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April Fools' Day

C

carole

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With April Fool's Day approaching, I've been wondering, what is the origin of this occasion. The French have something similar, don't they? What about other cultures?

Carole
 
"Unlike most of the other nonfoolish holidays, the history of April Fool's Day, sometimes called All Fool's Day, is not totally clear. There really wasn't a "first April Fool's Day" that can be pinpointed on the calendar. Some believe it sort of evolved simultaneously in several cultures at the same time, from celebrations involving the first day of spring.

The closest point in time that can be identified as the beginning of this tradition was in 1582, in France. Prior to that year, the new year was celebrated for eight days, beginning on March 25. The celebration culminated on April 1. With the reform of the calendar under Charles IX, the Gregorian Calendar was introduced, and New Year's Day was moved to January 1. "

-

here is the link to where it came from :)

this one looks a bit more comprehensive!
 
I posted this on the Psychogeography thread 5 days ago:-

"Yesterday I got a letter from my local district council dated April 1st 2002.

This proves that Carrick DC do think ahead, and/or have a sense of humour!"
 
I'm sure I have seen a different explanation to the French new year one, but I don't recall where and everywhere on the web seems to have the exact piece of text quoted above.
 
I always thought it had to do with the Roman Catholic Feast of Fools although the dates don't match.

Here's a link about the Feast of Fools, as celebrated by the Roman Church:

This might also be confused with a tradition during the Feast of the Holy Innocents (varying dates, but mostly in December and often on St. Nicholas Day, December 6) when a Child Bishop would be elected, old shoes would be burnt as incense, secular songs were sung in church, and all kinds of tomfoolery and mockery of the established church prevailed.



"I was a reference librarian in a previous life."
 
I remember the April Fools that BurgerKing played when they printed a full page advert telling everyone about their new 'left handed' burgers....millions of Yanks were had...:p
 
So have any of the papers and news websites contained any april-fools jokes today like they normally do?

I expected the front page of the sun to have an april fools joke but "Will gets girlfriend" would have been a bit insensitive.
 
There was one on one of our local radio stations this morning. They had a bloke saying that you could download ringtones by holding your mobile phone up to the radio speaker...
Then they played loads of funny noises. I could just imagine folk holding their moby's up.:p
They sucked a few people in as well, got them to ring up and asked them if it worked.

I can rememer believing one many years ago that was a proposal to decimalise time, 100 minutes in an hour etc.:D I was only 13.
 
From the front page:

April Fools' Special: History's Hoaxes

John Roach
for National Geographic News
Updated March 31, 2004


At first glance, the headlines sound plausible enough to snooker unwary readers: Colorless, odorless, tasteless chemical kills thousands of people each year. Mild winter brings Switzerland a bumper spaghetti crop. Taco Bell Corporation purchases Liberty Bell from U.S. Government. Alabama legislature votes to change the value of the mathematical constant pi.
But they are all lies.

Happy April Fools' Day. To mark the occasion, National Geographic News has compiled a list of some of the more memorable hoaxes in recent history. They are the lies, darned lies, and whoppers that have been perpetrated on the gullible and unsuspecting to fulfill that age-old desire held by some to put the joke on others.

The Internet has given birth to a proliferation of hoaxes. E-mail inboxes are bombarded on an almost daily basis with messages warning of terrible computer viruses that cause users to delete benign chunks of data from their hard drives, or of credit card scams that entice the naive to give all their personal information, including passwords and bank account details, to identity thieves. Other e-mails give rise to wry chuckles, which is where this list begins.

Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide

City officials in Aliso Viejo, California, were so concerned about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide that they scheduled a vote last month on whether to ban foam cups from city-sponsored events after they learned the chemical was used in foam-cup production.

Officials called off the vote after learning that dihydrogen monoxide is the scientific term for water.

"It's embarrassing," city manager David J. Norman told the Associated Press. "We had a paralegal who did bad research."

Indeed, the paralegal had fallen victim to an official-looking Web site touting the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. An e-mail originally authored in 1990 by Eric Lechner, then a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, claimed that dihydrogen monoxide "is used as an industrial solvent and coolant, and is used in the production of Styrofoam."

Other dangers pranksters associated with the chemical included accelerated corrosion and rusting, severe burns, and death from inhalation.

Versions of the e-mail continue to circulate today, and several Web sites, including that of the Coalition to Ban DHMO, warn, tongue-in-cheek, of water's dangers.

No Drunk Web Surfing

In 1994 columnist John Dvorak penned an article for PC Computing magazine about a bill working its way through Congress that would make it illegal to surf the information superhighway while drunk or to discuss sexual matters over a public network.

Explaining the origin of the phony bill, SB 040194 (i.e., April 1, 1994), Dvorak wrote, "Congress, apparently thinks being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is."

The bill was making its way through Congress unopposed, according to Dvorak, who quoted one anonymous Congressman as saying, "Who wants to come out and support drunkenness and computer sex?"

Dvorak urged his readers to send their comments to Lirpa Sloof. Apparently, some people missed the giveaway ("Lirpa Sloof" is "April Fools" spelled backward). A number of readers called Senator Edward Kennedy, who released an official statement denying that he was a sponsor of the bill.

