And in other news...

...it looks as though the Vatican may shortly be absolving the Knights Templar of 700-year-old charges of heresy.

Check out the Google references on this group of warrior monks. Among other things, they are, or were, the guardians of the Holy Grail. And now, darn it, they're about to go mainstream. They were just misunderstood Catholics, after all, creditors of Philip The Fair, king of France at the time, who hunted them down to wipe out his debts. Their mythos becomes mere history.

The effects on conspiracy theorizing world-wide could well be catastrophic. On the other hand, the "discovery" of a mis-filed document absolving the Templars of heresy could be seen as an attempt to throw us all off the scent. Ah, that's better.

The Templar mentality, if so it can be called, lives on in the conspiracy theorizing with which we are all familiar: 9/11 was an inside job! The world is controlled by a) the Jews; b) the Illuminati; c) the Freemasons; d) [insert your favourite cabal here.] And the Templars themselves persist, in various closed delusional systems.

Author Umberto Eco ("Foucault's Pendulum") sums up:

The lunatic is all idee fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

Who will now fill this much-needed gap? (Solecism intentional.) Incidentally, Truthers, et al., tinfoil doesn't work. Indeed, it attracts and focuses the rays. The rumour that it acts as a protection was put about by the...well, I'm not at liberty to tell you.