Loki

Without getting into a linguistic argument, the stuff you highlighted as "Weasel Words" aren't actually examples of that. They are qualifiers "probably, unlikely" used to signify the acceptance of doubt in a situation, in this case showing that I wasn't trying to present my hypothesis as fact, but show a reasonable series of logical steps. Weasel words are phrases used to present the appearance of fact, such as "It is accepted that" or euphemisms etc.Anywhoooo... What logic hole? I'm saying that I believe it perfectly reasonable to suppose that the US military has the capability to fly into near-earth orbit and even to and from the moon (though not building huge skyscrapers on it, I accept that) using technology that is not public knowledge. It's not even like it's impossible given known technology! Your argument against this is "if they had, we'd have found out" and to then dismiss out of hand any possible pointers towards its existence. I'd say that that is pretty circular logic.

I fucking hate the stupidity and obsessively blinkered nature of conspiracy nuts, Woyzeck, but (and I suspect you feel similarly) I often also wonder if they don't actually stumble upon something interesting from time to time. Those sort of sites have absolutely no quality filter on them, but the obsessive nature of conspiracy nuts means they do trawl through a lot of bland data that most people wouldn't normally bother with, and I suspect from time to time they do find a gem. Only problem is, people are rightly disinclined to believe them in the traditional spirit of the boy who cried wolf.I think there was a film based on this premise a few years ago, about a nut who stumbled into the middle of an actual real conspiracy. Can't remember what it was called.

That's a little patronising, which is unlike you Mortimer. There's nothing wrong with hypotheses in the absence of verifiable fact, and I'm setting out a hypothesis, not using weasel words to mimic fact. The declassified MoD reports released yesterday raise currently unanswerable questions that I am suggesting possible answers to. I don't actually think there are bases on the moon, that is pretty far-fetched, though as I said it wouldn't completely surprise me. All I am saying is that the traditional sceptic response of "oh, they are lying or accidentally mistook a funny shaped cloud" etc to well-documented and expertly-witnessed sightings is as far-fetched an explanation as thinking they are aliens.I am advocating a pragmatic approach to such things, neither dismissing out of hand nor leaping off the conspiracy deep end, but looking at the world with less naive eyes and accepting that there are plenty of things out there that are not public knowledge, that everyday folk sometimes spot or bump into. Given the hugely important part that secrecy plays in the development of new weaponry and military technology, this is a perfectly valid extrapolation of previously-classified and now public domain information.

One might argue that the incidents of reliable aviation sources seeing unidentified flying objects constitutes some proof that there are things up there that they don't bother to tell us about publicly.The space race may have started as a PR war, but created so many side benefits in terms of huge technological advancements that it seems unlikely to have halted in the way you suggest. The military importance of near-earth orbit is huge, and was undoubtedly hotly contested, but it's pretty hard to spot it going on as the BBC doesn't have a correspondent up there The US military budget over the past 40 years has been absolutely huge, and it seems reasonable to suggest that a large chunk has been spent on continuing aeronautic and orbital technology. Just as the Stealth plane and Aurora weere rumoured for decades before becoming "fact", so the likelihood is that there are plenty of other classified projects that would explain away ongoing UFO sightings and the like.Just as Aurora was years ahead of conventional Lockheed-Martin or Boeing technology, so there are probably orbital spacecraft operated by the military that are frankly decades ahead of NASA. It's not as exciting as alien conspiracies and all that, but much more plausible and indeed likely.

This might appeal to some people.NASA edit out UFOs 'n shit

Shatner may be shit in that, but he's absolutely brilliant in Boston Legal, so forgive him this one.In the spirit of JLM, I watched Clueless last night. I can't say whether it was any good or not, I was too busy knocking one out to Alicia Silverstone and Britanny Murphy. I feel I've failed you, JLM.

The Knightmare game had a bug where you couldn't get out of the first room. You can try and try and try to give the bread to the old man, but he'll never take it. Every single Spectrum copy had that, too. Evidently playtesting didn't exist in the eighties.

I watched Speed Racer on the plane home from Sri Lanka. It was a bit shit, really, wasn't it? I love Goodman, but even his likeable performance couldn't save it. It reminded me of that Sky Captain... film in terms of having a quirky art style and disappointing in every other area.

Doomsday (2008)

The trailer alone made me never want to see this. It was pretty clear that Neil Marshall is one of those directors that completely loses the plot when they have access to a bigger budget. Dog Soldiers was fucking amazing, Descent was alright, but really overrated. If it had been men instead of pretty women, the reviews wouldn't have been half as good. "Ooh, it were all a dream!" But then you get a trailer where there's a ridiculously attractive woman who's the ultimate slow-mo, jiggling boobies killing machine - right up there with superbrainy scientists played by Tara Reid in glasses - who says "nice car, I'll take it!" or whatever that Godawful line was at the end of the trailer. I know trailers are mostly out of the hands of the director and often portray the film differently than it actually is, but dreadful lines like the ones in the Doomsday trailer wouldn't have been in there if they hadn't been written and used in the film.I'll probably rent it someday, but that was the first trailer that made me go from being excited about a director to saying "fuck this guy."