Alabama Changes Value of Pi

The April 1998 newsletter put out by New Mexicans for Science and Reason contains an article titled "Alabama Legislature Lays Siege to Pi." It was penned by April Holiday of the Associmated (sic) Press and told the story of how the Alabama state legislature voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the round number of 3.

The ersatz news story was written by Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Mark Boslough to parody legislative and school board attacks on the teaching of evolution in New Mexico.

At Boslough's suggestion, Dave Thomas, the president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, posted the article in its entirety to the Internet newsgroup talk.origins on April 1. (The newsgroup hosts a lively debate on creation vs. evolution.) Later that evening Thomas posted a full confession to the hoax. He thought he had put all rumors to bed.

But to Thomas's surprise, however, several newsgroup readers forwarded the article to friends and posted it on other newsgroups.

When Thomas checked in on the story a few weeks later, he was surprised to learn that it had spread like wildfire. The telltale signs of the article's satirical intent, such as the April 1 date and misspelled "Associmated Press" dateline, had been replaced or deleted.

Alabama legislators were bombarded with calls protesting the law. The legislators explained that the news was a hoax. There was not and never had been such a law.

TV AND NEWSPAPER HOAXES

Before the advent of the Internet, and even today, traditional media outlets such as newspapers, radio, and television, have sometimes hoaxed their audiences. The deceptions run the gamut from purported natural disasters to wishful news.

Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

Alex Boese, curator of the Museum of Hoaxes, a regularly updated Web site that also appeared in book form in November 2002, said one of his favorite hoaxes remains one perpetrated by the British Broadcasting Company.

On April 1, 1957, the BBC aired a report on the television news show Panorama about the bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland.

Viewers watched Swiss farmers pull pasta off spaghetti trees as the show's anchor, Richard Dimbleby, attributed the bountiful harvest to the mild winter and the disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.

The broadcaster detailed the ins and outs of the life of the spaghetti farmer and anticipated questions about how spaghetti grows on trees. Thousands of people believed the report and called the BBC to inquire about growing their own spaghetti trees, to which the BBC replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

"It [was] a great satirical effect about British society," Boese said. "British society really was like that at that time. The British have a tendency to be a bit insulated and do not know that much about the rest of Europe."

Taco Liberty Bell

On April 1, 1996, readers in five major U.S. cities opened their newspapers to learn from a full page announcement that the Taco Bell Corporation had purchased the Liberty Bell from the U.S. government. The announcement reported that the company was relocating the historic bell from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Irvine, California. The move, the corporation said in the advertisement, was part of an "effort to help the national debt."

Hundreds of other newspapers and television shows ran stories related to a press release on the matter put out by Taco Bell's public relations firm, PainePR. Outraged citizens called the Liberty Bell National Historic Park in Philadelphia to express their disgust. A few hours later the public relations firm released another press announcement stating that the stunt was a hoax.

White House press secretary Mike McCurry got into the act when he remarked that the government would also be "selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Company and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial."

As a marketing ploy, the hoax was successful, PainePR said on their Web site. The firm says that more than 70 million Americans were exposed to the story, which resulted in a U.S. 0,000 sales increase for Taco Bell on April 1 and a 0,000 increase on April 2.

MISSING LINKS, MISSING MOON LANDING?

The threat of disaster and the wonders of science and nature are often evoked in the form of a hoax.

Crop Circles

Strange, circular formations began to appear in the fields of southern England in the mid-1970s, bringing busloads of curious onlookers, media representatives, and believers in the paranormal out to the countryside for a look.

A sometimes vitriolic debate on their origins has since ensued, and the curious formations have spread around the world, becoming more and more elaborate as the years go by.

Some people consider the crop formations to be the greatest works of modern art to emerge from the 20th century, while others are convinced they are signs of extraterrestrial communications or landing sites of UFOs.

The debate rages even today, although in 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two elderly men from Wiltshire County, came forward and claimed responsibility for the crop circles that appeared there over the preceding 20 years. The pair made the circles by pushing down nearly ripe crops with a wooden plank suspended from a rope.

Piltdown Man

In December of 1912 a 500,000-year-old skull that reportedly represented the missing link between modern humans and their prehistoric ancestors went on display at the British Museum in London. The specimen was recovered by an amateur fossil collector named Charles Dawson and put on display by Aurthur Smith Woodward, keeper of the Department of Geology at the museum.

The skull caused a stir among scientists, who felt that the lower jaw belonged to a different species, perhaps an ape. Eventually, however, those in favor of Piltdown man's authenticity won out, and the skull was given the scientific name Eoanthropus dawson and recorded in the textbooks.

Over the next several years Dawson recovered other bones from the Piltdown site and they were added to the collection. It was not until 1953, 37 years after Dawson died, that British Museum researchers Kenneth Oakley, Wilfred Le Gros Clark, and Joseph Weiner published a paper in which they announced that the fossil was a fake. They concluded that Piltdown man was a combination of human cranial pieces and the jawbone of an orangutan that had been stained to make it look old.

Moon Landing a Hoax?

Ever since NASA sent astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972, skeptics have questioned whether the Apollo missions were real or simply a ploy to one-up the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The debate resurfaced and reached crescendo levels in February 2001, when Fox television aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?

