Today I have two short pieces to discuss. The first is an update on a story I’ve been following for what seems to be years now, and the second… is also very depressing.
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This week is yet another Nazi week on the American Heroes Channel. On Sunday night, AHC broadcasted an episode of Myth Hunters on the “Nazi Hunt for Atlantis” (S02E07), which indicated its intention to examine Nazi efforts to seek out the Aryan master race from Atlantis. Then last night they offered up a new special, Hitler’s Jurassic Zoo, which was advertised as a look into Nazi efforts to create a prehistoric game preserve. Neither show was what it seemed to be. I was genuinely surprised, given its ridiculous title, that Hitler’s Jurassic Zoo was by far the superior offering.
Today I have two short topics to discuss: first, a Welsh art project on the search for Welsh Indians in American, and second, a new book that argues that white people are genetically adapted for wealth, dominance, and success because of prehistoric events.
Let’s get this out of the way first: H2’s press release about The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved scouring the world for the “megalithic yard” wasn’t just deceptive—I’m happy to say it was completely wrong! Nary a word about the “megalithic yard” was uttered on The Universe, and perhaps the PR officer for the network has drunk the Ancient Aliens and America Unearthed Flavor Aid a bit too deeply and now sees even serious and sober science through the lens of the network’s lunatic fringe offerings. I do wonder, though, what happened. My on-screen cable guide also listed the megalithic yard (“just one unit of measurement”) as the subject for the show. Did someone realize after America Unearthed that the unit was a fiction and erase it from the more “serious” show, thus accounting for all the astronomical repetition? Why was all of PR information wrong?
With the massive snowstorm barreling down on the East Coast, I’m spending today shoveling, hunkering down, and trying to stay out of the snow. This morning I almost got t-boned by car sliding straight through an intersection, and conditions are only getting worse.
Today I have a grab bag of a few newsworthy items to share. Yesterday I discussed a polemical text being used as the standard American history book in one Texas charter school. In doing so, I mentioned that according to media reports Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) had been teaching its private religious school students that the Loch Ness Monster was real in an attempt to discredit evolution. When that text was removed from international editions of the school materials (while apparently remaining in the U.S. version, according to Alternet), the replacement text is equally awful.
As we here in the United States celebrate Independence Day, I’m taking the day off. So, in honor of the holiday, I’m honoring American independence with links to articles on my website about the Founding Fathers and other patriotic topics:
And from my Library:
And be sure to pick up a copy of my book Unearthing the Truth, packed with great information on strange beliefs about the early history of the United States! Since we’ve been discussing Einstein and Helena Blavatsky this week thanks to Gary Lachman’s “ironic” discussion of the same, I thought it was worth looking at Theosophy’s claim to have invented Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the famous equation E = mc^2. Boris de Zirkoff made the claim on behalf of his great aunt, Blavatsky, while editing her papers, and he also was the first to suggest that Einstein was a frequent reader of the Theosophical fraud. Over the years this bit of puffery expanded into Leon Maurer’s claim, first presented by (unanswered) letter to the physicist Richard Feynman in 1975, that Einstein derived relativity from The Secret Doctrine.
If you’ve been following my Twitter feed or have been reading the comments on my various blog posts, you’ll know that I’ve recently received a great deal of criticism for being too rude to alternative history speculators. According to several alternative authors and their supporters, it is wrong of me to describe the authors or alternative theories in non-neutral language, an apparent prerequisite for participating in “honest” (read: ineffective) criticism. To be honest, I didn’t think I was particularly rude to alternative theorists given what they routinely say about mainstream scientists, archaeologists and historians, though I do in fact use some non-neutral language from time to time.
All roads in alternative belief eventually lead back to aliens, probably because the aliens represent a modern interpretation of the ancient angels and gods. Therefore it should come as no surprise that America Unearthed’s Scott Wolter will be appearing at the Paradigm Symposium this fall, a gathering of alternative “theorists,” including a large number of ancient astronaut speculators, dedicated to “re-visioning our place in history.” What is perhaps more surprising is that the H2 network, Prometheus Entertainment (of Ancient Aliens fame) and Committee Films (producers of America Unearthed) are sponsors of the summit. This should clear up any doubt about whether the network or its production partners has any residual idea that about the value of science, historiography, or facts.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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