On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon. I remember watching it on TV as a child with my father, my parents letting me stay up late to watch such a historic event. I was mesmorized.

Except - it didn't really happen. It was all faked, done with sets on a soundstage. We know this is true because someone knows someone that says they worked on the set and were sworn to secrecy, blah blah blah.

Welcome to the world of conspiracy theories.

What makes a conspiracy theory? It usually requires covert government operation with just enough variables to make it plausible, especially in cases where there is evidence that doesn't quite seem to fit. It usually involves something with great emotional impact, like the JFK assassination, the moon landing, the Christian religion, 9/11, controversial government legislation... there's always some shadowy group, and anyone that offers a rational explanation is either "in on it" or being duped by those that are in on it.

These "shadow groups" through the centuries have worn many labels, including the Freemasons, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, CIA black ops, etc. It's always the people in power or the people that control the money (which in turn essentially makes them the people in power as well).

The conspiracy theory can be appealing. I've watched "Loose Change", the 9/11 documentary, and it provides some interesting information (such as the apparent controlled demolition of WTC7 and the lack of a plane in the "wreckage" of Shanksville, PA). The problem comes, however, when plausible explanations for some phenomena are pushed aside in favor of less plausible explanations that better fit the narrative. Are those thermite explosions popping out of WTC1 & 2, or could it just be the structure popping and blowing out through the outer shell? Which seems more plausible? Which fits the narrative? For 9/11, there are certainly some aspects that don't fit the "official" narrative and invite further investigation, but the idea that it was all engineered by the government is too far-fetched for me to swallow, especially considering what a clusterfuck they made of the Middle East (oh they screwed all that up on purpose to make themselves LOOK inept, it's all part of the plot... )

My whole working life has revolved around troubleshooting problems. Whether it's troubleshooting electronics, buggy software, or ghosts in a complex online application system, my job has always been to locate and fix the problem. How do I do that? I systematically eliminate possible causes. Once all possible causes have been proven to not be the problem, what is left has to be the problem. The trick of course is to eliminate as many potential causes as possible as quickly as possible. It often takes a holistic approach, looking at the whole system and how it all works together, and not just focusing on small parts.

Conspiracy theories always seem to go the opposite way. When there are multiple possibilities, rather than see which makes the most sense, and how each one works within the context of the whole, they take the desired outcome, and pick the possibility that works for that outcome, brushing aside all other possibilities and explanations as "what they WANT you to believe". It's bad science. Imagine a medical researcher ignoring evidence that didn't fit with the outcome they were trying to prove. Would you want to swallow THAT medicine?

It's a no-win situation trying to explain this. The theory-proponents think the non-believers are sheeple being duped by shadow groups. The non-believers think the theory-proponents are barking at clouds. There are always areas that might be a little gray, and I tend to reserve judgement until there's more evidence (which might never happen). This irritates both sides.

What precipitated this little rant is the recent apparent spate of animal deaths. It's being reported as a "phenomenon", which seems excessive, considering that National Geographic says this kind of thing happens all the time, for various non-related reasons. Nonetheless, some of the theories I've read online include secret chemical weapons testing (likely started by this ridiculous bit of bad writing), chemical residue from the BP oil spill, the HARP project, the End Times, etc.

None of those explain why only certain species are affected and only in certain areas. Starlings are known to fly in tight flocks and if they flew too close to a professional fireworks display, the percussion from a mortar explosion could certainly stun them to the point they fell from the sky to suffer blunt trauma upon hitting the ground. Some marine deaths are being blamed on unusually cold water (a predicted result of global warming), which seems a lot more plausible than any other theory I've heard, especially since it was the explanation for why it happened last year. What? You didn't hear about it last year? That's likely because it didn't happen at the same time as a flock of starlings getting stunned when they flew through an exploding mortar shell. Of course - we didn't have the media (or various bloggers) trying to find the Next Big Story.

It's human nature to try to draw connections between events that seem to have something in common (like animals dying en masse). We do so at our intellectual peril, because trying to create an explanation that ties them together forces us to ignore (or outright mistrust) more plausible explanations that disprove the conclusion that we've already reached. Paranoia is a vicious spiral.

Evidence first - then conclusion, and when new evidence disproves the conclusion (or casts it in a bad light), then all evidence must be re-examined in totality. That is the only way to the real truth.

Otherwise, we will fall victim to the Conspiracy Theory. Just check Snopes.com - it's full of them, crafted out of flimsy evidence, breathlessly spread with wanton ignorance of the facts, then cast aside to rust alongside the information highway.