December 2009
33 posts
“‘In distilled form the explanations of both the right and the left have...”
– Barack Obama, ‘The Audacity of Hope’.
Dec 29th
“‘Just as the Knights Templar and the Bavarian Illuminati are still blamed...”
– Arthur Goldwag
Dec 29th
“‘The originators and spreaders of the conspiracy theories of the 1950s...”
Dec 22nd
“‘How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men...”
Dec 22nd
2 tags
“The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with...”
– http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/protocols.htm
Dec 14th
4 tags
“To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie...”
– http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/protocols.htm
Dec 14th
2 tags
Who wrote the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'?
[http://www.coxandforkum.com/] ‘Abbé Augustin Barruel (October 2, 1741, Villeneuve-de-Berg, Ardèche – October 5, 1820) was a French Jesuit priest. He is now mostly known for documenting the conspiracy theory involving the Bavarian Illuminati and the Jacobins in his book Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (original title Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire du Jacobinisme)...
Dec 14th
2 tags
Umberto Eco on the 'Protocols of the Elders of...
‘Intellectual anti-semitism as we now know it originates from the modern world. In 1797, Abbé Barruel wrote his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du jacobinisme to show that the French revolution was a plot of the Knights Templar and the freemasons. Later it was an Italian, Captain Simonini, who suggested to him that it was above all the perfidious Jews who were acting behind the...
Dec 14th
2 tags
Origins of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'
‘The conceptual inspiration for the Protocols can be traced back to the time of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. At that time, a French Jesuit named Abbe Barruel, representing reactionary elements opposed to the revolution, published in 1797 a treatise blaming the Revolution on a secret conspiracy operating through the Order of Freemasons. Barruel’s idea was...
Dec 14th
2 tags
Straight Dope article on 'Protocols of Elders of... →
Dec 14th
2 tags
Investigations into the 'Protocols of the Elders...
From Wikipedia: 1905 Stolypin’s investigation -A secret investigation ordered by the newly appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers Pyotr Stolypin came to conclusion that the Protocols first appeared in Paris in antisemitic circles around 1897–1898.[47] Even though he himself was anti-Semitic, when Nicholas II learned of the results of this investigation, he requested: “The...
Dec 14th
2 tags
The non-existent manuscript: a study of the... →
Dec 14th
1 tag
Wikipedia list of Conspiracy Theories →
Dec 14th
2 tags
WatchWatch
Documentary on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Dec 14th
2 tags
Wikipedia: Protocols of the Elders of Zion →
Dec 14th
“Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or...”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
Dec 8th
2 tags
“‘The cyborg figure reinforces Classical and Christian Romance themes –...”
– Muri, A. (2003). Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture. Body & Society, 9/3.
Dec 8th
3 tags
Of Shit And The Soul
‘If we are going to be talking about the living human body in cultural studies of the interface of body and technology, however, we need also to emphasize that human consciousness is inalienably enmeshed with its corporeality, with the everyday actualities of its flesh, its giving-birth, its growths and excrescences, the regularities or indignities of its secretions; our consciousness is...
Dec 8th
2 tags
Anomie →
Dec 7th
3 tags
“‘A survey of 348 residents of southwestern New Jersey showed that most...”
– Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in Conspiracy Theories . Political Psychology, 15(4), 731-742. [link]
Dec 7th
4 tags
Biased concepts of randomness and meaningfulness
‘These investigators [Brugger et al.] had argued that believers may be more likely than non-believers to read meaning into random patterns and sequences and thus be more likely to be impressed by everyday coincidences. Such coincidences would seem to believers to require some other explanation than mere chance and they would therefore be more prone to opt for a paranormal...
Dec 7th
4 tags
Probabilistic Reasoning
In addition to our problems with certain aspects of syllogistic reasoning, we are also very poor at estimating probabilities in a variety of everyday situations. This could be another important factor in leading people to misinterpret certain situations as involving paranormal forces when in fact the explanation lies elsewhere… … in summary, the probability misjudgement theories...
Dec 7th
2 tags
Dec 7th
6 tags
Syllogisms
“It is trivially easy to affirm that the reasoning in this example is valid, that is to say that the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. But other examples are not so obvious. People are particularly prone to make the error known as affirmation of the consequent, illustrated by the following example: If the government is engaged in a cover-up of the existence of UFOs then...
Dec 7th
5 tags
“‘Roe rightly criticised, on methodological grounds, earlier studies that...”
– French, C. C., & Wilson, K. (2007) Cognitive factors underlying paranormal beliefs and experiences. In S. Della Sala (ed.). Tall Tales About the Mind and Brain: Separating Fact From Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 1, pp. 3-22.
Dec 7th
1 tag
“New media, such as those contained in the World Wide Web, are unlike mass media....”
– http://www.openanthropology.org/ANTH498/syllabus2009.pdf
Dec 4th
2 tags
Dec 4th
1 tag
A Cyborg Solution To A Cyborg Problem
‘In Irish political discourse, “an Irish solution to an Irish problem” is any official response to a controversial issue which is timid, half-baked, or expedient, which is an unsatisfactory compromise, or sidesteps the fundamental issue’ [from Wikipedia] So, for the domain of conspiracy theory, can we suggest: ‘In online political discourse, “a cyborg solution to an...
Dec 4th
3 tags
Disorganised schooling?
If, as Bill Green argues (1993), postmodernity demands the transmutation of pedagogy in a new era of ‘disorganised schooling’, the conventional pedagogical practices in the university lecture hall, seminar room and supervisor’s private office are quite rightly under attack. If the postgraduate area continues to grow exponentially and if, pedagogically speaking, the postmodern lecture is an...
Dec 3rd
3 tags
How is this 'power' relayed digitally? Or is it at...
‘Powerful university teachers are likely to be well-rehearsed in terms of the bodily performance necessary to “occupy[ing] the symbolic position of subject supposed to know”. That is they can enact the pleasure and seductiveness of knowing in their posture, stance, utterance, gaze, gesture as well as the written and spoken texts they generate as ‘subject content’.’ McWilliam, E and...
Dec 3rd
2 tags
“In this work authors speak of a ‘lived body’ or a ‘mindful body’ in ways that...”
– McWilliam, E and Palmer, P. (1995). Teaching tech(no)bodies: open learning and postgraduate pedagogy. Australian Universities’ Review, 2.
Dec 3rd
3 tags
“The material proximity or even existence of the campus becomes of far less...”
– Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education. [revised version uploaded 10 November 09]
Dec 1st
1 note
2 tags
“An uncanny digital pedagogy concerned with ghostliness of place would take a...”
– Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education. [revised version uploaded 10 November 09]
Dec 1st