Just a few more days until the Conspiracy Cruise sets sail! Thanks to the support of everyone who backed my crowdfunding campaign I’ll be on board to conduct interviews and attend lectures by people like Andrew Wakefield, Winston Shrout, Nick Begich and Sherri Tenpenny.
The seminar schedule includes panels like Whistleblowing in the Public Interest (Andy Wakefield), Are GMOs and Roundup Causing Disease in Millions?, Vaccinations: Do You Really Know What’s Coming Through That Needle?, Conspiracy of the Court System, Conspiracy to Steal Your Body and Soul, Divine Wizardry, Competing Theories of Autism: Vaccines vs. Glyphosate (Roundup) Herbicide, Astral Possession, Psychic Vampirism, and Exorcism, How to Control the World with Mind Machines, All That Glitters Is Not God: Dangers of Psychic Roulette, and a Controlled Opposition Panel Discussion: Solutions to Psyops and Censorship with Wakefield and others.
I’ll try to post a nightly summary of each day’s events, but the seminar schedule and connectivity issues might keep me from doing that. If so, I’ll just post the nightly summaries in a batch once we’re back on shore. And I’ll write up a longer piece summarizing my thoughts on the conference as a whole. I’ll be posting everything here, and I hope you’ll share the links and leave your comments! In the long run my aim is to start conversations about these ideas, and this is a great way to do it.
In the meantime, please drop me a line with any suggestions or questions. I’ve already had some great suggestions for questions to ask (things like, “What’s your research methodology?”) and I’m happy to hear more. You can email them directly to me, or leave it as a comment here. I won’t be very responsive next week, as the ship isn’t a very connected environment, but I’ll respond as quickly as I can.
Some people have asked about whether it’s OK to share these posts, and if the cruise organizers will figure out who I am and why I’m there. It’s absolutely OK! And of course they’ll figure it out–I’ve been totally honest about this all along, and I don’t intend to change that. There’s no cover identities or secret agendas. I doubt anyone will care; the whole point of the seminar is to talk about their beliefs, after all, and I’m not going to be doing anything disruptive or disrespectful.
So get ready to peek behind the curtain! Bring a friend by sharing a link to Violent Metaphors or the crowdfunding campaign (donations gratefully accepted through Sunday). The most helpful thing you can do is join the conversation once the seminar is underway and the updates start going up.
Violent metaphors 
If the cruise ship sinks…
If Douglas Adams were alive and writing Hitchhikers today, this would be what the B Ark would look like.
Whew! Glad you caught the missing “not” in the email share … 🙂 … and thanks for your bravery.
My fault 🙂 I edited it on my phone at 5:30 am, and missed it before clicking “post”. Sorry, Colin!
Thank you so much for pointing that out! I had the same typo in my GoFundMe update. Would really have sent the wrong message!
Given the way disease can spread through cruise ships, it seems converging a large group such as this on a ship would be ill advised. Do you know if the line gave any thought to that?
Hey, A, I’m sure that, with all those years of healthy diets, juicing, detoxing, avoiding vaccines, and the crate-loads of homeopathic magic water and sugar pills in their luggage, norovirus and rotavirus won’t spread like wildfire on that cruise ship. (/sarcasm) Considering all of the … content in the seminars, there’s no more room for feces on that boat anyway.
A lot of the presenters are there to sell their wares, presumably including energy healing and such. So whatever the actual risks are, I think the participants probably feel they’re better protected than the normal cruise-goers.
I don’t know if you’ll be attending any lectures where people promote alt-med treatments for autism or other disorders but the question I always want to put to these presenters is the following:
If a large pharmaceutical company like Merck or Novartis sought approval for a new drug for high blood pressure but could only offer as evidence of safety and efficacy the same type of evidence you claim demonstrates this treatment is both safe and efficacious for this disorder–no clinical trials, etc., but instead only personal testimonials, anecdotal accounts, appeals to tradition and ‘different ways of knowing’, etc.–do you believe the FDA should approve the large pharma company’s drug for sale?
I think those alt-med treatments will be heavily promoted. Your question is very interesting; I think most would say they wouldn’t want such a drug approved, which is an easy position for them to take because they’re (mostly) fairly anti-pharmaceutical. I’m not sure about people like Wakefield; my sense is that his medical opinions are fairly conventional outside of vaccines. I don’t think he’d want to rock the boat (so to speak) though, so I’d be he’d take a party-line position. We’ll find out if possible!
The other question I frequently ask anti-vax types is if they believe that extraterrestrials piloting faster-than-light vehicles routinely visit earth, abduct humans and subject them to medical examinations (which all seem to require an obligatory colonoscopy).
After all, there’s as much evidence in support of alien abduction, of exactly the same form, as the evidence they’ve accepted as proof vaccines cause autism: collections of anecdotes and personal testimonies.
And when they typically respond “Of course not” I ask them to describe the exactly how they pick and choose which collections of anecdotes they will equate with actual evidence and which they will not.
I’ve yet to get a good answer, though.
I would love to know these things:
Why do you trust the sources you do? What makes them trustworthy to you?
What would change your mind on an issue? What source (goverment? scientists? clergy? personal experience?) would it have to come from?
Great questions.
Yes, the evidence that will change their mind question would be great to have answered. They’ll probably dance around it faster than they can shout “shill” when presented with contrary evidence.
I have a suggestion. Go to the ship’s medical clinic when its open and ask people why they’re there and why they’re not going to many of the naturopaths and alternative therapists on board. Its a bit intrusive but could be interesting.
Once the organizers, presenters an audience figure out who you are, stay away from the rails. Especially after dark.
“and” audience. Damned tablet.
LOL… I had the same thought, and I also have a big problem with typos myself. And I don’t even own a tablet; I do my work from a laptop or a big desktop work station. Best to drink a bit more coffee and go slow (and I’m at least reaching a point where I can use age as an excuse). And it’s okay to grumble about the lack of an editing feature. At least one with a “time interval”; there are unscrupulous sorts who will resort to gaslighting techniques otherwise.
Yeah, Colin, if things get ugly, pretend you’re buying into a bit of their nonsense. They love to hear the sound of their own voices. Take one of their cards and tell them you’re thinking about making a donation.