Conspiracies And Probability 506
guttentag writes "Sunday's New York Times Magazine is running a feature that looks at the rumored conspiracy that allegedly killed nearly a dozen bioterror and germ warfare researchers during a four month period following the U.S. anthrax scare. "What are the odds," people ask, despite the fact that a "one-in-a-million miracle" will statistically occur 280 times a day in the U.S. These strange things happen all the time, but we hype them because they provide the spice in literature and the comfort of comprehension."
Re:Hemos... stuck in a time loop? (Score:4, Informative)
Enough true conspiracies to worry about (Score:3, Informative)
As for this particular issue of the dead scientists, there's been no good evidence either way, and so it hasn't appeared at all in my blog.
Re:Conspiracies, nuts, and JFK (Score:2, Informative)
2) Because the gov't has a bad habit of covering up anything that might potentially embarrass them. Then, they cover up (lie) about the rest just for good measure.
3) Because evidence "disappeared" -- like frames from Zapruder's film. Odds are some buffoon bureaucrats simply lost stuff, but it doesn't look good.
Re:Did they catch the Anhtrax killer ? (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, I have. Pictures of plane wreckage at the pentagon [hawaii.edu]
Re:Conspiracy (Score:2, Informative)
Happened before (Score:2, Informative)
When his family made inquiries in 1975, Congress paid $750,000 in damages to the family. What was really weird was that during this time, a letter was sent between Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who were working for Gerald Ford at the time, saying that if there was a trial, it could be "necessary to disclose top secret information concerning national security".
These guys are at the top today, and since assassination and cover-ups (even specifically regarding biological warfare) clearly are not foreign to them, I don't see why the default theory should be an extremely improbable coincidence.
Re:Enough true conspiracies to worry about (Score:4, Informative)
From looking at your blog, I don't see evidence of conspiracies. All I see in your blog are the angry ramblings of a self-righteous individual who thinks the news media is playing up the wrong stories.
For real evidence of real conspiracies, read through the documents at The George Washington University's National Security Archive [gwu.edu] of declassified documents, like the proposal [gwu.edu] to incite world opinion against Cuba through propaganda, staged riots, staged attacks on the U.S., mock funerals and more.
Re:Conspiracies, nuts, and JFK (Score:4, Informative)
Three? See, this is exactly what the parent was talking about. There was *TWO* people that the bullet passed through. Connally and JFK. And if you look at pictures shown by the "look, the single bullet theory is ridiculous"-people, sure enough, it will look like it had to make funny u-turns in the air. However, if you look at the actual pictures of how JFK and Connally sat, you'll notice that they weren't at all directly behind eachother but that JFK was much further to the outside of the car than Connally was. Thus, a bullet passing through his head would have hit Connally in the right shoulder, just as it did.
Of course there's a million other evidence, for and against but I'm not really interested in the whole JFK conspiracy. I just don't like it when people bend the facts; say it was three people instead of two, show diagrams full of errors and clearly exaggerated with bullets making u-turns in the air and so on.
If your case is so convincing, just stick to the facts. Ok?
Here's just one site that reveals some of the bullshit:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm