(Melchizedek Communique, MC020410) With pipe cleaners, the kind pipe smokers use to clean their pipes, you can build "pipe cleaner men." Hopefully shown here, on the right, is one such "pipe cleaner man" about to throw a touchdown pass.

This Sunday, February 7th, millions of Americans will tune in the television to watch grown men in long underwear and helmets chasing the skin of a pig. But this editor stopped watching TV in 1999. So he will build two teams of pipe cleaner men and imagine them chasing the skin of a pig.

A major episode of infantilism is imminent. The Super Bowl of Infantilism broods over the news this week. All news stories this week have the Super Bowl subtext: How important can they be, with massive infantilism just around the corner?

And so, Melchizedek Communique was going to just start building the pipe cleaner men and not issue any more reports this week. But then a footnote of a story appeared which caused even the pipe cleaner men to take notice.

National Public Radio (NPR) reports on how author David Aaronovitch has written a book, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History. An excerpt from his book is published at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123127032.

"A conspiracy theory is likely to be politically populist, in that it usually claims to lay bare an action taken by a small power elite against the people. Or, as a Californian professor of theology could tell an audience at the Copenhagen central library with regard to 9/11: 'Members of the elite of our society may not think that the truth should be revealed.' By contrast, belief in the conspiracy makes you part of a genuinely heroic elite group who can see past the official version duplicated for the benefit of the lazy or inert mass of people by the powers that be. There will usually be an emphasis on the special quality of thought required to appreciate the existence of the conspiracy. The conspiracists have cracked the code, not least because of their possession of an unusual and perceptive way of looking at things."

This (above) is from Aaronovitch's book. And it got this editor to thinking: "Is it all just a big ego trip?"

But the pipe cleaner men do not agree. They say it is just puzzle solving. Some people do Sudoku puzzles, others do conspiracy puzzles. True, some ego trippers may gravitate to propounding conspiracy theories. But the quintessential conspiracy theorist just likes solving puzzles, that's all.

This is just a footnote of a story. The looming infantilism celebration will not be affected. But, just for the record, Aaronovitch is not spot on. It is mathematics, not ego, which propels the true conspiracy theorist.