Ship of Fools: Daft conspiracy theories

Thread: Daft conspiracy theories Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Francophile (# 17838) on :

On a light-hearted vein, and not wishing to enter into overly deep discussion about the theories, I wonder what are the most daft conspiracy theories currently abounding?

I have always thought that one about the Apollo moon landings having been staged for the TV cameras somewhere in Texas takes some beating for daftness.

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

Why do you want to know? [Paranoid]

Along with the moon landing, I would add the Roswell conspiracy.

Actually, for pure daftness, throw in any conspiracy that depends almost entirely on the competence of decades worth of politicians and civil servants to keep a secret. Particularly when those politicians are from opposing political parties!

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Not that it's "currently abounding", in fact it's almost 40 years old, but I've always found the theory that the Freemasons carried out the Ripper murders in order to cover up a Catholic heir to the throne particularly daft.

That's mostly because the theorists allege that the murders openly employed Masonic ritual symbolism, even though the whole point of the killings would have been to cover something up.

That theory was the basis for two movies, the 1970s Canadian producion Murder By Decree(directed by Bob Clark of Porky's fame), and 2001's From Hell. I rememeber Murder By Decree as being rather cheezy, but it seems to have its partisans on IMDB.

[ 25. September 2013, 00:13: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

One word: Birthers. What a bunch of dingbats. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Oh you are talking your daft theories; for comparison, I bring you a real theory.

Posted by TheAlethiophile (# 16870) on :

I think my favourite is the Phantom Time Hypothesis - the idea that we are actually in the 18th century, because around 300 years of history in the middle ages was a fabrication.

Though for users of these boards, I think the Christ myth hypothesis is one that is more worthy of a [Killing me]

than a

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
I think my favourite is the Phantom Time Hypothesis - the idea that we are actually in the 18th century, because around 300 years of history in the middle ages was a fabrication.

It's funny, I was just reading up about that one the other day. The thing that I keep wondering is how you'd disprove a theory like that.

I think for sheer nuttiness, there's still a rich seam to be mined in the troofer community, even if the last 10 years of repeated debunking made most of them shut up and slink away. The absolute best bit is when competing troofer theories go head to head. Get a vanilla controlled demolition theorist and a holoplane advocate arguing, and sparks will fly. The funniest thing is that they'll probably end up accusing each other of being government shills. Poe's Law FTW.

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

Not a conspiracy as such, but wasn't there a popular theory a few decades back that most religious experience in the ancient world (including Christian) could be attributed to the use of magic mushrooms? I think the writer Robert Graves held the idea - he mentions it in his Greek Myths. But then I think he also thought the Odyssey was written by Homer's daughter, so perhaps it wasn't the ancients who were using the mushrooms ...

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Craziest conspiracy candidate: that Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered, possibly at the behest of Prince Philip.

Why stupid?

Well: the fact that Dodi Fayed was engaged to someone else at the time of the accident would have made his affair with Diana (if such it was) yet another instance of that sad, unhappy woman forming an attachment with a man already promised or married to someone else. Look at her previous history in this regard (Will Carling, Magdi Yacoub, Haznat Khan, etc, etc).

All the royal family needed to do was sit back and wait for her to either self-destruct (very likely) or for even her die-hard 'fans' to become tired of her endless entanglements with unsuitable men...

Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Not a conspiracy as such, but wasn't there a popular theory a few decades back that most religious experience in the ancient world (including Christian) could be attributed to the use of magic mushrooms? I think the writer Robert Graves held the idea - he mentions it in his Greek Myths. But then I think he also thought the Odyssey was written by Homer's daughter, so perhaps it wasn't the ancients who were using the mushrooms ...

I've certainly heard it said that the great witch scares of the Middle Ages were due to people tripping out on lysergic acid (as in LSD), a natural product of ergot fungus which grows on rye.

I have to say it actually sounds plausible. Extending the concept to the entire corpus of human religious experience, on the other hands, does stretch it bit.