Guests on the show argued that NASA did not have the technology to land on the moon. Anxious to win the space race, NASA acted out the Apollo program in movie studios, they said. The conspiracy theorists pointed out that the pictures transmitted from the moon do not include stars and that the flag the Americans planted on the moon is waving, even though there is thought to be no breeze on the moon.

NASA quickly refuted these claims in a series of press releases, stating that any photographer would know it is difficult to capture something very bright and very dim on the same piece of film. Since the photographers wanted to capture the astronauts striding across the lunar surface in their sunlit space suits, the background stars were too faint to see.

As for the flag, NASA said that the astronauts were turning it back and forth to get in firmly planted in the lunar soil, which made it wave.

The issue may have been put to rest when NASA pointed out that the show never questioned the more than 800 pounds (363 kilograms) of rocks brought back from the moon. "Geologists worldwide have been examining these samples for 30 years, and the conclusion is inescapable. The rocks could not have been collected or manufactured on Earth," NASA states on its Web site. Regardless, the conspiracy theory remains today.
Click to expand...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0331_040331_aprilfoolshoax.html

One question - what are the origins? I assume its pagan or something.......

Emps
 
Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/aprilfool2.html

on the origin:

April Fool's Day or All Fool's Day,holiday of uncertain origin, known for practical joking and celebrated on the first of April. Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1564, the date was observed as New Year's Day by cultures as varied as the Roman and the Hindu. The holiday is considered to be related to the festival of the vernal equinox, which occurs on Mar. 21. The English gave April Fool's Day its first widespread celebration during the 18th cent.
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http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0804428.html

see also:

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/april/aprlfool.htm

http://www.urbanlegends.com/misc/april_fools_day_origin_of.html

http://wilstar.com/holidays/aprilfool.htm

Emps
 
They don't have the greatest one of recent years. In the year 2000, the national "yoof" network, here in Australia, broadcast a series of reports, allegedly from Olympic HQ, that led to an announcement that, due to corruption and ineptitude, Sydney had lost the Olympic games (due to start 5 months later), and they were re-opening bids.

They even got the Premier of New South Wales to issue a statement condemning the decision (after letting him in on the joke).

A national breakfast television program picked the story up, and reported it as fact. (The person involved later tried to claim he knew it was a joke, but wanted to help it along. No-one believed him.)
 
i loved that prank a couple of years ago when someone painted a zebra crossing on the M3 in surrey.
 
Internet Magazine have reported that people will be charged to access the Internet and this fee will be added to their TV licence.

"Subscriptions to computer magazines, a penchant for take away Pizza and Linux T-Shirts are also dead giveaways that you're using the Internet."

http://www.internet-magazine.com/news/view.asp?id=3973
 
Net Hoaxes Snare Fools All Year

By Joanna Glasner


02:00 AM Mar. 31, 2004 PT

The infinite power supply does not exist. But for the past two years, that fact hasn't stopped people from trying to buy one.

In fact, ever since ThinkGeek, an online retailer of offbeat gadgets, put up the item on its website as an April Fools' Day prank in 2002, requests to purchase the item have continued to arrive at a slow but steady rate.


"We've had people e-mailing us from all over the world telling us they were very interested in it," said Scott Smith, a buyer for ThinkGeek, adding that no one who places an order actually gets charged for the 0 Desktop Zero-Point Infinite Power Generator. He said the site also receives queries on a regular basis, albeit in lower volumes, for other fake postings, including a USB George Foreman Grill and caffeinated meatloaf.

It's hard to say why some fake products are taken more seriously than others. Smith said he believes customers are fooled largely because the site's real inventory -- which includes such items as caffeinated soap -- is so odd. If a more mainstream site posted the same bogus products as ThinkGeek, customers would be more likely to spot the joke.

Whether it be dehydrated water, infinite power supplies or corporate-sponsored tattoos, many a ridiculous item offered online as a practical joke has attracted a stable of true believers. This week, as news sites, blogs and Net merchants gear up for April Fools' Day tricks, hoax watchers warn susceptible readers to be on the lookout for more online trickery.

"I wouldn't say that the Internet has created any new categories of pranks. What it has done is to make the old pranks much easier for anyone to play on a mass audience," said Alex Boese, curator of the online Museum of Hoaxes, a repository of well-known pranks, and author of a book by the same name.

Boese says hoaxes can be broken down into a few basic categories. Among the most popular: the fake warning, the fictitious product, the unlikely purchase and the stupid legislation. While all these predate the Internet, the Web gives them new life.

Some of the more successful examples of pranks are actually decades-old jokes that have been revived online, including one warning of the dangers represented by the toxic chemical dihydrogen monoxide (better known as water).

In the stupid legislation category, columnist John Dvorak penned a well-known piece in 1994 warning that Congress was considering a law that would make drunk driving on the information superhighway illegal, because "being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is."

Another prank that spread wildly by e-mail was a phony press release stating that the Alabama Legislature had changed the value of pi from 3.14 to the biblical value of 3.0.

Boese says the formula for a successful hoax requires that it contain some element of the believable.

"For a hoax to be really successful and popular, it not only has to successfully locate something in that gray area of our knowledge, but it has to present a claim in such a way that it's believable at first, but totally ridiculous in hindsight," he said.

Boese cites Snowball the Monster Cat -- a doctored photo of an 87-pound housecat -- as a prime example. After finding out it's a prank, most people feel ridiculous for falling for it. But, given that most individuals don't know much about cat biology, they're often able to suspend disbelief about how big a housecat can really get.

Another prank in a similar vein was the webnode hoax of 1999, in which a group of pranksters announced the formation of a company licensed to sell "nodes" on the next-generation Internet. That prank, Boese said, played on the fact that many people who use the Internet every day don't actually know much about how it works.

But even the most obviously silly hoaxes still manage to snare susceptible Web surfers, as John George, a sales rep for outdoor gearmaker West Peak, can attest.

About four months ago, George created a product listing on the West Peak site for dehydrated water, resuscitating an old joke among backpackers. While the posting makes clear at the bottom of the page that the product is entirely fictitious, George said, several customers have still gone ahead and placed orders.

"We of course sent them nothing because what it is is nothing," George said. On the bright side, he added, customers got it for free.
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http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62794,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
 
the Local newspaper carried a story about an american company (Laisfroop ltd or something) starting safari tours around doncaster where american tourists would go around looking at the locals in little cars and look at things such as schools post offices and chip shops. It actually sounded a rather good idea actually, though I think a real safari with lions & tigers & such would be a lot safer for all concerned;)

oh, and teh Garduindia had a story about Peter Mandelson too
 
Local tv (SW.) said " And now a late breaking news item ... unusualy warm currents in the gulf stream have caused trapped pockets of air in the newly sunken frigate to expand and she has risen back to the surface.." whilst running the sinking of the frigate footage backwards!:D
Almost believable as there was a ban on letting the first sport divers down for a day due to dangerous pockets of air still trapped in some parts of the ship, which has been sunk to provide an artificial reef.
 
Some synth head has done a spoof of the Korg website where he's issued a press release claiming that their vice president has committed seppuku after the failure of a recent product line.

(Only then he got cold feet that someone at Korg might not find it so funny and blew the gaff with a disclaimer and an apology)

http://www.public.asu.edu/~lkilby/pressrelease.htm

"...'we have tried our best to deal with the very legitimate criticisms leveled at previous Triton workstations. I hope that you will seriously consider our Pa1X arrangers while you are searching for a new workstation.'

Following these words, Mr. Okashina proceeded to commit seppuku, or ritual self-disembowelment, during which time the press was not allowed to take pictures or use video and audio recorders. His assistant for many years, Aiwana Shounen, delivered the blow that severed Mr. Okashina’s head from his shoulders. It was Mr. Okashina’s wish that his suicide help restore honor to Korg’s name."
 
A Fine Year for April Foolery

By Joanna Glasner


10:38 AM Apr. 01, 2004 PT

April Fool's Day pranksters took their trickery online Thursday, perpetrating hoaxes that ran the gamut from fake news stories to phony products to bogus corporate announcements.

Some of the more inspired hoaxes included lunar Web development jobs, in-car chicken roasters and an automatic hunger eliminator. A common theme: Most of it was pretty hard to take seriously, even for a minute.

"It's all pretty obviously silly," said Alex Boese, curator of the online Museum of Hoaxes, who said most of the online pranksters this year seemed more interested in being funny than in being believed.

In the unbelievable device category, Thinkgeek.com, an online retailer of offbeat gadgets, continued a multiyear tradition of posting fake gadgets on April Fool's. This year's roster included a PC EZ-Bake Oven, the RC Gastron Hunger Elimator, an ingestible device that lets users control their hunger level, and CaffeDerm, a patch that provides wearers a continual dose of caffeine.

Elsewhere, an advertisement in England's Guardian claimed that a new technology from BMW will allow drivers to cook their dinners from their car as they drove home from work. The ad for "SHEF technology" directed readers to a website, featuring images of a roasted chicken and a sleek sedan, along with links to features recipes like "chicken a la M42."

IPodLounge, a fan site devoted to the popular music player, came out with a bogus announcement that Apple Computer is introducing the iPod V, the smallest portable video player ever developed.

Politicians got in on the act as well. The Republican National Committee, in its latest attack on Democratic presidential contender John Kerry, sent out a Web video to more than a half-million of its team leaders. The clip included a snippet about an alleged French cousin of Kerry, said to be an avid Bush supporter.

Beliefnet, a religion website, displayed a taste for the absurd Thursday, publishing a story about how Oprah Winfrey has been declared the fourth member of the Trinity under a new theological agreement by the world's major Christian denominations. Other headlines addressed the Dalai Lama's "new, youthful look," and a prayer circle for bad hair days.

Among search engines, Google led the pack in April Fool's Day promotions. Visitors who clicked on a link offering jobs that are "out of this world" on the search engine's home page were told that "Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center." Google went on to say that the facility, set to open in late in the spring of 2007, will house 35 engineers, 27,000 low cost Web servers, two massage therapists and a sushi chef.

On a more serious note, Google's much-lauded announcement of a soon-to-be-launched free e-mail service called Gmail generated widespread speculation online as to whether the offering is a hoax. While the announcement received voluminous media attention, skeptics looked to the wording of Google's press release, which says the service provides a gigabyte of free storage, "quickly recalls any message an account owner has ever sent or received" and "can already be used to read and send e-mail in most languages (even Klingon.)"

