Things I’ve encountered in my travels or been told about but don’t have time to discuss in detail:

Well-known pseudoscientist Myron Evans is trying to start a university to promote his particular brand of highly gussied-up crank physics. According to the Welsh news, Evans plans to kick off “Myron Evans University” (not unduly troubled by modesty, is he?). Reporter Martin Shipton gives a standard he-said, she-said summary:

He claims to have formulated a “unified field theory” which will revolutionise modern physics, and while he has the strong support of some academics, the theory has been dismissed by others.

Oh, those vicious academics, always eager to knock a man’s leek about his pate on St. Davy’s Day. Incidentally, the sugar daddy for this bit of self-aggrandizement is Francesco Fucilla, supposedly a “generous oil multi-millionaire” who saw Evans’s “work” on the Internet; as far as I can tell, Fucilla is actually a moderately prosperous, semi-retired engineer who doesn’t have nearly the financial capital to start a university. He’s credited as chief geophysicist at the Palm Harbor, Florida “Institute of Basic Research” — which the article erroneously locates in California — and which was founded by “I can burn water for fuel and I hate relativity” crank Ruggero Santilli.

The more you delve into serious crankery, the more weirdness you find; I’ll probably be returning to this subject soon.

Next up:

Feeling thirsty for quantum woo? Do your genetics feel unhighlighted? Are your cells vibrating at the wrong frequencies of consciousness? Then you might be interested in the Human Design System:

Strategy according to type, and inner authority for decision making are the primary tools offered by the Human Design System. According to proponents of Human Design, when someone experiments with their strategy and authority, it transforms their life, one decision at a time. Through each decision they can begin to discover their uniqueness, and they find the correct alignment of their own particular trajectory. In addition, by experimenting with strategy and trying out decision making with the individual’s inner authority, each person comes to their own conclusion about the validity of the information from their own experience.

At a practical level, Human Design offers a new process of decision making. It is not a new mental strategy or type-casting philosophy. It is about transferring the decision making from the mind to the inner authority of the body. Every cell in the body has it’s own intelligence, it’s own memory capacity, and according to Human Design, it’s own frequency of consciousness. This bio-intelligence, the consciousness of the form itself becomes the source of the inner authority for decision making.

This might be the first bit of woo I’ve seen which invokes magnetic monopoles:

The design or form consciousness derived from the Design Crystal, is designed to provide the inner authority for the decision making, direction, and trajectory of the life. The personality or mental consciousness derived from the Personality Crystal is designed to provide the outer authority; the ability to observe and interpret information for the benefit of others, but not to run the life. These two streams of consciousness are pulled together by what is called in Human Design terms, the prime Magnetic Monopole which creates the illusion of separateness, and provides the direction for the life. It is by the healthy utilization of the binary consciousness that humans can achieve their potential of self-reflected consciousness in form.

Wait a second — pulling together the “streams of consciousness”? No, no! Don’t cross the streams! Every atom in your body will explode at the speed of light!

UPDATE (12 March): The Wikipedia article “Human Design System” has been deleted. The deletion discussion itself is not without interest.