I'm now absolutely certain that Asa picked the best possible name for our beloved Junk Science family.

The Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, who lived in the American Midwest in two equally miserable stays from 1882-4 and 1886-8, working (inter alia) as farmhand, store clerk, railroad labourer, itinerant lecturer and (slightly more congenially) parish church secretary, treated the street parades of veterans "with tiny flags in their hats and brass medals on their chests marching in step to the hundreds of penny whistles they are blowing" as if he were watching some curiously remote tribal ritual.

That's a passage from a 2003 Simon Schama article.