Is there any better combination of words than “Space Monkey?” I can’t help but picture an imaginary Brad Pitt utter those words, such is the joy “space monkey”, as a phrase, gives me.

Space monkeys is what I was all about this morning, specifically the Iranian variety (although I don’t believe Iran has any indigenous monkeys, space-variety or otherwise), which may, or may not, have been on a round trip through the outer atmosphere of the Earth.

The issue can be illustrated thusly. This is a space monkey before heading out on a spot of space flight:

This is a space monkey after said flight.

Spot the difference?

What happened to the space monkey?

To my mind there are at least six possibilities:

1. There was a successful launch, the monkey survived and returned to Earth but there was a photo mix-up (this is quite possible – five monkeys were rumoured to have been trained for space flight – and this is the official position of Iran).
2. There was a successful launch but the monkey died before returning to Earth; Iran’s space agency, however, wanted to suggest it returned to Earth alive. If this is the case we have a relatively minor conspiracy on our hands.
3. The launch was unsuccessful launch and the monkey died – conspiracy
4. The launch was successful launch but the monkey did not go – conspiracy (but an unlikely one since you then have to spin a story as to how the Iranian spaceflight agency managed to cock up the photos).
5. There was no launch at all – a major conspiracy but also an unlikely one.
6. There is no such place as Iran (like the other pseudo-country, Belgium, or the pseudo-state of the US, Idaho.

More thoughts on the matter below (warning: this segment was literally phoned in, so the audio quality is a little shoddy and my thoughts, when transmitted by phone, always seem a little more scattered than usual).

So, have you heard the tale of John McAfee? Maybe you know him as the guy whose anti-virus software you run (although he claims to not use it himself). Maybe you heard about him making drugs in Belize, or heard that he claimed he was making drugs just to pull a prank on drug users? Perhaps you know of his being sought for questioning about the murder of a fellow ex-pat in Belize and, rather than going to the police station, fled to Guatemala.

Or, just maybe, you know of him as a super-spy who preys on Central American countries.

Whatever you think (and maybe you think like these people), these are my thoughts (and you can borrow them if you like):

Two conspiracy corners in one day? Well, I was in Wellington last week and never got around to updating the site (i.e. I was having too much fun to worry about the internets).

The Sandy Hook Mutations

Note: I got the date completely wrong on when Sandy Hook occurred; it was post the election, not prior.

Sandy Hook is fast becoming a conspiracy theory that says the real victims of the shooting are not the dead, their families or friends but, rather, gun owners and conservatives. It is also a good example of what I think is a common set of mutations for such conspiracy theories, namely:

1. It didn’t happen (It was set up by the media or the president. Presumably to justify further erosions of civil liberties – narrowly defined as being about guns rather than, say the rights of women), or:
2. It did happen, but not the way we’ve been told (It did happen but there was a second shooter and some of the victims were invented – to make it look worse than it really was?) or
3. It did happen the way we’ve been told, but there’s another layer to it (The real cause was drugs, or video games or something not related to guns and the government and the media are deliberately making guns the real victims to hide other problems in society or there is a suspicious correlation between some other event).

More thoughts on all of this below.