ChoiceBlogger?

“You gotta focus on what’s working best,” R. replied after I mentioned to him I ponder stopping this blog – the reason being I can’t find the time to post much. I also had to realize it’s hard to get a readership when the blog topic changes every month, and it’s hard to write something meaningful when you can’t talk about your expertise. Having to learn details of a new topic is fun, but also time-consuming, and trying to write a meaningful post can take a week (of reading a book, of trying to make an interview, and so on). Creating a mere link blog works, but is also less rewarding to read. A weekly posting frequency on the other hand destroys the idea of this blog, as topics change every month (I feel e.g. my German “bad service” blog works OK with a much more rare posting frequency). My Werther palimpsest blog, on the other hand, had its ending planned from the start, even though it ended sooner than expected.

This year, I’m hoping to take blogging full-time and I’m focussing my energies on Google Blogoscoped. For ChoiceBlogger for now, this means good-bye... and thanks to everyone who supported this experiment.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Apr 28 2006 reg. Famous Photos.
>> ChoiceBlogger? (2 comments)

A Handful of People Run Everything

From stand-up comedian Bill Hicks:

It’s just a handful of people that run everything, and that’s provable. I have this feeling that whoever’s elected president . . . no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail – blah, blah, blah – when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it’s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll... and then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new President, “Any questions?”

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> A Handful of People Run Everything (0 comments)

The New World Order Conspiracy

From the New World Order homepage:

The New World Order is a powerful & secret political movement aiming to place the world under a global totalitarian dictatorship called the New World Order or ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> The New World Order Conspiracy (0 comments)

Satanic Barcodes

From Snopes.com regarding the claim that “The infamous number ’666’ appears in all product barcodes”:

Contrary to popular myth, no bar code includes the number 666. This belief arose because the number six is represented by a pattern similar to that of the guard bars used to mark the beginning, middle, and end of every bar code. Since the guard bars always appear three times in a given bar code, people who mistakenly read them as sixes claimed that the pattern 6-6-6 was embedded in every bar code.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> Satanic Barcodes (0 comments)

Alien Abductions

From a Wikipedia article on the abduction phenomenon:

The abduction phenomenon is an umbrella term used to describe a number of hypotheses, claims or assertions stating that non-human creatures kidnap individuals – sometimes called “abductees” – usually for medical testing or for sexual reproduction procedures. Many such encounters are described as terrifying or humiliating, but others describe them as transformative or even pleasant. (...)

Such alleged abductions are usually closely connected to UFO reports, and are sometimes supposedly conducted by so-called Greys: Short, grey-skinned humanoids with large, pear-shaped heads and enormous, dark eyes. Many abductees, it must be admitted, are heavily under the influence of illegal substances. Religion is also cited as the source of alien abduction delusions.

Also check out this Alien abduction survey data...

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> Alien Abductions (0 comments)

Crop Circles Man-made?

From a WarnerBros.com Conspiracy Theory newsletter:

There is no convincing evidence that crop circles or any other kind of UGM (Unusual Ground Markings) were made by aliens. There are some reports of lights being seen in and around crop circle sites, and a few videos showing objects flitting over fields. The lights are hardly proof, and the objects in the videos seem to be pieces of foil or paper being tossed about by the wind.

In a deliberate attempt to test crop circle “experts,” a crop circle was faked under the watchful eyes of the media. When cerealogists were called in, they proclaimed it genuine.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> Crop Circles Man-made? (0 comments)

CIA and LSD

From the book The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen :

The CIA was on to acid long before the flower children. (...)

At least one person committed suicide after becoming an unwitting subject of a CIA LSD test, crashing through a highstory plate-glass window in a New York hotel as his Agency guardian watched. (Or perhaps the guardian did more than watch. In June 1994 the victim’s family had his thirty-year-old corpse exhumed to check for signs that he may have been thrown out that window.) (...)

The CIA and the military simply couldn’t figure out how to harness the drug’s power. Thank goodness. Their idea was not to open “the doors of perception” but to convert otherwise free human beings into automatons.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> CIA and LSD (0 comments)

WMD Moved?

Is it possible that Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were moved out of Iraq by the Russians before the US could find them? Well, someone interviewed by O’Reilly at Fox News seems to believe so.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> WMD Moved? (0 comments)

Princess Di Murdered?

From Vigay.com:

Diana was the ’peoples princess’, whom everyone loved and admired.

But.... Did someone want her removed?

Although a terrible thing to think, many people I’ve spoken to agree that things don’t add up about the reporting of her terrible death, along with Dodi Al Fayed.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> Princess Di Murdered? (0 comments)

The Kellog’s Conspiracy

From an article at Rotten.com:

Kellogg’s Cornflakes, the bland breakfast flakes that go almost instantly limp in milk were originally invented to bore you into such a deep coma that you would fall face down in the milk drenched flakes, drown, and thereby be spared the temptation and sin known as masturbation.

Like many Christian conservatives before and since, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg believed that masturbation, and in fact all sexual excess, was sinful – “sexual excess” here defined as “sex for anything beyond reproduction”. (...)

Although it is hard to judge whether Kellogg and similar theorists were the cause or merely the voice of 19th century Americans’ surging hysteria over masturbation, we can certainly see that the shadow of this era has lingered in our culture for over a century.

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> The Kellog’s Conspiracy (0 comments)

AIDS Man-Made?

Was AIDS an invention of science?

Philipp Lenssen on Friday, Mar 31 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> AIDS Man-Made? (0 comments)

Katie Holmes’ Missing Days

Has Katie Holmes been brainwashed? There are 16 days missing in her life, FOXNews.com says, and within that period Katie made some life-changing decisions... like fire the manager she’s been with for years.

[Via Waxy.]

Philipp Lenssen on Monday, Mar 27 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> Katie Holmes’ Missing Days (0 comments)

Time Travel Conspiracy

This guy believes he’s been a time travel target by none other than the US gov’t:

I have enclosed below a series of pictures to show how the US government starting around 1994 went back in time with remote sensing and holographic radiation longitudinal emf and sound wave holographic energy beams as shown in the movie time tunnel to place different computer generated holographic archetypes of different Nordic, Celtic, and Aryan faces and other attributes around my body as if I were a microcosm of the center of the universe, Adam, and God, to change the genetic attributes, facial form, eye color, hair color, voice sound, and many other body attributes throughout my life year by year from my birth (1962, Jan 23 Midnight) to the present representing correlation’s between the years in my life and the ages of evolution and history from the beginning of time to the present.

[Via Waxy.]

Philipp Lenssen on Monday, Mar 27 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> Time Travel Conspiracy (0 comments)

Conspiracy Theory Party

At this conspiracy theory party on March 31 in Austin, Texas, you come “disguised as your favorite conspiracy, conspiracy theory figure, icon, or the real truth.”

Philipp Lenssen on Monday, Mar 27 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> Conspiracy Theory Party (1 comment)

82% Say 9/11 Covered Up by Gov’t

PrisonPlanet.com writes:

Despite the best efforts of the now whimpering attack poodles of the mainstream media, an online CNN poll shows that over four-fifths, or 82 per cent, agree with actor Charlie Sheen that the U.S. government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks.

Philipp Lenssen on Monday, Mar 27 2006 reg. Conspiracy Theories.
>> 82% Say 9/11 Covered Up by Gov’t (0 comments)