Robin Falkov Radio takes on the Inaccutron

"If you want something pre-digested and bearing no relation to the truth, you've got mainstream media"

        Thus Dr Robin Falkov^{note 1}, introducing the very first of what she intends to be a regular series of three-hour internet radio shows on the Sceptre Radio Network, under the racy (if a little obvious) title WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW.

        Well, what THEY apparently didn't want us to know about in this pilot edition was the plight of the Greek population in a crippled economy (hour 1, with Marie Christine Polymenacou) and the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (hour 2, with John Edmonds). I must say I've heard plenty about both those topics on NPR, and Falkov's exposition seemed to me no less "pre-digested" than any presentation of a complex topic on mass media has to be of necessity. But I admit I was in sampling mode only for those first two hours, and may have missed something non-pre-digested.

Introducing the famous pseudoscientist

        So finally, Falkov introduced Richard C. Hoagland to amaze us all, and although she didn't exactly admit that Hoagland was her POSSLQ (look it up), the way she gushed about what a great time the two of them had prancing around Mauna Kea with the Accutron gear^{note 2} let that particular cat at least half way out of the bag. She declaimed "You're hearing this story here for the first time, before anyone else," which is not really true since the pseudoscientist had reported the Hawaiian jaunt live on Coast to Coast AM as it was happening. But then, Falkov never promised that her show would stick to the facts, did she?

        Hoagland said this was the chance of a lifetime, to take the Wacky-Accy to a latitude of 19.5° to do its stuff. If so, he was scampering up the wrong volcano. It's Mauna Loa^{note 3} which is at 19.5°. Mauna Kea is at 19° 49'.

        Well, you know Hoagland. Mister Blabbermouth. He couldn't bear to tell the story straight—first he had to give us a 25-minute lecture on the Allais Effect, which is the presumptive explanation for the phenomenon he claims to be sensing. I caught some weird extrasensory phenomenon myself as this dragged on, and I swear it was the power of Dr Falkov's "Get the fuck on with it, Richard" thoughts coming through to me.

I thought YOU had the spare batteries

        Finally we got the story, and it was a real screamer. They settled into the visitor center at 3:20 am, for an eclipse that was due 11 hours later, at 2:26pm. The pseudocientist immediately got such amazing "mind-blowing" readings—the frequency swinging all the way from 70 Hz to 540 Hz and back again— that he lost track of time and his battery ran out long before the actual eclipse began.

        Any real scientist, of course, would have declared the expedition a total failure and repaired to the nearest pub to drown his or her sorrows. Not this pseudoscientist, oh no. This, he said, was brilliant re-confirmation of all his theories. The fact that it happened eleven hours early simply meant that the torsion field was coming from the planet Mars^{note 4} as it emerged from behind the Sun.

Then it got REALLY silly

        Then it got not just silly but, frankly, insane. The trace formed by the Wacky-Accy reminded them of a picture of the two Hawaiian volcanoes themselves, Loa and Kea. Clearly, to Hoagland and Falkov, "someone was sending messages," probably the secret space program. "It was a definite message," said Robin, as if she would know anything at all about physics. Hoagland explained that torsion waves propagate at billions of times the speed of light, and came up with this exquisite gem of Hoagland-style insanity:

"There has been a rumor that Curiosity and Opportunity have torsion transmitters that send secret faster-than-light messages to NASA."

Richard, go to your room.

A note on the  production values: There were plenty of technical glitches, and patches of dead air, as we've come to expect from what is, let's face it, a strictly amateur enterprise, internet radio. As hostess, Dr Falkov is not very good, but she's not hopeless and I can imagine she might be ok with experience. She has a tendency to giggle—but then, so does Terry Gross, one of the doyennes of NPR.

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1] Dr Falkov is trained in oriental medicine and is a believer in the memory of water. Her idea of helping people afflicted by the Gulf Oil spill is to offer, on her website, bottles of diluted Gulf seawater that have been slammed onto a hard surface several times. From her website:

The price for the 2 ounce bottle of Gulf Oil Remedy is $22.99, plus shipping.
Shipping for one or two bottles is $5.00. The PayPal address is: DrFalkov@yahoo.com 

2] Once again, any readers who have no idea what "the Accutron" means can read a decent enough summary here.

3] Funnily enough,he made the same mistake in Dark Mission (page 91, 2nd edn).

4] When he reported live into C2C, he ascribed the wild excursions of the Wacky-Accy to interference from HAARP. He must have changed his mind about that.