A Google spokesman confirmed that the free e-mail offering is not a hoax. Boese, of the Museum of Hoaxes, said the e-mail offering didn't sound like a prank.

"If they say they're going to give a gig of space, it wouldn't be that clever or funny a joke because it's too believable," Boese said. "But they might get people talking about if this is too good to be true by announcing it on April Fool's."

Not to be overshadowed by Google, Ask Jeeves joined the search engine silliness competition with an April Fool's home page featuring its signature animated butler clothed in undershirt and patterned boxer shorts. In a press release, Ask Jeeves attributed the new look to a "wardrobe malfunction."
Click to expand...

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62901,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_10

The article has numerous links to the relevant articles and stories it mentions.

Emps
 
some comments on "hoaxes"

To all:

There can be many facets to an issue, and a number of them are ignored or glossed over in the approach to April Fool's Day coverage. The article, "Historic hoaxes", from the Christian Science Monitor, is mentioned, with its reference to UrbanLegends.About.com, MuseumOfHoaxes.com, TruthOrFiction.com, Vmyths.com, and BreakTheChain.org, as well as "History's Hoaxes", from National Geographic. In a neighboring thread is mentioned the rash of anonymous callers, pretending to be from the police, recommending fast food restaurant owners to conduct strip searches of customers or employees, because they are suspected of being thieves.

A commonplace of all of these, though, is the insistent reference to "hoaxes", either by implication or by name. The word "prank" is to be found, but much, much less than "hoax"!

But, April Fool's Day is about pranks, tricks or practical jokes! April Fool's Day, in fact, doesn't have anything to do with hoaxes! No matter how much it may be demanded to the otherwise, practical jokes, pranks, and such like are not hoaxes! In fact, much of what is represented in the threads as "hoaxes" do not qualify, either!

A hoax has certain characteristic qualities. It is not just, as has been suggested, "a falsity". A "hoax" is a calculated deception, carried out almost as a project, with alterations of course, when necessary, to maintain the spread of the story. And it has to be carried out with malicious and/or self-seeking intent. A hoax falls entirely out of the bounds of what normally would, or, it can be said, could take place on just one day! But, just because a statement might not be true does not necessarily make it rise to the level of a true hoax. The photographs of fairies, said, actually to be cutouts from children's books; the photograph of "Snowball, The Monster Cat", which accidentally became a widely disseminated item on the internet; or the picture of "spaghetti trees" on a BBC travel program, all from the Christian Science Monitor article, do not qualify as hoaxes. The picture of Snowball was sent as a joke, and attained "fame" by accident! And the girls who produced the pictures of fairies have not been demonstrated to have done it for venal or craven purpose.

The National Geographic article mentions, among other things, a supposedly untrue claim that the Alabama legislature passed a law "officially" changing the value of the transcendental constant pi to3. This is said to have been launched recently, and caught fire with the internet. In fact, they should check their facts. It seems that, at about the same time as the Scopes Monkey Trial, concerning evolution, Indiana did pass a law officially setting the value of pi to 3, based on a passage in the Book of Kings, Kings 7:23-26, in the Bible, describing a circular fire pit described as "thirty cubits around", but "ten cubits in diameter"! And the Geographic's declaration of crop circles as a hoax just because two guys came forward and took credit is so laughably incompetent a display that it would "justify" crediting Amundsen with reaching the pole just on the basis of a photo of him standing in the snow outside Copenhagen on January 1! If they are so willing to ascribe "authenticity" or "lack of authenticity" on such flimsy "evidence", it seriously raises the question of how trustworthy any of the material they hawk is. The days of Gilbert Grosvenor seem over!

If articles would so easily gloss over misrepresentations, and even The National Geographic stoop to demean the air of professionalism and accuracy they strove to perfect, there must be a reason.

And there is.

There is, frankly, a general emphasis on crying “hoax”, these days. The public, it seems, has begun to be more accepting of the unconventional and to be more willing to call a spade a spade and to call someone who doesn’t call a spade a spade, a liar. And a large part of this is admitting just how much the government has evidently taken it on itself to commit wholesale fraud against the people! Obviously, those who seek to profit from deceit would see this sense of openness and willingness to look beyond “the official line” as nothing short of anathema. And that calls for action.

And that action is to engage in a wholesale program of denouncing absolutely everything that challenges the “established order”, or the “established order’s” description of how things behave. It used to be that an open mind and acceptance of levels of reality beyond what is written in the textbooks, the suggestion that the texts may have some application, but are not the of-all and be-all of everything, was viewed as crucial to the urge to progress. Remember that? To demand that nothing be considered to be beyond yesterday’s headlines was once depicted as closed-minded and defeatist, utterly at odds with what humanity is supposed to be about.

Once.

Today, to even evince the possibility that primeval anthropoids stalk the wilderness, or that something outre causes crop stalks to be crushed and bent in intricate patterns, or that jets are spreading chemicals in persistent aerial trails, is met not just with skepticism, but outright hostility! Even the Fortean Times web site is rife with regular condemnations of belief in the unorthodox, or even just the willingness to lend them some sense of possible credence! In fact, it can be startling to see the venom with which suggestions of anything beyond “the standard pale” are greeted, nowadays!

