Last December, in response to a blog post I made about Graham Hancock’s foreword to Glenn Kreisberg’s book about an alleged megalithic culture in North America, a commenter posed as Graham Hancock and insulted the intelligence of other commentators, giving the impression that these insults came from Graham Hancock. This commenter was not Hancock, and the words did not belong to Hancock. I was not aware of the comment until the real Hancock called my attention to it this past weekend. The comment, and all responses to it, have been removed from the relevant page for violating my site’s terms and conditions. It is reproduced here as a screenshot, however, so that the context is entirely clear. I condemn in the strongest possible language any comments that attempt to mislead readers into believing they came from someone else, and I apologize to Hancock for the distress that the fraudulent posting has caused.
20 Comments
I wanted to take a moment today to talk about In Search Of. Regular readers will have read my review of the show and know that I wasn’t too taken with the rebooted series’ approach to mysteries, or host Zachary Quinto’s off-brand Leonard Nimoy impression in a program that reinvents the old documentary series as a personality-focused reality show. But I was surprised to see that audiences seem to agree. Despite the massive promotion the History Channel gave the series, and a comfortable berth with an Ancient Aliens lead-in, the show seems to be performing modestly.
As we learned from the many revelations about the Pentagon’s UFO research initiative, the company contracted to conduct much of the program’s research, Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies, adopted the position advocated by paranormal researcher Hal Puthoff that flying saucers are intimately connected to poltergeists and may actively create poltergeists as they pop in and out of reality. Puthoff is a former employee of BAASS owner Robert Bigelow’s previous paranormal research organization and current VP of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, and he was a paid consultant on the Pentagon research program, where he helped to direct it toward bonkers investigations of poltergeists and super-secret paranormal propulsion systems. For several decades, the Russian government, and the Soviet one before it, have used the official organs of state to promote a series of bizarre pseudoscientific claims, ranging from the ancient astronaut theory to Kirlian photography, for reasons that have never been entirely clear but seem tied to efforts to sow dissent in the West by undermining the pillars of Western society, including faith in science. A new study coming out of ITMO University, a Russian state university, alleges that the Great Pyramid contains mysterious magnetic forces that it concentrates in the subterranean chamber due to its bulk. The researchers did not actually study the pyramid, nor did they measure electromagnetic forces therein, but instead made a model of it in a computer, using a number of assumptions that are untrue (e.g., that the pyramid contains no unexplored cavities) and then reported the results without testing whether other large piles of stone might have similar properties without any intention on the part of the builder or of nature. Naturally, the Daily Mail picked up the Russian claims, and other papers copied their story.
|
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
Enter your email below to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my latest projects, blog posts, and activities, and subscribe to Culture & Curiosities, my Substack newsletter.
Categories
All
Terms & ConditionsPlease read all applicable terms and conditions before posting a comment on this blog. Posting a comment constitutes your agreement to abide by the terms and conditions linked herein.
Archives
April 2024
|