Conspiring To Create Conspiracies

I came across the below series of photos at Bad Astronomy, supposedly taken by a Japanese satellite orbiting the moon. I say "supposedly" because the satellite's existence is obviously being faked. Notice the copyright information in the photo? How would that writing have ended up on the lunar surface? Besides, everyone knows the moon is in the public domain.

No, no, I'm just kidding. I fully believe that it's every bit as authentic as the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify the Iraq war.... Well, okay, maybe the photo is just a bit more true.

Although there are those out there who continue to insist that the moon landing was faked, I do not count myself among the conspiracy theorists. In fact, I'll take it a step further and say those people are every bit as wacko as the people who insist the 9-11 attacks were faked. The problem with such alleged government conspiracies is simply that they are too vast to sustain. For example, take Oliver Stone's version of the Kennedy assassination. If you believe that hundreds--or even thousands--of people were involved in pulling that off, how come not a single one of them has decided to go public with the information? Such a book deal would be worth tens of millions of dollars, and yet not a single participant has cashed in on it?

Also, look at the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. The level of incompetence exhibited by the Bush administration rose to truly mind-boggling proportions. Yet these same idiots supposedly managed to pull off an intricately woven hoax like 9/11?!?! And never mind that much of that terrible morning's events unfolded on live TV.

That said, I do NOT buy NASA's story that the Mars Orbiter was lost in 1999 because of a mistake in converting English units of measurement to metric ones. Are we supposed to believe that rocket scientists with PhD's would make such a simple and fundamental mistake in seventh grade level math?

I continue to believe, despite a total and complete lack of evidence to support my position, that the Mars Orbiter was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired by the Martian Space Defense Agency.

I also continue to firmly believe, despite the complete and utter lack of physical evidence to support the idea, that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago by an omnipotent supernatural being, who then took the seventh day off because He was exhausted.... Because, well, even omnipotent supernatural beings get tired.

I also believe that this entity also created a fossil record dating back hundreds of millions of years just to confuse us. And finally, I firmly believe that He created the billions of stars in our galaxy--as well as the billions of other galaxies out there--so the Hubble Space Telescope would have something pretty to look at.

But I digress. As far as the moon landing is concerned, have you seen the video of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the surface? Looks pretty damn convincing to me.

Look at how grainy that image is. If the landing had truly been faked, don't you think the special effects would have been much better? Wouldn't there have been dramatic background music? Wouldn't some sort of giant sandworm have emerged from the lunar soil and swallowed Armstrong whole? Wouldn't the lighting booms have been better secured?

Now if George Lucas were to release a new digitally remastered version of the moon landing, then maybe--just maybe--I would have to reconsider things.