Posted by Francophile (# 17838) on :

I dont want to get into a discussion about Lockerbie conspiracy theories, but there's a persistent rumour that the CIA had people on the ground after the crash but before the police/emergency services were even at the scene. Did they know it was going to happen and did they know exactly where the plane would come down in advance? I was told that the rumour can be traced back to Lockerbie locals who speak to US accented people at the scene minutes after the crash.

Did the US government bring an American civilian airliner down to pin a case on Libya?

Daft, I would day.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

quote:
I was told that the rumour can be traced back to Lockerbie locals who speak to US accented people at the scene minutes after the crash.

The rumour was obviously started by someone who is unaware of the fact that American tourists in search of their roots can turn up anywhere. Scotland is a popular destination due to the large number of Americans with Scottish ancestors.

If they really were CIA they must have been psychic - the reason why it came down on Lockerbie was because the takeoff was delayed. If the plane had left on time it would have exploded somewhere over the Atlantic and the crash investigation team might never have had enough evidence to pin the crime on anyone...

My favourite conspiracy theory is that old chestnut, the Bermuda Triangle. I have a book on my shelves entitled 'The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved'. It was compiled by a librarian who was sick of being asked about fairytales connected with the Bermuda Triangle, and published in 1975.

A quick Google reveals that despite this heroic effort to set the record straight, the Bermuda Triangle myth is still going strong.

Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :

I'm entertained by the Concentration Camps in the US conspiracy theory! In fact, a friend asked me to keep my eyes open while I was traveling this summer. He had heard that the place I was going was just rife with the camps!

It became a game to find odd structures in fields and discuss the concentration camp that was no doubt under our noses. [Razz]

Posted by ChaliceGirl (# 13656) on :

I remember reading one not too long ago that the late Pope John Paul II was of Jewish heritage- that his maternal side was Jewish until someone converted to Catholicsm along the line.
Hence the "real" reason JPII was sympathetic to the Jews.

So there you have it: a Jewish Pope!

Posted by Mere Nick (# 11827) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Hedgehog:
Why do you want to know?

Along with the moon landing, I would add the Roswell conspiracy.

Actually, for pure daftness, throw in any conspiracy that depends almost entirely on the competence of decades worth of politicians and civil servants to keep a secret. Particularly when those politicians are from opposing political parties!

Aha! But just like two professional rasslers, the politicians are all paid by the same promoter, doncha know?

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ChaliceGirl:
So there you have it: a Jewish Pope!

Of course, so was St. Peter. [Smile]

Over on the "Persuasion" thread in Purg there has been a reference to the anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts. But perhaps they are not daft so much as dangerous.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that, even though I seriously doubt that Paul McCartney died in 1966(or at any time since), it's not hard to entertain the possibility that the Beatles wanted people to think that. I mean...

-He appears on the back cover of Sgt. Peppers with his back turned, while all the other Beatles are facing the viewer.

-In the same picture, Harrison's fingers really do point to the words "He blew his mind out in a car".

-He is the only one dressed in black on the cover of Magical Mystery Tour.

-Possible confirmation bias, but it's pretty easy to construe the Abbey Road cover as a funeral procession. Maybe it's for for the band, I guess, but Paul would seem a likely candidate to represent the deceased in that particular semiotic arrangement.

-As many times as I've listened to it, I cannot hear the words at the end of Strawberry Fields as "Cranberry Sauce". It really does sound to me like "I buried Paul".

Though for that last clue to match the Abbey Road symbolism, the lyric would have to be read by George(the gravedigger), not John(the priest). Unless "buried" is used to mean "officiated the funeral of".

[ 25. September 2013, 17:07: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by ChaliceGirl (# 13656) on :

I watched something on the Lindburgh kidnapping that had the theory that Charles himself either killed the baby or was involved somehow.

Posted by georgiaboy (# 11294) on :

One I just heard recently, although it has apparently been around quite some time, is that it wasn't the Titanic that hit an iceberg and sank, but the substituted Olympic, which was supposedly a 'jinxed' ship.

Given all the publicity about the sailing of Titanic, the substitution would have had to have been elaborately complicated, so it's all quite farfetched, IMO, but then, that's how conspiracy theories operate, innit?

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I'd like to take this opportunity to say that, even though I seriously doubt that Paul McCartney died in 1966(or at any time since), it's not hard to entertain the possibility that the Beatles wanted people to think that. I mean...

-He appears on the back cover of Sgt. Peppers with his back turned, while all the other Beatles are facing the viewer.

-In the same picture, Harrison's fingers really do point to the words "He blew his mind out in a car".

-He is the only one dressed in black on the cover of Magical Mystery Tour.

-Possible confirmation bias, but it's pretty easy to construe the Abbey Road cover as a funeral procession. Maybe it's for for the band, I guess, but Paul would seem a likely candidate to represent the deceased in that particular semiotic arrangement.

-As many times as I've listened to it, I cannot hear the words at the end of Strawberry Fields as "Cranberry Sauce". It really does sound to me like "I buried Paul".

Though for that last clue to match the Abbey Road symbolism, the lyric would have to be read by George(the gravedigger), not John(the priest). Unless "buried" is used to mean "officiated the funeral of".

In my youth, the similar rumor was that rapper Tupac Shakur staged his own murder and was actually alive. The evidence was slim, based on numbers and the fact that he nicknamed himself Machiavelli. (According to the proponents of the theory, Machiavelli advised faking your death to fool your enemies. No idea if that is true.) But it does explain why they kept finding "new unreleased" Tupac records for about ten years after his death... [Paranoid]

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

Apple pie is American.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

balaam
[Killing me]

[actually, the worst ever apple pie I've eaten was in the USA - incredibly thick pastry and it had been made without cloves [Eek!]

]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Now that we're into a Pond skirmish, did you know that all American lawyers are British subjects?

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

Thanks to a "documentary" aired on the Animal Planet network, my brother called me and spent an hour telling me why mermaids are real!

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

I just stumbled across a really nutty one today. You know John Dillinger, Public Enemy #1? Shot down outside a movie theatre having been led into an ambush by "the Lady in Red"?

The conspiracy theory is that the guy who was killed was NOT Dillinger (gasp!) but just some poor schmuck who looked a bit like him. But, here is the thing. The FBI was (allegedly) relatively new and had just been allowed to carry guns. And two innocent people had already been shot during the hunt for Dillinger. So, afraid that the public would--gasp!--criticize them for accidentally killing a third innocent, the FBI decided to pretend that it was Dillinger. And the real Dillinger? Oh, him, they put into witness protection and he lived out his life as a mechanic somewhere.

Why they didn't just kill him (when they caught him to offer witness protection) and bury him in an unmarked grave (since he was supposed to be dead anyway) is not explained by the theory, SFAIK.

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Francophile:
On a light-hearted vein, and not wishing to enter into overly deep discussion about the theories, I wonder what are the most daft conspiracy theories currently abounding?

I have always thought that one about the Apollo moon landings having been staged for the TV cameras somewhere in Texas takes some beating for daftness.

My ex-roommate/girlfriend was a Naval aviator and swears that there is no possible way the moon landing could've been real because the radiation belt surrounding the Earth's atmosphere would kill the astronauts immediately. She also talked about the controversy of the flag waving on the flag pole. I told her that the guys on "Mythbusters" had proven that the moon landing hoax was completely nuts and also explained about the flag, but she insisted that the guys on the show were paid to say that... I gave up trying to talk reason to her. She's a little on the weird side anyway and she tends to get very upset if someone argues with her. [brick wall]

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

The faked moon landing, the aliens kept at Wright Patterson's Area B all make me laugh so hard because they depend on hundreds, maybe thousands of people keeping silent for 50 years. Please. I've worked at WPAF base and the Pentagon and had military men sit down with me in the cafeteria and tell me all sorts of stuff they shouldn't have, all in the interests of trying to impress a woman. One of them told me we were going into "Desert Storm," long before my Air Force husband knew. Remember when one of (Clinton's?) advisors got in trouble for telling secrets to a prostitute? He didn't even need to gain her interest, he was paying her! These guys are all too human and they've now gone through old age and dementia. Someone would have blabbed to the waitress at Dennys long before the tabloids had a chance to make an offer.

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
Apple pie is American.

