Columbia

I received spam from a new place, assuring me that there were CIA documents that Hitler had survived and lived another ten years.  The National Enquirer and similar rags reported a hundred different stories of how he was still out there throughout my childhood and well beyond. There were also alien and bigfoot reports as well, and it was a good education to see how people could take marginal evidence - anything that looked unusual, really - and assure you of a particular interpretation.  Well, maybe not an education, because a lot of people grew up with the same weeklies at the supermarket but somehow still at least half-believe them.  I was with some of my old Jesus Freak friends this week because of a funeral, and my goodness, they still believe rumors about everything.  As with other personality characteristics, credulousness seems to be installed at a stable level in all of us, regardless of what education or logic classes we are exposed to.  Sumus quod sumus.  

This particular website was even more worrisome than usual, though.  It assured me that Hitler had lived those ten years in "Columbia." Whether that was the university or the "gem of the ocean" it didn't say.