The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

— Fmr. US President John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America [1787]

Wired just published a rather long but very good and detailed article about HAARP, a $250 million facility in Alaska with a 30-acre array of antennas capable of spewing 3.6MW of energy into the ionosphere. My insane mother is one of those credulous people who believe every conspiracy theory under the sun. I’d never talked with her about it, but I’d bet that she even believes that the 9/11 attacks were plotted by the Federal Reserve to bring about the biblical apocalypse. Or maybe aliens. There’s never any telling with her. It was in fact through her that I first learned of HAARP, and around the same time that Nick Begich’s self-published book Angels Don’t Play This HAARP came out, which spawned yet another conspiracy theory for the masses of uncritical thinkers to pine over. Of course the conspiracy theory is bullshit, fuelled by bits of fact that — when strung together and seen through a biased lens — look a bit shady. The truth is that it’s just a giant, expensive research facility, built and maintained by the military (just as many other products of science, like the Internet, begin) and funded by congressional budget earmarks thanks to former U.S. Senator from Alaska Ted “Bridge to Nowhere” Stevens. The project actually is not classified, nor are there any classified documents related to HAARP; there’s even a webcam — two, actually — which allow people to stare all day if they like at the facility’s antennae, and they even hold an annual open house at which any and all are invited to visit the site. The facility exists for one thing: science.

And what science it does! From the flashy (like triggering visible auroras) to the practical (like using the ionosphere to send low-wavelength communications signals to deep-sea submarines) to the stuff purely for advancing scientific knowledge (they recently used it to echo radio waves off the surface of the moon, bringing with it a lot of data about the composition of lunar soil and the satellite’s topography). The only thing I worry about is that the aforementioned Nick Begich, who thinks it’s all a giant conspiracy for weather control and mind control and all kinds of other things, is the older brother of newly-elected U.S. Senator from Alaska Mark Begich; if Nick can convince Mark of his wacky conspiracy theories, then Mark might start pushing to close down the facility. Hopefully Mark has a cooler head on his shoulders than his brother.