fred Riley spotted being plugged by someone posting on the Facebook page of UK broadcaster Channel 4: “New Evidence Fukushima Disaster Created by HAARP/Chemtrails/Plasma Weapons and Possible Mini-nuke.” Delusional anxiety about the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program falls roughly into the A front-page advertising feature in Brian Whitehead’s local paper boasted: “New invisible hearing aid has to be seen to be believed” “microwave” category. In reality, HAARP is, as its distinctly non-secret website haarp.alaska.edu explains, a facility for researching the ionosphere. The US Navy is one of the bodies openly involved in this work for communications purposes (see bit.ly/NavyHAARP). But HAARP has long excited more than the electrons in the atmosphere – in particular, it has excited people who really, really know the US government is controlling the weather. HAARP could almost have been designed, after all, to attract the attention of fans of the more esoteric ideas of independent physicist Nikola Tesla. Anxiety about “chemtrails”, meanwhile, is a phenomenon of, as far as we have noticed, the first decade of the 21st century. The anxiety was initially caused by emails detailing how the evil government is spraying noxious nostrums into our skies. This made some people look up, possibly for the first time since they were a wondering child. What they saw, of course, were vapour trails, which convinced some that there is a conspiracy. However, the thing that stands out most for our informant Fred about the Facebook posting he saw is “the idea that atmospheric manipulation could create earthquakes. This is beyond comment.” PHISHING emails – those that attempt to get you to reveal details that will enable someone to steal from you – vary widely. There are the misspelled exhortations from unknown people with unusual names to open the attached “sexy photo”. There are the highly polished messages from your bank – except that your bank never sends such messages and, anyway, your information turns out to go to [email protected]. Then there are intermediate cases, such as the “more than usually convincing-looking spoof email supposedly from PayPal” that Jeremy Marchant received. It bore this footnote: “How do I know this is not a Spoof email? Spoof or ‘phishing’ emails tend to have generic greetings such as ‘Dear PayPal member’. Emails from PayPal will always address you by your first and last name.” Glancing up, Jeremy noted that this one was addressed “Dear Paypal User”. Is this a massive logic fail? Or could it support the hypothesis put forward by Cormac Herley of Microsoft Research in his paper “Why do Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria?” – that scammers want to hear only from the truly, deeply gullible (21 July 2012)? SCIENCE has been of inestimable value in improving forensic inquiry in recent decades – think of the role of DNA matching in freeing the unjustly convicted. Now a new frontier has been breached. Subramaniam Divakaran alerts us to a report from CBS News about a gated apartment development in Plano, Texas, that requires residents to supply a mouth swab from their dogs – so that anything they leave on the sidewalk can be sequenced and traced back to them. GAITERS from Trespass are nylon “sleeves” that cover the bottom of walkers’ legs to keep the bottom of their trousers free from mud. Raffi Katz wants to know why they are billed as “waterproof to 10000mm”. If the bottom of his trousers are 10 metres under water, and he is less than 10 metres tall, “then how,” Raffi asks, “do I breathe?” SEARCHING for research on an antenna design, Stephen Murray stumbled across a very puzzling conference session. Among the topics of discussion were “Marchitime Radar”, “SMarcht Antenna Systems” and “Marchkovian Channel Modeling”. It was a reference to “Queen Marchy” college at the University of London that made everything clear: someone’s search-and-replace tool had gone marching out of control. FINALLY, a blurb announcing an article in online electronics magazine Z6 begins, “Extinct Loggerhead sea turtles are about to get US government help.” “The US government,” observes Gary Shoup, “may be slow, but it always comes through.” Happily, the blurb-writer forgot to tell the very much alive, but endangered, loggerhead turtles that they are all dead. You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback PAUL MCDEVITT

Upload: voquynh

Post on 30-Dec-2016

215 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Feedback

60 | NewScientist | 13 April 2013

FEEDBACK

CONSPIRACY theories and delusional systems, Feedback has long observed, are as prone to fashion as are… clothes. We recall receiving, back in the days when we started out in journalism, an inch-thick wodge of mostly illegible 10th-generation photocopies purporting to show that Marilyn Monroe had been assassinated by gangsters working for the CIA to cover up its secret experiments with hallucinogens.