Today, questioning the absolute verity of what’s in the textbooks, acknowledging a willingness to accept something beyond “traditional science” is looked at with mistrust and disgust. What, before, was the sign of “an open mind” is, today, depicted as “proof of mental instability”.

Ranks are closing about everything already written, or subjects only a page breadth away. The symbol for “science” today is rabid entrenchment, vituperative insistence that they, and their friends, be taken as the absolute last word.

There’s generally a reason for this kind of behavior, and that is fear.

The purveyors of “traditional science” have had a cozy set-up for a few decades now. In the wake of the Apollo broadcasts, “traditional science” could do no wrong. Indeed, a sense of trust, and a well-being born of the feeling of trust, has existed for some time. When those who were asking to be trusted were actually providing some kind of legitimacy, or were able to claim a certain degree of verifiability in their words, that could have its benefits. But it changed, and fast. In short order, it became apparent that those who were asking, then demanding, they be trusted viewed it not as a bridge to helping the believers, but, merely, as a springboard to conning “the rubes” into buying a product, or not making a stink when their tax dollars are funneled into a political crony’s pocket under the auspices of a “project in the public good”!

There are only so many times you can hear the mealy-mouthed refrain, “Regular treatment with this product may reduce the threat of…,” before realizing someone’s got the hook baited for you! And, whether it’s depictions of bran as the food of the gods, followed by retractions of the suggestion, after many people’s health was ruined by “yuppie malnourishment; condemnations of salt, followed by warnings not to drink too much bottled water, because it depletes electrolytes; denunciations of wine, followed by revelations that it can be helpful; attacks on carbohydrates, followed by revelations that it was all unfounded, followed by yet more assaults; Watergate; Billy Carter’s denial of being paid by Libyan sources; Iran-Contra; “trickle down economics”; the “Evil Empire”; “ketchup and relish as ‘vegetables’”; Monica Lewinsky; Vince Foster; “fast food preparing as ‘manufacturing’”; “outsourcing as a form of trade”; “accepting illegal aliens as a form of free trade”; or Iraq, the lesson has been plain and simple, namely, things aren’t the way they tell us! Even now, there seem hordes of secrets being kept from us about how business and government are being allowed to violate our rights, and try to turn us into beasts of burden! Every day brings yet new revelations, and it’s a fool who can’t see where the wind is blowing. And something worse than a fool who won’t see where the wind is blowing!

And, yet, all the things that are later discredited are - while the profiteering’s good - attested to by all sorts of individuals claiming reliability, or asserting “accreditation” by someone claiming to be reliable!

Realizing the faithlessness of their presentations, however, spells disaster for the liar, however. And, for all that the public is being condemned as being “more gullible”, they are, in fact, simply being more willing to admit that those in positions of money or influence have apparent prominent track records of swindle! The willingness to accept what “traditional science” roars at us to believe is, actually, an expression of the realization by the public that they have been lied to ruthlessly, and, even now, their intelligence is routinely insulted by inane and insipid pronouncements!

To maintain a steady income from swindling “the sheep”, the liars have to make them question their ability to think correctly for themselves, and convince them that anything other than what those in positions of influence assert is patent falsity.

In the rawest terms possible.

And that means, among other things, representing any conception that doesn’t hew to the “standard line” as being promoted in bad faith, and for corrupt ends. And a critical part of this process is terming any unconventional assertion a “hoax”. This lends an air of deliberate deception, and venal machination, because, in general, hoaxes are perpetrated, not just spread, like rumors or even innuendo, and, usually, to get the hoaxer popularity, money, or both. Hoax, huckster, carny shill. They avoid the threat of imminent truth to their cozy empire of lies, they denounce even questioning the “standard line”! Indeed, the system seems to have reached saturation, because, now, even CNN is referring to college student Audrey Seiler’s strongly disputed report of being kidnapped as a “hoax”. It may be a lie, or a deception, or even a rumor, but it does not rise to the definition of a “hoax”! Yet, so devoted has even CNN become to promoting the atmosphere that “anything not cleared by the central command must be viewed as evil and disbelieved” that, like National Geographic, they have become diffident about correct English!

For this reason, apparently, too, those who take issue with, and post internet reports about such things as chemtrails are all uniformly painted as “hoaxers”! The farmer in his field, appalled by the sight of a grid of fourteen non-dissipating aerial spray lines, that he cannot remember seeing before about seven years ago, that despoils the view and robs his crops of light is conveniently depicted as “perpetrating a hoax”! The housewife who looks out a window, and worries that the seven lines covering most of the sky might be poisoning her children is “in it for the money”! The nature lover who can’t accept crisp blue skies being turned into murky, pearly overcasts is “engaging in a scam”! The “debunkers”, those trying to peddle the lie that those who oppose chemtrails are engaging in a con determinedly point out that many involved in opposing them have books they try to sell.

“Skeptics” like Michael Shermer or “The Amazing Randi”, who hawk their books and schedule talks, of course, aren’t doing the same thing!