Have you lot ever heard of a vile American idea called "Mock Apple Pie"??! It's from the Ritz cracker company and the recipe has NO APPLES in it!! WTF?

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

When I looked for "mock apple pie", one of the first recipes I found was for zucchini mock apple pie.

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
balaam

[actually, the worst ever apple pie I've eaten was in the USA - incredibly thick pastry and it had been made without cloves ]

I have had delicious apple pies made with cloves and cinnamon, though there should be more apples than pastry. What I would not dispute is that apple pies are more popular in the USA than in the country where it originated (British Isles or Scandinvia, no one is sure).

But to get away from the apple pie subject, I would, as a Yorkshireman, have liked this sort of response:

Yorkshire puddings originated in Yorkshire.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
I told her that the guys on "Mythbusters" had proven that the moon landing hoax was completely nuts and also explained about the flag, but she insisted that the guys on the show were paid to say that...

Without begrudging the Mythbusters their success (I love the show) or denying the moon landing, I always get a little worried about the old "the guys on 'Mythbusters' proved..." line. Shouldn't we require some peer review before we call something proven?

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Someone would have blabbed to the waitress at Dennys long before the tabloids had a chance to make an offer.

Ah, but it's clear that you haven't heard about the fact that they have blabbed. It's just that everyone has dismissed them as crazy too.

Posted by Carex (# 9643) on :

Zucchini makes a better pumpkin pie - just let it get big and save it like a winter squash.

The ones who really seem looney to me (well, the believers and ideas are wacko, the promoters are con artists) are the many flavors of "personal sovereignty" claims, where your name in all upper case letters is a different legal entity that makes you immune to many government laws. Any brief description can't do justice to the wonderfully creative theories that this includes, but one of my favorites is the idea that, as a result of abandoning the gold standard in 1933, the US Government now uses it's citizens as collateral in trade agreements with foreign countries.

Some years back I read a long screed about how you could send a letter with just 3 cents postage because the rules for a certain category of mail that applied to resident aliens (Sovereign Citizens are not citizens of the US, which is not a valid government anyway) had been left in force when the Post Office was converted to the US Postal Service, but it only worked if you specified your name in uppercase letters, and you couldn't send it to an address, because that was US territory, but had to be addressed as "near" a street address, and you had to write something about a special domestic rate on the envelope, and...

The Sovereign Citizen movement.

The FBI considers them a domestic terrorist threat.

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
When I looked for "mock apple pie", one of the first recipes I found was for zucchini mock apple pie.

Here, try this: http://www.backofthebox.com/recipes/pies-pastries/ritz-mock-apple-pie.html

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Carex wrote:

quote:
The ones who really seem looney to me (well, the believers and ideas are wacko, the promoters are con artists) are the many flavors of "personal sovereignty" claims, where your name in all upper case letters is a different legal entity that makes you immune to many government laws.

Followers of that dogma are currently involved in a stand-off with police in Calagary, Canada.

This particular group claims some identity as First Nations(IOW native indian), thus marking yet another addition to the salad of factions and interest groups represented among the adherents: there are marijuana enthusiasts, gun nuts, anti-environmentalists, and a host of others, all drawn to the idea. The hucksters, as you call them, seem to market it in such a way so as to allow the dupes to read anything they want into it.

I believe they somehow work it so that you ARE still obliged to obey laws against harming others(eg. murder and assault), but are immune from supposedly victimless or non-violent crimes. Whereas I'm pretty sure the law recognizes no caterogical distinctions between the two types of crime.

Another interesting thing about Freeman On The Land is that, unlike most of the other American-inspired groups of right-wing anti-government libertarian shadings(eg. militias), this one seems to have developed a following in the UK. I'm not sure what the reason for that would be, though, speaking strictly as an outsider, I do get the impression that there has been an upwsing in hostility against the police and other authority figures over there. Maybe related to anti-Eurose sentiment as well.

[ 28. September 2013, 00:06: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by The Machine Elf (# 1622) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:

quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
I think my favourite is the Phantom Time Hypothesis - the idea that we are actually in the 18th century, because around 300 years of history in the middle ages was a fabrication.
It's funny, I was just reading up about that one the other day. The thing that I keep wondering is how you'd disprove a theory like that.

