The best crackpot theory I’ve ever read is The Bible Came from Arabia by the Lebanese philologist Kamal Salibi. He analyzed the roots of place names from the Bible and compared them with place names in ‘Asîr, the southwestern part of Saudi Arabia, which borders on Yemen. ‘Asîr gets a fair amount of rainfall and is much greener and more fertile than the rest of the country. Salibi claims that the Bible stories were only much later retroactively applied to the area now known as Israel/Palestine; they originally referred to ‘Asîr. He was able to match up the Biblical names with actual places on the ground in ‘Asîr. He brings in other evidence like architecture and Jewish demography in nearby Yemen, but the core argument is based on comparative philology. I’ve studied enough comparative Semitics myself to appreciate how ingeniously he handles the subject.
Most crackpot theories tend to be slapdash, clumsy affairs. Not so Kamal Salibi’s exquisitely well-wrought thesis: he has the philological skills to meticulously analyze hundreds of comparative Semitic roots and reinterpret ancient Hebrew in the light of Arabic. The consonantal outlines of Semitic writing make this possible, bringing into sharp relief the similarities between different Semitic languages and obscuring the differences. Salibi was clever enough to knit together a huge number of Semitic roots into a widespread texture of highly realistic imaginary geography closely overlaid on the real geography. It was almost as though he had bent the earth’s crust, bringing together Canaan and southwest Arabia to achieve this overlay. There are some circumstantial considerations to corroborate The Bible Came from Arabia. One is the phenomenon of “land-náma”: people who migrate to a new land superimpose on it names remembered from the old country (for example, all the Old World names used in America, including many Biblical names). Also, travelers to ‘Asir have remarked on the mystical impression its fertility made on them amidst the surrounding desert—as though it could have been the prototype for the Garden of Eden. Salibi’s ingenious skill at tying together so many philological and geographical strands almost had me believing it. Against my better judgment, he made me want to believe it. This is the mark of a superior quality crackpot theory. Read this wonderful book if only for an example of the prodigies the human brain is capable of.
I heard just today that there is a government conspiracy to keep us all ignorant of the “fact” that planet X is going to throw the Earth off it’s orbital axis in the year 2003.
Funny, we didn’t have the book that discusses it. I guess that makes my library part of the conspiracy.
Dollar bills never actually enter or leave a strip club. Guys come in, change ten or twenty bills for ones, use them to tip the dancers, who then take them back to the bar and change them for tens and twenties. If this activity takes place at a high enough rate of speed (say, two hours before or after midnight on a Saturday night) the circulation of dollar bills creates a temporal vortex, and, if you manage to get yourself dead center of this vortex, it is possible to travel backward or forward in time- forward before midnight, when the guys are changing their larger denom bills for singles, backward after midnight when the girls are starting to change the singles for tens and twenties.
Oh, the things that a craps dealer thinks of on a dead game, especially when said craps dealer once had a part time job as an exotic dancer…
Smoke detectors are really listening devices that the Government can use to spy on us.
This is why 1) The number of smoke detectors recommended in a household has grown since they were first introduced, the government now has the technology to moniter more of them, 2) The recommendations have gone from general coverage (“Upstairs”) to more private locations (“your bedroom”) and 3) Smoke detector’s innards contain pieces that are labeled “Do not open or tamper”. An oscilliscope held up to these pieces shows a waveform coming out of them.
LordVor, of course they perpetuate the idea by suggesting that there is some ‘radioactive’ element inside, which, as a joke, they call “Americium”. (Get it – it’s America (i.e. the gov’t.) that can “see 'em” through the device.)
I once saw a crackpot theory on a newsgroup (imagine that!) that was a rather passionate and apparently well-thought-out ‘anti-gravity’ or ‘push’ theory. Basically, they said that gravity was not an attractive force between two objects, but the result of a ‘pushing’ force which goes from vacuum to the center of objects. According to this theory, objects placed in front of a larger object are pushed up against it because of the gravity pushing them on it. They also believed that putting more objects in the way of the force weakened the push, which is why the tides work (the moon is blocking some of the gravity pushing on the oceans).
The infamous ‘Port Arthur Killings’ here in Aus. have been subject to the interest of conspiracy theorists as well. Martin Bryant was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for ‘the term of his natural life’ for the massacre of 36 people. There were plenty of eyewitnessess, and enough other evidence to leave nobody in any doubt as to his guilt. (Whether he was completely sane is another issue altogether and one that I do not want to go into here).
Yet there are some complete morons out there who reckon that Bryant was set up by the govt. who had a (hidden) agenda to ban the possession of firearms. They maintain that Bryant did not kill anyone, instead, the killings were carried out by a govt. hired marksman and Bryant was the fall-guy.
And they are deadly serious.
Except they don’t seem to see the irony of their own actions. THEY are the one’s with the ‘agenda’ that has clouded their commonsense.
This would be funny if it wasn’t so damned sad.
I swear I read this (well, saw it on the cover) in one of the tabloids while in a supermarket checkout line.
When Jackie Kennedy Onassis died of cancer (I forget what year that was) it was the latest event in the JFK conspiracy.
JFK did not die in Dallas in 1963; he suffered severe brain damage and was either in a coma or reduced to a vegetative/childlike state. The public was told that he had died to facilitate the Presidential succession to LBJ.
Jackie’s later “marriage” to Onassis was part of a deal which permitted JFK to be relocated to a Mediterranean island Onassis owned. There may have also been financial considerations.
Jackie did not actually die of cancer; her illness and later “death” were a cover-up so that she could spend JFK’s final days with him.
These were the main points as I remember them; the details elude me after all these years (particularly since I had only scanned the article while waiting for the customer in front of me to answer that deathless question - paper or plastic?).
I will admit to wondering two years ago if someone was somehow going to tie JFK Jr’s death into this theory.
I like the one that claims that Mark David Chapman was actually brainwashed by the CIA to shoot John Lennon. Apparently Lennon did have a CIA file back in the Nixon era, and was seen as a threat to national security because of his popularity as a singer and anti-war protestor.
One of my lingering favorite conspiracy theorists was this guy who had a thing about people driving around in cars, in pairs. You could detect them three ways:
He had some complicated scheme about combining their license plate numbers, e.g. One will have a “CL” in the license plate number, and the parner will have a “DW”–if you see a CL, look for a DW and you’ll have found his partner, and vice versa. Also, I think there was something about adding up the numbers on the plate and getting certain totals (he had a long list.)
They all have something on their antennas–a ribbon, one of those '76 balls, something. (I looked at the profusion of American flags on antennas after 9/11 and figured this guy had probably collapsed into a coma.)
They always had one rear window rolled partway down, sometimes just a few inches. Even when there was no one in the back seat! On hot days, they’d roll it down and stuff a towel into the gap to keep the air conditioning in. Why would they do that? Huh? Why? Unless it’s all part of the conspiracy! (He considered this the slam dunk proof that Something Odd is going on. I might agree with him, if I’d ever seen a towel stuffed in a window! Presumably the consipracy is not active in my area.)
The most touching part was, while he was convinced that there was some sort of conspiracy afoot, he would not hazard a guess as to what they were up to! People were driving around in pairs, with linked license plates, with ribbons on their antennas and towels stuffed in the gaps in their rear windows, and he had no idea why!. I found this pleasantly refreshing. Usually it seems like the persecution comes first, and the weird description of the persecutors follows. Not with this guy. He very earnestly solicited information from anyone who had any information regarding this phenomenon, and urged us to pay attention to this bizarre plot going on around us every day!