Even the White House seems to have decided to jump on the bandwagon of representing anything they don’t like as a patent scam, in the hopes that that will stick. When Tyler Crotty, son of Orange County, Florida, Chairman Richard Crotty, engaged in his fits of fidgetiness - yawning, gyrating, cracking his neck, doing impromptu calisthenics, and checking his watch - while President Bush apparently pushed his rhetoric at a rally, and it was caught on tape, the White House immediately issued a release to CNN, declaring that he had been “edited into” the film! This is somewhat reminiscent of the perennial pastime, of those who seek to obfuscate the truth, of calling genuine, but unconventional, photos, “photomanipulations”! They seemed to feel that the practice has gained such ubiquity, with every legitimate piece of evidence being called a “Photoshop Pro manipulation to perpetrate a hoax”, that they could just rattle the phrase off whenever they wish, and the “beasts of burden” would buy it. Then David Letterman showed the tape, and denounced the White House’s “explanation” a bald-faced lie! Suddenly, CNN, apparently an obsequious lap dog for The Oval Office, backtracked so hard they left tread marks! They suddenly issued their own statement that they had not been contacted by the White House, declaring the boy to have been edited into the film! They don’t seem to be able to say where the “announcement” that the film was a photomanipulation came from; they may even want people to believe they didn’t make the statement at all! But they did make the statement that the pronouncement came from the White House! Their lapse of ethics seems no less egregious than National Geographic’s!

Which, incidentally, brings to mind a point.

Every time a “hoax photo” hits the internet, someone usually comes forward, in an astonishingly short period of time, to “reveal” where the separate components that had been “pasted together” came from. In the case of the photograph supposedly showing a young man at the top of the World Trade Center building, with the approaching jet in the background, the purported photograph from which the jet had been “lifted” - a promotional picture” for the airline - was identified. Do you know how many photographs there are on the internet of any one jet, not to mention the sheer number of photographs in the world, to search through? Yet, conveniently, the source of the jet “pasted into” the picture was found posthaste, and in an internet file already, no less, to make it easier for the public to believe that the jet in the World Trade Center photo came from there, simply because their accessing the purported “original picture” was so simple!

That, incidentally, is another tactic of the obfuscators, at least with respect to a certain branch of the public, namely, to make their act of “verifying” the obfuscators’ claim easy. Whole groups, the obfuscators seem to aver, won’t do anything that requires work, so, if you make “authenticating” erroneous claims simple, they’ll buy it, just because deriving the truth may be relatively so complicated. There do seem to be a fraction of people who will readily sign away their humanity, just to be able to have someone do their thinking for them!

Another example is the one shown in the National Geographic article, in which a man, suspended from a helicopter rope ladder, seems to be being lunged at by a shark. The claim is that it was a pastiche of a legitimate picture of a man suspended from a helicopter and a separate photo of a breaching shark, made in Australia. Again, do you know how many photos there are of sharks to have to go through, to find the one that was supposedly pasted into the photo?

There seems an alternative, though. What if, instead of unconventional photos being constructed from separate photos, obfuscators take genuine unconventional pictures and “deconstruct” them, taking their separate elements and pasting them into pictures, where they don’t belong? If a picture existed of a man, suspended from a helicopter, being lunged at by a shark, how difficult would it be to airbrush out the shark in the original, then paste it into a picture of open ocean, then declare the undramatic pictures to be the originals that were “photomanipulated” to produce the controversial picture? If it’s supposedly so easy to use Photoshop Pro to make unreal photos, it should be possible to use it take genuine ones apart, and construct other, less dramatic, pictures from them!

In the end, in discerning the truth, it is, largely, the responsibility of the person who purports to seek it. Whether it is nature, or the lies of obfuscators, you have to address, to find it, you have to be willing to do the work!



Julian Penrod
 
greets

thought i'd bump this and see if anyone has spotted any april fools stuff in the meija this year (2005)

mal
 
On the radio this morning (2FM and Radio 1 in Ireland) had 2 of the lamest aprils fools attempts - Gerry Ryan tried to fool people into believing you wouldnt be allowed into Grafton Street (Irelands answer to Oxford ST or Rodeo Drive) wearing certain types of cloths. And Radio 1 tried to convince us that U2 announced that a 3rd concert was going ahead in the summer on the hill of Tara. Pathetic, anyone come across any good ones
 
On Radio 4 this morning there was a story that because of some obscure law about sucession in the House of Saxe-Coburg, that was incorporated into English law when Prince Albert married Victoria, Tom Parker-Bowles, son of Camilla, would become second in line to the throne after Prince Charles, instead of Prince William....
 
New Labour lines up countryside role for Charles

greets

from the guardian:

New Labour lines up countryside role for Charles

Staff reporters
Friday April 1, 2005
The Guardian

Tony Blair is planning to offer Prince Charles the role of "countryside tsar" in a third-term Labour government, the Guardian has learned.

The offer - to be announced on the eve of Charles's wedding to his long-term lover, Camilla - is intended to give the prince some hands-on experience of running something in preparation for his future role as king.

Labour insiders also hope that the prince will help mend fences with rural voters, disenchanted by the government's handling of foot and mouth, BSE and fox hunting.

The prince would work alongside Alan Milburn, Labour's election campaign coordinator, and Lord Birt, adviser to Mr Blair, in a re structured Cabinet Office. Lord Birt believes that Prince Charles could be sent on a nationwide "mission to explain" New Labour policies to farming communities.

Lord Birt and Prince Charles are reported to have held "blue-skies thinking" focus groups, which came up with a proposal to top-slice the BBC licence fee with a view to putting the long-running Radio 4 serial, the Archers, on Channel Five.