Carbon dating would show that things which are 2000 years old are four times as old as things which are 500 years old, so any history which has artefacts and dates linked needs to fit with that - you can only miss out 300 years if no buildings were made of wood in those years, and all wooden things before then are actually 300 years older than other records suggest. You could posit that carbon dates are, say, 15% more recent than previously imagined and loose three centuries since 1AD that way, but then you may hit dendrochronology - a tree which was known to have been felled 1000 winters ago should have a similar carbon date, and losing 300 years may put that date outside the measurement error.

Personally, I'm secretly hoping that the badger cull is actually a cover for a hunt for the black beast, what with they both being in the same general area.

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
One word: Birthers. What a bunch of dingbats.

I spell that in one of two ways:
UNRECONSTRUCTED STONE-AGE BIGOTS or RACISTS.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Came across a new one to me last week, and I've heard a few from semi-computer literate teenagers, but did you know that the cause of WWI was nothing to do with the assassination of Duke Franz Ferdinand and all about the Germans fighting over the Berlin-Baghdad Railway? Another oil and resources based war.

I did bother looking to see where this one came from because I was told in all seriousness. There was a book published in 1917 discussing it, before the Germans rewrote history and before the Government documents were released.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

It's not inherently daft to see the railway as part of the competition for empire, which in turn underpinned the alliances which formed the domino effect triggered by Sarajevo.

But it's common in those with limited knowledge to fix on some apparently disregarded detail and go AHA! - confusing their own sense of discovery with some special line on The Truth.

Posted by Francophile (# 17838) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:

quote:
Originally posted by Francophile:
On a light-hearted vein, and not wishing to enter into overly deep discussion about the theories, I wonder what are the most daft conspiracy theories currently abounding?

I have always thought that one about the Apollo moon landings having been staged for the TV cameras somewhere in Texas takes some beating for daftness.
My ex-roommate/girlfriend was a Naval aviator and swears that there is no possible way the moon landing could've been real because the radiation belt surrounding the Earth's atmosphere would kill the astronauts immediately. She also talked about the controversy of the flag waving on the flag pole. I told her that the guys on "Mythbusters" had proven that the moon landing hoax was completely nuts and also explained about the flag, but she insisted that the guys on the show were paid to say that... I gave up trying to talk reason to her. She's a little on the weird side anyway and she tends to get very upset if someone argues with her.

I find the thought of the fake moon landings hilarious.

First of all, they would have had to employ actors, cameramen and various technical people to set the scene and film it all, including the apparent lack of gravity on "the moon". These people would all have had to have kept quiet.

Then, they would have had to comandeer an area of land somewhere to stage the landings. And nobody noticed what was going on and blabbed?

Then there was the whole US government and NASA establishment (from pre-the landings down to the present day), including the "astronauts" themselves. Was Neil Armstrong lying to the world from 1969 until his death? And his family?

If the whole thing was staged, why was it necessary to stage several further "landings" after the first one in July 1969? And why was it necessary to pretend that Apollo 13 was on the verge of disaster? I suppose the conspiracy-theory holders would say that was to show NASA could save the astronauts from almost certain death and thus reinforce the superiority of US space technology over the Soviets.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by georgiaboy:
One I just heard recently, although it has apparently been around quite some time, is that it wasn't the Titanic that hit an iceberg and sank, but the substituted Olympic, which was supposedly a 'jinxed' ship.

Given all the publicity about the sailing of Titanic, the substitution would have had to have been elaborately complicated, so it's all quite farfetched, IMO, but then, that's how conspiracy theories operate, innit?

I believe that Dan Van der Vat, who is quite knowledgable on maritime history, wrote a book proposing this theory. IIRC the switch happened when the Olympic was in dock alongside the Titanic, and they switched the names over. This seems a bit implausible to me, if only because there'd have been a lot of people working on the ships at the time. You can imagine the scene at Harland & Wolff's one balmy morning in, I suppose, 1911:
Worker 1: hey, Billy!
Worker 2: yes, Billy?
W1: When we knocked off last night which dock was the Titanic in?
W2: The left-hand one, so it was.
W1: Aye, I thought so too. But will you look - it's in the right-hand one!
W2: So it is. Would ye believe it? My memory must be going. Oh well, better shift our tools over there, then...