In the years that followed, we received plaintive pleas for help from those whose minds were being controlled by microwaves from the Soviet Embassy. Then alien abduction became the delusion of choice. And so on, sadly. Now the advent of the interwebs has apparently allowed for cross-decade fertilisation.

How else to account for the portmanteau conspiracy that Fred Riley spotted being plugged by someone posting on the Facebook page of UK broadcaster Channel 4: “New Evidence Fukushima Disaster Created by HAARP/Chemtrails/Plasma Weapons and Possible Mini-nuke.”

Delusional anxiety about the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program falls roughly into the

A front-page advertising feature in Brian Whitehead’s local paper boasted: “New invisible hearing aid has to be seen to be believed”

“microwave” category. In reality, HAARP is, as its distinctly non-secret website haarp.alaska.edu explains, a facility for researching the ionosphere. The US Navy is one of the bodies openly involved in this work for communications purposes (see bit.ly/NavyHAARP). But HAARP has long excited more than the electrons in the atmosphere – in particular, it has excited people who really, really know the US government is controlling the weather. HAARP could almost have been designed, after all, to attract the attention of fans of the more esoteric ideas of independent physicist Nikola Tesla.

Anxiety about “chemtrails”, meanwhile, is a phenomenon of, as far as we have noticed, the first decade of the 21st century. The anxiety was initially caused by emails detailing how the evil government is spraying noxious nostrums into our skies. This made some people look up, possibly for the first time since they were a wondering child. What they saw, of course, were vapour trails, which convinced some that there is a conspiracy.

However, the thing that stands out most for our informant Fred about

the Facebook posting he saw is “the idea that atmospheric manipulation could create earthquakes. This is beyond comment.”

PHISHING emails – those that attempt to get you to reveal details that will enable someone to steal from you – vary widely.

There are the misspelled exhortations from unknown people with unusual names to open the attached “sexy photo”.

There are the highly polished messages from your bank – except that your bank never sends such messages and, anyway, your information turns out to go to [email protected].

Then there are intermediate cases, such as the “more than usually convincing-looking spoof email supposedly from PayPal” that Jeremy Marchant received. It bore this footnote: “How do I know this is not a Spoof email? Spoof or ‘phishing’ emails tend to have generic greetings such as ‘Dear PayPal member’. Emails from PayPal will always address you by your first and last name.”

Glancing up, Jeremy noted that this one was addressed “Dear Paypal User”. Is this a massive logic fail? Or could it support the hypothesis put forward by Cormac Herley of Microsoft Research in his paper “Why do Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria?” – that scammers want to hear only from the truly, deeply gullible (21 July 2012)?

SCIENCE has been of inestimable value in improving forensic inquiry in recent decades – think of the role of DNA matching in freeing the unjustly convicted. Now a new frontier has been breached.

Subramaniam Divakaran alerts us to a report from CBS News about a gated apartment development in Plano, Texas, that requires residents to supply a mouth swab from their dogs – so that anything they leave on the sidewalk can be sequenced and traced back to them.

GAITERS from Trespass are nylon “sleeves” that cover the bottom of walkers’ legs to keep the bottom of their trousers free from mud.

Raffi Katz wants to know why they are billed as “waterproof to 10000mm”.

If the bottom of his trousers are 10 metres under water, and he is less than 10 metres tall, “then how,” Raffi asks, “do I breathe?”

SEARCHING for research on an antenna design, Stephen Murray stumbled across a very puzzling conference session. Among the topics of discussion were “Marchitime Radar”, “SMarcht Antenna Systems” and “Marchkovian Channel Modeling”.

It was a reference to “Queen Marchy” college at the University of London that made everything clear: someone’s search-and-replace tool had gone marching out of control.

FINALLY, a blurb announcing an article in online electronics magazine Z6 begins, “Extinct Loggerhead sea turtles are about to get US government help.”

“The US government,” observes Gary Shoup, “may be slow, but it always comes through.” Happily, the blurb-writer forgot to tell the very much alive, but endangered, loggerhead turtles that they are all dead.

You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback

PAu

l M

CDEv

iTT

130413_Op_Feedback.indd 60 5/4/13 16:40:43