"It kills two birds with one stone," said one Downing Street insider last night. "It gives Charles a proper job, which is good for the monarchy, and it also helps reconnect us with the green welly brigade."

The prince is understood to have made it a condition of taking the job that a third term Labour government would reverse its ban on fox hunting. One Downing Street source said: "Tony's very relaxed about it, so long as it can be re-branded as a sport for the many, not the few."

The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, has already been in discussions with Clarence House about how to open up fox hunting to a more diverse, less elitist, group of participants. "It's about giving kids on housing estates the same opportunities to hunt as posh children from the home counties," said one culture department source. Ms Jowell's office refused to confirm whether Britain would be pressing for drag-hunting to become an Olympic event in time for the 2012 Games.

The prince has deep roots in the countryside, and has turned the Duchy of Cornwall into a £12m business. Labour strategists believe this reconnection with the countryside, harking back to gentler, more community-based times of strong village and family links, could turn into a mass movement under the slogan: "Are you remembering what I'm remembering?"

Downing Street insiders also believe that the prince could help repair relations with the travelling community, bruised by the recent commotion over illegal sites.

Ministers close to Tony Blair were both surprised and delighted when the prince offered to accept 200 caravans from the controversial site at Crays Hill in Essex on a large plot at Poundbury, his showpiece development in Dorset.

Labour insiders hope that Camilla could play a role along side the prince in wooing disaffected rural voters. Mr Milburn is keen that she should repair links with the Women's Institute, after Mr Blair's humiliating slow-handclap reception in 2000.

"The feeling is, it works both ways," said a Cabinet Office source. "It's good for us, but it also helps re-brand Camilla as a jam-maker rather than a home-breaker."

Private surveys for the prince, conducted by the polling firm Yo, Guv!, show that Mrs Parker Bowles has a positive image rating with the public exceeded only by the Queen among female royals.

One plan being discussed at Highgrove is to gradually reposition the prince's wife as the public face of the Duchy Originals biscuit range. It is thought that the stem ginger brand will be the first to carry her portrait.

Last night however, Treasury sources were suggesting that Gordon Brown, the chancellor, was counselling strongly against the prime minister's bold move. "Gordon doesn't believe in chummying up to the royals and their legions of toadies. He keeps asking how this will go down in Auchtermuchty Labour club," said a No 11 source.

But that position was rubbished last night by officials close to Mr Milburn. "That's just sour grapes from Gordon," said one influential aide. "The unpalatable truth for Brown is that Alan and Charles get on brilliantly. And why wouldn't they? Alan is the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Charles has the Duchy of Cornwall. They have loads in common."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1449902,00.html

mal

tee hee
 
I assume this is an Aprifl Fools Day joke but it is dated the 31st and there is an odd air of truth about it :shock:

DeLay: Feed Medicare recipients to zombies


Daily Staff Writer
March 31, 2005


'Romero's Law' assures 'culture of life' rights for the undead

By Sean L'Mort

Daily Staff Writer

Stung by a perceived defeat in the Terri Schiavo feeding tube case, House Republicans pushed through a bill Thursday aimed at dealing with a "zombie event" such as those depicted in popular sci-fil films like "Dawn of the Dead" and "28 Days Later."

The largely meaningless bill, dubbed the "Romero's Law" after zombie-film director George Romero, is primarily aimed at energizing the conservative base, according to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX). DeLay explained that the religious right is "highly interested" in the rights not only of the unborn but the "not quite dead" as well.

"Zombies represent just another faction of the culture of life that we hold dear," DeLay said. "People who aren't yet born and those who aren't quite dead have very little say in what becomes of them. They are still God's creatures, and they need representation."

Romero's Law postulates the existence of "tens of thousands of undead, barely dead or marginally alive humans who need to feed." In accordance with Republican beliefs, the bill declares zombies to be of "high importance," and suggests that simply shooting them in the head or clubbing them, spitting or piking them or decapitating them is contrary to "culture of life" principles. The bill suggests the zombies be "repurposed" either as Border Patrol agents or DMV workers.

When it was pointed out to DeLay that zombies typically need live human flesh to continue their activities - a potential homeland security risk - he suggested feeding them Medicare recipients.

"It's a win-win situation," DeLay said. "Medicare is in trouble, these people are old as hell and the zombies need to eat. Trimming the ranks of those on the public dole is, in my view, an excellent way of solving the problem. Now, we just have to kinda hope for a zombie event."

House Democrats voting for the bill couldn't deny its application to a potentially at-risk minority of zombies, who would ostensibly be denied health care coverage due to a pre-existing condition (death).

"It disgusts me the way DeLay and his gang are making this just another chapter in the battle to outlaw abortion," said Diana DeGette (D-CO). "But, ridiculous though it may sounds, zombies really would be in a pickle, much worse off than some of our other signature minorities."

President Bush, who flew in to sign the bill on a rocket ship from his fake ranch in Texas - and then via jetpack from the airport to the White House - was angered when he learned the Senate had to approve it first.

"Dang it," Bush said. "I interrupted brush-clearin' and a really good mountain bike ride to be here an' all. You sure I can't sign it yet?"


------------------
Vail, Colorado
Click to expand...

Source

;)
 
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