Really for me, the great mystery of 9/11 is how people can watch, live on tv, 2 huge planes full of fuel thump into the heart of New York city and go "I wonder if that did enough damage?" I swear someone could Senate Building in Washington and there'd be someone on the internet who'd complain that the Washington monument falling over is suspicious.A friend of mine got really into the whole 9/11 conspiracy stuff, even going so far as to organise an event about it where people discussed it, showed films etc. I sat through a 2 hour film about the whole thing, and then fell out spectacularly with him after I remained unpersuaded.2 months later he had a severe mental breakdown and spent 3 months in a mental institution, and has never fully recovered since. In retrospect, the compulsive fascination with conspiracy theories was a warning sign of his mental deterioration.

A little research on the internet will reveal that the impact of the plan on the Pentagon is entirely consistent with what one would expect from a plane that size and a crash like that.

Bearing in mind it's a reinforced concrete building apparently designed to withstand a nuclear attack... that's a lot of damage. It may not add up to you, Kenny, but it adds up to the exeprts in structural engineering and air crash investigation, and that's good enough for me.

EDIT:

I've found a good site for you, from the un-conspiracy/debunk site Popular Mechanics:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology...842.html?page=6

The problem is that rumour is much more compelling than fact, and so rumours will circulate a lot more widely than the more prosaic reality of a situation.

This is compounded by a more basic human instinct - the desire to believe someone is in charge. It's why the concept of God/gods has been so prevalent in human society. Early man sees the sun rise in the morning and think "someone must have done that". We see the World Trade Centre destroyed in a random and violent act of mass murder and think "There must be more to this, there must be some grand scheme behind all this" It's hard to accept that all that death was achieved with a couple of knives and a flight schedule. Conspiracy theorists love to link together unrelated information, weaving a web of control with some sort of shadow government at the centre, because the reality that the world is a chaotic and ungovernable place is just too hard for them.

Governments are as guilty of this as us - the US has justified its entire foreign policy be creating this concept of a unified, organised Al Qaeda, as it's easier to fight a proper enemy than accept that there are many small, dispirate groups of people, loosely connected by their shared hate of western capitalism.

I find it ironic that Loki is posting about Hoaxes

Good thread, and I'm very sympathetic to Woyzeck (who I realise now is Sickboy??). I really want to believe.BUT but but, the problem is that whilst I firmly believe that there are plenty of things out there which are not currently documented or explained in mainstream science, the whole area of Fortean, cryptozoology etc is just awash with fraudsters, kooks, criminals, wackos and zealots. Trying to tease out any valid argument or evidence from the sea of shit is extremely difficult. One main problem is that these conspiracy/Fortean ares of interest seem to attract devotees who are neither particularly bright or particularly discerning, and so incorrect information and rumour circulates almost endlessly on the internet.Even those who have the appearence of proper scientific rigour often let you down. I was hugely influenced by Fingerprints Of the Gods by Graeme Hancock when it was first published, but for all its elegance and seductive science it was basically a big load of bullshit, as even he has now admitted. Same with Bob Dean, elder statesman of UFO investigation. I head him talk at Manchester Uni in 96 (I have the recording if anyone wants it), but over the years his fascinating story has been slowly teased apart by more rigorous debunkers.There are a few things that I still hold onto though. I believe the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Sprinx are a lot older than currently dated, and point to the mouth-watering prospect that civilization is a lot older than we think. I believe that Mokele-Mbembe is out there, and is quite possibly a fragmentary population remnant of a long-thought extinct hominid species. But I don't buy this Bigfoot discovery. There is too much flimflammery and drip-feed information, too much carny about the whole thing. If they had anything real, they would have had it rigorously tested by top men (top men) by now, and the whole thing would be out in the open. As Woyzeck said, we're halfway to the Hamptons.EDIT: "However, since their discovery, Whitton and Dyer have started offering weekend bigfoot search expeditions in Georgia for $499." This is why they are still stretching out the reveal. As long as they don't produce a body, there will be people who not only believe them, but will pay 500 dollars a pop to be driven out into the bush to look at some trees.

Great publicity for their business though. There are enough kooks out there who'd believe this to keep them in customers for years.

I love a bit of cryptozoology, but the whole idea of Bigfoot being out there is preposterous. Firstly, there's no fossil evidence to suggest any great ape species has ever lived in the American continent (apart from us). Secondly, no bodies have ever been discovered, indeed apart from the occasional out-of-place hair no physical evidence at all. Thirdly, given that all other species living in those areas have been long identified, and those areas are at least intermittently visited by hunters, etc, it seem highly unlikely that an animal as large and dominant as a great ape would remain undocumented.

My personal belief is that Bigfoot is a race memory passed from the Native Americans to the newer Anglo-saxon population of Gigantopithecus, huge bipedal apes who co-existed with early man and who probably gave rise to our many myths of giants, ogres, etc.

EDIT: it looks like it's this costume in a freezer box.

Clerks 2 is one of the worst films ever made.

How did that camping trip go, RochelleRochelle? Only I notice you're still into the ladies, which is surprising

I can see where you're coming from with the thighs and fit body, Morty, but her face is like a bag of spanners.

The Olympics is a really great event for major perving.

At the very least, it'd be Caribbean.

As far as taking a poo, Stevie, if you start tightening your grip halfway through your arse is definitely going to become shitty. This might be your problem.

I thought you were talking about Funny Bones, which I don't remember being violent at all. I don't think I've seen either in that case.

I enjoy reading Seven's reviews. I usually disagree but he actually makes a case and discusses it, which is nice.

Donnie Darko was shit though, so this isn't that unexpected.

It is back, for what it's worth.

Is that any good then? It's been getting some poor-ish reviews.