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The History Channel deserves the name because it is subverting history. It does so by placing established fact and surmise, speculation, and the most outrageous claims on the same plane and concluding the episode (whatever the topic may be) with "Who knows?"

Well, in a recent case...we do. The UFO files (more and more cable channels are developing a love affair with UFOs & Las Vegas devoting more and more air time to these subjects) claims in one episode that we owe integrated circuits, lasers, and Kevlar to items found on or near the putative crashed UFO in 1947 at Roswell, NM. If you've never heard of the Roswell Incident, you're lucky; quit reading this post immediately, and always look (or run) away any time you hear the word "Roswell."

In the cases above, one individual (a former Army officer named Corso) claims that the alien technology was turned over to Bell Labs, or some such thing, and they came up with it. It is specifically claimed that Bell Labs developed the microchip from alien technology. This is patent nonsense, as it is documented that the integrated circuit was developed at Fairchild Semiconductor (Robert Noyce) and Texas Instruments (Jack Kilby) under circumstances that brook no dispute. The technology of integrated circuits requires no postulate of the introduction of alien materials or design.

In all of these cases, it is only necessary to apply Occam's Razor. Simply put, no wonderful and mysterious stories of extraterrestrial intervention are required, thank you very much. And yet the conflation of prosaic fact with wild speculation continues, and on a multitude of topics, every day, via media that are supposedly reputable. Soon, when I claim that the thermometer reads 25 degrees C, I will be told "Not necessarily; that thermometer could be an illusion, or...." Is this a symptom of The Coming Dark Age? I'd better go and consult Nostradamus.....