#1482: Ed Conrad

Ed Conrad is a legendary internet kook particularly familiar from his, uh, contributions to the talk.origins newsgroup. Without going into to much detail, Conrad claims to be the victim of a grand scientific conspiracy since he allegedly found human remains in a coal seam that dates to long before humans were around. Accordingly, the Darwinian Establishment wants to silence him, and will stop at nothing. Naturally, his contributions to debates are characterized by Conrad suspecting that any critic of his ramblings being part of the conspiracy; the result is … well, for the most part much fun. His website is here.

Much of the noise centers around Conrad’s skull-shaped object (a rock, in fact), which he says was found in the Carboniferous-dated anthracite region of Pennsylvania in June of 1981, and which was investigated (according to Conrad) by scientists at the Smithsonian, who determined that it was a concretion, a conclusion Conrad has … had a hard time accepting (he has later come up with a range of other, similar items, none particularly more impressive than his first ones) since it does, to Conrad, look so much like a skull. He is, however, somewhat more skeptical of other people’s claims (this one is hilarious). The spirit of Ed Conrad and his discoveries is well captured here.

At present he appears to be pushing 9/11 truther insanity and some half-garbled urban legends as proof of the existence of God, or something.

Diagnosis: Might be a bit unfair to include him here (he’s pretty harmless), but Ed Conrad has managed to become something of a legend in certain circles.