"How can anyone so intelligent

believe something like that?" the Senior Cat asked me.
A friend of his had sent me an e-mail with a link to a short video which he asked us both to watch. 
The Senior Cat refuses to have an e-mail account - and it is probably just as well. However it does mean that these things appear in my personal e-mail account and I am expected to pass them on. They irritate me - and they irritate the Senior Cat as well. 
We watch because the friend really is a friend. He has done a good many things for the Senior Cat - and the Senior Cat has always tried to reciprocate. We tolerate the oddities of this person - and there are many - because he is kind. He genuinely cares about his friends.
But, somewhere along the line, he has collected some very strange ideas. 
He grew up in another state and went to a school which has produced some people with other ideas which, although they differ from his, are also somewhat out of the ordinary. I can only think that perhaps there were teachers there who believed some of these things and passed on their ideas - perhaps to children who did not fully understand what was being said to them. Whatever happened the Senior Cat's friend has some very strange ideas and he appears to believe things we find unbelievable.
Yesterday's link was to a "levitating" car. The friend in question has, for years, been trying to develop an engine which runs by some magnetic device or other and "pulls energy from the air". I do not pretend to understand it - and neither does the Senior Cat. I doubt anyone does. The idea of a levitating car however would appeal to the friend. 
The Senior Cat and I duly watched the little video. We knew it had to be a prank. It was quite funny. The special effects were excellent. It was, cleverly, set in China with Chinese narration and characters on the screen and that added to the realism. You can (apparently) see this "levitating" car beetling around the streets of a major Chinese city. It's a "smart" car. It avoids collisions. You can speak to the GPS system and it takes you where you want to go. We are told it works on some sort of force between the vehicle and the natural minerals under the ground in this city. It is the stuff of dreams.
And, the Senior Cat's friend believes this is real. I know it is what he wants to believe. Many people would like to believe it. There will be no point in trying to convince the Senior Cat's friend. I could show him the material on Snopes and Wiki-answers and other sites. His response would be that all this is a conspiracy by the oil companies et.al. to prevent the development of the vehicle. Nothing will change his mind. 
I mentioned the video to someone else I know. She also knows the friend. She agreed. Nothing will change his mind. Then she said, with a rather wicked expression, "I wonder who taught the car to meditate so it could levitate."