This week we had marching, hiking, flying, switching lanes and finally: throwing. As in throwing obfuscation out there, sowing confusion.

Despairing mermaid?

Meet Robert Proctor, a science historian at Stanford, who studies how people deliberately obfuscate evidence that undermines their claims and, more importantly, their bottom line. He coined the wonderful term agnotology, the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance. Now why would we, at this point in time, be so interested in willful acts of spreading confusion or deceit, to sell a product or win a favor? You tell me 🙂

Wooden statues at base of crane

The link below is a wonderful article about Proctor’s work – starting with an investigation of the actions of the cigarette industry, continuing with a look into climate change denial and a focus on the current administration’s skills in deliberately keeping people ignorant or worse, convincing them of things that are not true to fact.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance

 

Stained glass windows in a derelict building

Photographs are of some of the more confusing vistas I encountered over the last months and a face that mirrors confusion pretty accurately, in my opinion.

Now what?