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

Yesterday I found online a documentary that Tony Robinson (of Time Team) made, gleefully demolishing all the conspiracy theories in The Da Vinci Code that people believe to be true - the "holy bloodline", the Priory of Sion, the Templars, Rosslyn Chapel, the lot. He spent a lot of time on the subject of Pierre Plantard, the fantasist who seems to have invented most of the nonsense back in the 1920s.

A thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half.

Posted by cheesymarzipan (# 9442) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Carex:
Some years back I read a long screed about how you could send a letter with just 3 cents postage...[/QB]

You can send a letter with no postage on it at all, but it may not get delivered...
Any non-delivered post will obviously have been confiscated by the conspiracists...

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Way back in the mists of time, there used to be an Urban Myths board. I went to look to see if I could drag up some of the ones people were talking about back then. I didn't find much, but this Procter and Gamble one turned up.

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Machine Elf:

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:

quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
I think my favourite is the Phantom Time Hypothesis - the idea that we are actually in the 18th century, because around 300 years of history in the middle ages was a fabrication.
It's funny, I was just reading up about that one the other day. The thing that I keep wondering is how you'd disprove a theory like that.
Carbon dating would show that things which are 2000 years old are four times as old as things which are 500 years old, so any history which has artefacts and dates linked needs to fit with that - you can only miss out 300 years if no buildings were made of wood in those years, and all wooden things before then are actually 300 years older than other records suggest. You could posit that carbon dates are, say, 15% more recent than previously imagined and loose three centuries since 1AD that way, but then you may hit dendrochronology - a tree which was known to have been felled 1000 winters ago should have a similar carbon date, and losing 300 years may put that date outside the measurement error.

Good point.

But hold on - aren't you then relying on the accuracy of ancient dating to prove the accuracy of slightly less ancient dating? If you're prepared to swallow the idea that 300 years never really happened, it would be trivial to explain away discrepancies and anomalies with similar lines of reasoning.

The argument would run that the dating of any artifact from before the phantom years is necessarily suspect, even when taken directly from historic records and chronicles, because they obviously weren't terribly precise about dating back then, or they wouldn't have allowed 300 years to be created overnight. Game, set and match!

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that argument's genuinely been advanced, because it seems to fit the conspiracist mindset.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
Way back in the mists of time, there used to be an Urban Myths board. I went to look to see if I could drag up some of the ones people were talking about back then. I didn't find much, but this Procter and Gamble one turned up.

I never get tired of that one. High-five to Amway for keeping it afloat.

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

It seems that in, ohhhhh, two weeks, 16 States (of these United States)will be eliminated and/or merged with other States.

Info courtesy of the snopes.com "Urban Legends" site, complete with de-bunking.

Posted by Siegfried (# 29) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
Way back in the mists of time, there used to be an Urban Myths board. I went to look to see if I could drag up some of the ones people were talking about back then. I didn't find much, but this Procter and Gamble one turned up.

That was my first hosting gig, actually! My favorite was that the cassette tape innards strewn along roads were witches' curses.

Posted by Siegfried (# 29) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Machine Elf:

quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:

quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
I think my favourite is the Phantom Time Hypothesis - the idea that we are actually in the 18th century, because around 300 years of history in the middle ages was a fabrication.
It's funny, I was just reading up about that one the other day. The thing that I keep wondering is how you'd disprove a theory like that.
Carbon dating would show that things which are 2000 years old are four times as old as things which are 500 years old, so any history which has artefacts and dates linked needs to fit with that - you can only miss out 300 years if no buildings were made of wood in those years, and all wooden things before then are actually 300 years older than other records suggest. You could posit that carbon dates are, say, 15% more recent than previously imagined and loose three centuries since 1AD that way, but then you may hit dendrochronology - a tree which was known to have been felled 1000 winters ago should have a similar carbon date, and losing 300 years may put that date outside the measurement error.

