• 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB!!!!!!
• BUSH SR...INVOLVED IN THE GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY TO ASSASSINATE JFK?!?!?!?!
• WE NEVER LANDED ON THE MOON!!!!!

I pride myself on being skeptical. Under most arenas of my life a deep undercurrent of disbelief runs, causing me to constantly question myself and others, and justly earning me a reputation for being cantankerous. I also, on most occasions, enjoy passionate, respectful debate. I have argued Calvinism in the midst of Arminians, Conservatism in the midst of Southern Democrats, and the superiority of Star Wars in the midst of Trekkies; in other situations I have argued the opposites of these things. I consider myself to be a Devil's Advocate rather than just being contrary, as I have been accused, though contrary is an apt word for it I suppose. There are two areas, however, where my skepticism and contrariness seems to run dry, or down to a shallow rivulet at least. The first is the area of my personal religious beliefs, where it could be said that my faith overcomes my skepticism. The other area is conspiracy theory.

I am not myself a conspiracy theorist; very rarely do I ever look at a situation like the moon landing or the 9/11 terrorist attacks and think, "There must be some massive government effort to cover up the truth of what is really happening here." But give me a badly laid out web site or a cheaply produced "documentary" (or in the dark days before the Internet, a piece of paper fifty photocopy-generations removed from it's original) about how JFK was killed by the CIA because he would not invade Cuba, and you have my attention, for a little while at least. I am not so soft in the head that I cannot reason my way out of the dark web of insinuation that comprises most of these theories, but that first blush is all belief. I always get that odd fluttery sense of glimpsing a "real" world that I was not meant to see, a shadow world I called it in a crappy novel I once started but never finished. Plus, conspiracy theories are marvelously entertaining. Graham Hancock's book "Fingerprints of the Gods"--which is not conspiracy theory per se but is instead it's first cousin, revisionist history--is a fun read; even as I scoff at the ideas he presents I am pulled smiling along the nutty logic of the "plot" he is constructing. The movie "JFK' also falls into this category. The intertwining of known historical fact with fanciful supposition and invention can be an intoxicating brew for me, and this adds to the creepy reality/unreality that these films and documents possess.

In the rational part my mind, I am aware that these ideas are nuts. Conspiracy theorists ignore the concepts of research and the scientific method and instead believe that poking circumstantial holes in "The Official Story" is sufficient to discredit it, also known as conspiracy theory logic. And even when a alternate theory is proposed, the theories are full of paranoid fantasy and tend to simultaneously violate both Occam's and Hanlon's Razors. But all of this knowledge has the same effectiveness as a parent's admonition to a child that there is no monster in the closet. Leaving me to either accept that the part of my brain that deals with these matters is misfiring in some fundamental way, or that my skepticism of "The Official Story" leads my brain into these dark corners of paranoia.

• Penn and Teller: Bullshit! - Conspiracy Theories [links to more episodes]
• Chron.com | 9/11 conspiracy theories persist, thrive
• “CONSPIRACY CRANKS By JAMES B. MEIGS - New York Post Online Edition: Postopinion
• “Popular Mechanics” editor debunks 9/11 myths on O’Reilly
• Screw Loose Change
• Noam Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy claims Pt. 1 2