Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Let's review what we call believers in various conspiracy theories . . .

• A Truther believes that 9/11 was carried out at the behest of the U.S. government.

• A Birther believes that Barack Hussein Obama is not a "natural born Citizen" as required in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 1.

• A Tenther believes that the Tenth Amendment of the same Constitution should be obeyed.

• A Deather believes that Osama bin Laden, whose body supposedly is lying on the ocean floor, did not die.

Notice a pattern? It is that a believer in a conspiracy theory must be describable as a <word>+er, where the <word> ends in "-th." So now we have a hypothesis. Moreover, this is a scientific hypothesis, because of its predictive power:

All we need do is find words that end in "-th," and we have a new conspiracy we can expect to see in the next few years.

Let's start thumbing through our reverse-spelling dictionaries, in the HT section.

Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

Note from KBJ: I'll play. A Healther is someone who believes that there is a moral right, and should be a legal right, to government-funded health care. An Earther is someone who believes that human beings are capable of affecting the Earth's climate. A Wealther is someone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. A Keither is someone who believes that Keith is God.