Going dumpster diving in the conspiracy communities can bring up some fascinating stuff. Sheldon Day and John DiNardo are best known (in these communities) as proponents of Planet X conspiracy theories; that is, the idea popularized by Nancy Lieder that a tenth planet, Planet X, is going to pass by Earth sometime in the near future causing massive destruction and woe. Day and DiNardo have been at the game for a while, and if their audience had been minimally rational, the abject failure of their dire predictions to come to pass should have had an impact on their popularity, but fortunately for them that antecedent is in no danger of being satisfied. The website (sporting precisely the kind of design you’d expect from this camp) for Sheldon Day’s radio show “The Light of Day” does not seem to have been updated since 2011, however, and the latest news item proclaims that “The Planet X system COULD BE NEAR Saturn at this time & this is exactly what my research associate John Dinardo has been suspicious of …”
And of course there is a coverup – don’t you know – and not only because the powers that be want to avoid mass panic (since that would be a silly reason for the coverup). No, the powers that be are building secret underground bases and even underground cities on Earth, the Moon, and on Mars for themselves and the elites, and they are, from these secret bases, going to use the disastrous event as a means of purging the population and institute a New World Order. It’s right around the corner, and has been so for quite some time now. Evidence? Well, mostly it’s pulled out of that wonderful repository of remarkable evidence: imagination (or whatever you want to call it). According to Day and DiNardo astronomers know about the upcoming events partially because of several ancient prophecies (not only the Mayan one, but also others we don’t know about) … so no: Day and DiNardo do not seem to know quite what astronomers do. But those astronomers are lying! TheLightofDay has pictures and discussions of interviews with astronomers where they can clearly see that the interviewees are lying based on blinking, eye movements and other, subtle features observable to anyone who really wants to see them.
Of course, Day’s and DiNardo’s discussions aren’t limited to Planet X. TheLightofDay website functions (or functioned) primarily, it seems, as a resource linking to various websites and rants too silly even for InfoWars: HAARP conspiracies, chemtrails, global warming denialism, “manufactured earthquakes”, lizard people, anti-vaccine conspiracies, FEMA concentration camps, mind control, and “independent researchers” who fail to understand (or don’t want to accept) the distinction between astronomy and astrology (“Pluto is channeling the Energy of the Photon Belt from the central Sun, Alcycon in the Pleiades. All Planets are like little lenses that channel energy. The Galactic center is where all the spiritual energy comes from. WE DON'T HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 2012. IT'S HERE NOW !!!!! Just watch the government fall apart. These higher Energy particles are going to incorporate in our physiology and all of our physical problems will be history.” Oh, wee.) Day himself claims that “in accordance to a questionnaire I completed (star kid/star seed identification questionnaire) and created by a Dr. Richard Boyland [Boylan – we know who he’s talking about], I proudly consider muself to be an ‘adult star-seed” [I have removed the random use of colors from the quote]. DiNardo, on the other hand, seems to be particularly obsessed with what he takes to be a Biblical prophecy suggesting the existence of a Planet X.
Diagnosis: They’re at least admirably industrious and zealous. But good grief how far out of touch with anything resembling reality they are. People listen to them, but I doubt they’ll win many new converts.