Personally, I'm secretly hoping that the badger cull is actually a cover for a hunt for the black beast, what with they both being in the same general area.

Running orbits of comets and such back would also turn up any such errors. And we know of certain astronomical events (such as the supernoval that created the crab nebula in 1054) that were observed by non-western cultures. So, unless the Chinese were part of the hoax as well...

Posted by The Rogue (# 2275) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
Way back in the mists of time, there used to be an Urban Myths board. I went to look to see if I could drag up some of the ones people were talking about back then. I didn't find much, but this Procter and Gamble one turned up.
I never get tired of that one. High-five to Amway for keeping it afloat.

Note that the article doesn't say what P&G did with the damages ...

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Rogue:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
Way back in the mists of time, there used to be an Urban Myths board. I went to look to see if I could drag up some of the ones people were talking about back then. I didn't find much, but this Procter and Gamble one turned up.
I never get tired of that one. High-five to Amway for keeping it afloat.
Note that the article doesn't say what P&G did with the damages ...

I believe a lot of the money went towards unveiling their new logo.

Posted by ChaliceGirl (# 13656) on :

No one has mentioned JFK?

Who was behind killing Kennedy?
a. Oswald
b. Oswald plus a few others yet to be named
c. Communists
d. The Mafia
e. Texans who hated JFK and wanted LBJ to become president.
f. LBJ himself
g. Jackie, because she was fed up with her husband's cheating with Marilyn Monroe.
h. The Ku Klux Klan (they hate Catholics)
i. None of the above
j. Insert your own theory here.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

NASA because he had found out about the Moon hoax and was going to cut their funding?

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ChaliceGirl:
Who was behind killing Kennedy?

Aha! So you have bought into the story that JFK was killed! They have you completely bamboozled!

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Insert your own theory here

-British intelligence, because they feared the ramifications of an Irishman being the most powerful person in the world. (I think I more of less made that up)

-the Vatican, because Kennedy had promised to uphold the First Amendment rather than promote Catholicism(that one actually has considerable currency in fundamentalist circles)

On the whole though, I subscribe to the statement of the left-wing writer Alexander Cockburn, who said that Oswald was a leftist who killed Kennedy for left-wing political reasons, and that it was one of the rare cases in which a political assassination had the results intended by the assassin, ie. Johnson actually put the kibosh on some of Kennedy's imperialistic excesses in Latin America, the area that Oswald was most outraged about.

[ 04. October 2013, 00:20: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
Insert your own theory here
-British intelligence, because they feared the ramifications of an Irishman being the most powerful person in the world. (I think I more of less made that up)

-the Vatican, because Kennedy had promised to uphold the First Amendment rather than promote Catholicism(that one actually has considerable currency in fundamentalist circles)

...

These two go together. Head of MI5 at the time, Roger Hollis, was the brother of Christopher Hollis, RC convert, and uncle of Crispian Hollis, now RC Bishop Emeritus of Portsmouth. Make of that what you will.

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

My faith in conspiracy theorists is restored. With the technical crash-and-burn of the Affordable Care Act's computer registration system, I felt sure that somebody would suggest this:

It was sabotaged by the Tea Party!

Posted by Sparrow (# 2458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Craziest conspiracy candidate: that Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered, possibly at the behest of Prince Philip.

Why stupid?

Well: the fact that Dodi Fayed was engaged to someone else at the time of the accident would have made his affair with Diana (if such it was) yet another instance of that sad, unhappy woman forming an attachment with a man already promised or married to someone else. Look at her previous history in this regard (Will Carling, Magdi Yacoub, Haznat Khan, etc, etc).

All the royal family needed to do was sit back and wait for her to either self-destruct (very likely) or for even her die-hard 'fans' to become tired of her endless entanglements with unsuitable men...

I've always thought that if they DID want to do away with her, all they would have needed to do is arrange an "accidental overdose". Everyone would have believed that.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Prince George was born by surrogate, Kate wore a false bump to pretend she was pregnant.

I have no idea why anyone thinks that would be even remotely feasible.

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

I've seen this one too North East Quine. It's being openly promoted in at least one of the royal gossip sites. Another of these sites appears to support it but doesn't allow any discussion. So the allegation seems to be made repeatedly and just left there undisputed.

For this to work it would involve hundreds, possibly thousands, of people in a massive deception and some of them in criminal activity, including Prince William who have made a false declaration when registering the birth. 'Evidence' for this theory includes the photographs published for Prince George's christening - some people are claiming that he looks 4 months rather than 3 months which means, according to them, that the 'surrogate' delivered early. The fact that he was seen at one day old, and very clearly newborn, being taken home from hospital doesn't stop these idiots.

Along the same lines, and from the same sources, comes the theory that the Duchess of Cambridge is actually older than her given age - estimates vary between 5 and 10 years. Evidence to the contrary will include birth registration and baptism certificate along with numerous photographs which can be clearly dated. The idea behind this theory seems to rely on a plot conceived by the family of the Duchess before she was born with the ultimate aim of establishing her family at the top. Like the Boleyns, only worse.

[ 27. October 2013, 13:59: Message edited by: justlooking ]

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

The UK foot and mouth outbreak of 2000 was started deliberately to remove livestock farmers from the countryside .

Wasn't it disclosed that the government had stockpiled railway sleepers in advance ,( used to incinerate slaughtered animals) ?

Posted by Rosa Winkel (# 11424) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
Insert your own theory here
-British intelligence, because they feared the ramifications of an Irishman being the most powerful person in the world. (I think I more of less made that up)

-the Vatican, because Kennedy had promised to uphold the First Amendment rather than promote Catholicism(that one actually has considerable currency in fundamentalist circles)

...
These two go together. Head of MI5 at the time, Roger Hollis, was the brother of Christopher Hollis, RC convert, and uncle of Crispian Hollis, now RC Bishop Emeritus of Portsmouth. Make of that what you will.

An alternative reality version of himself was arrested a few years later because of tax fraud. Lister, The Cat and Kryten went to him and via a time link thing took him behind the grassy knoll, where he shot himself, knowing that he would go down well in history, instead of the tax fraud infamy he awaited.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Prince George was born by surrogate, Kate wore a false bump to pretend she was pregnant.

I have no idea why anyone thinks that would be even remotely feasible.

Aside from all the other reasonable objections, didn't Kate spend time in the hospital early in her pregnancy because of extreme morning-sickness?

Moo

Posted by Francophile (# 17838) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Prince George was born by surrogate, Kate wore a false bump to pretend she was pregnant.

I have no idea why anyone thinks that would be even remotely feasible.
Aside from all the other reasonable objections, didn't Kate spend time in the hospital early in her pregnancy because of extreme morning-sickness?

Moo

I suppose the answer to that is that she was in hospital but not suffering from morning sickness. I mean, did anyone actualy SEE her nauseated/throwing up while she was in hospital? Maybe those Australian radio pranksters know the real truth.......

Posted by Squirrel (# 3040) on :

There are still followers of William "Bill Cooper," the alleged former Naval Intelligence officer turned UPO kookoo, around. One was telling me how NASA had secret farms on the Moon. Our discussion went as follows:

ME: John, how can there be farms on the Moon when there's no air there?

JOHN: How do you know there's no atmosphere there?

ME: People have been to the Moon.

JOHN: And you believe everything the Government says?

BTW: John works for the federal government. In the Department of Agriculture.

Posted by justlooking (# 12079) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Francophile:

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Prince George was born by surrogate, Kate wore a false bump to pretend she was pregnant.

I have no idea why anyone thinks that would be even remotely feasible.
Aside from all the other reasonable objections, didn't Kate spend time in the hospital early in her pregnancy because of extreme morning-sickness?

Moo
I suppose the answer to that is that she was in hospital but not suffering from morning sickness. I mean, did anyone actualy SEE her nauseated/throwing up while she was in hospital? Maybe those Australian radio pranksters know the real truth.......

And, that nurse who died - she 'knew too much' and was bumped off by the freemasons. We all saw that masonic design on the belt buckle of the nurse who was with Liz when she left hospital. Proof.

[ 28. October 2013, 02:02: Message edited by: justlooking ]

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