Saturday, October 12, 2013

Our Wacky World—10/12/2013

How to make chumps out of Ken Ham zombies:
"My suggestion for how to respond to the 'Were you there?' question is to simply say 'Yes, I was'. This is likely to stump the stumper who will not expect it. If the person says that he/she does not believe you, you can respond, 'How do you know? Were you there?”
Mano Singham

Be sure to read the linked article for a sample conversation. BTW, Ken Ham wasn't there. I know because I was and I didn't see him anywhere.

Branding
I just love it when people dish dirt on con artists like Kevin Trudeau. Check out this "secret" invitation he sent out to who knows how many suckers:
"There has existed for many years an exclusive association, a secret society, of some of the world’s most famous and powerful people... I have some incredibly exciting news to share with you. The association has analyzed your profile (you’d be unbelievably flattered if you knew who these individuals were). Please forgive us, but we’ve discovered something special about you. It seems you, [sucker], possess several rare traits we are searching for. Because of these traits, which we’ll talk about later, you are eligible to become part of our exclusive club and to share our Greatest Kept Secrets, too, absolutely free!"
Cherry Teresa

Here's the post she mentioned at the beginning, describing how she got sucked into the Trudeau con in the first place and then figured her way out.

"Dark web hoodlums linked to the underground drugs bazaar Silk Road are preparing to launch revenge attacks on the FBI agents involved in the shutdown of the site.... Although the rabid activists have stopped short of calling for violent attacks on the FBI, they discussed carrying out a campaign of fear aimed at making Feds 'think twice' before targeting any anonymous drugs market in future."
The Register


It's official—Michelle Bachmann says these are the End Times:
"Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand... When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.”
Crooks & Liars

"A leading Saudi cleric warned women who drive cars could cause damage to their ovaries and pelvises and that they are at risk of having children born with 'clinical problems.'"
CNN


Oh the irony:
"Julian Robertson, a Wall Street moneyman who has agglomerated billions from his hedge-fund investments, has sold all of his stock in Apple Inc., not because he necessarily believes shoveling his spondulicks towards Cupertino is a bad bet, but because he has come to the conclusion that Steve Jobs was a 'really awful' person."
The Register

"'The officers posed as regular high school students and would ask other students for drugs. Twenty-two students were arrested - the majority of them are reported to be special needs students like the Snodgrass' son. Their son...is noticeably handicapped and has been diagnosed with autism as well as bipolar disorder, Tourettes, and several anxiety disorders. Their son's list of disabilities have many in the community wondering why he was targeted in this undercover drug operation."
Reason

"Michael Selleneit, shot their neighbor, Tony Pierce, after claiming that Pierce was 'telepathically raping' his wife."
Salt Lake Tribune

Something to remember
"A USA TODAY investigation finds that consumers buying Reumofan dietary supplements are trusting their lives to a company that uses fake addresses, lies about ingredients and may not even exist."
USA Today


Rupert Murdoch's foray into hi-tech education hits a snag:
"Newscorp’s entry into the education market, the Amplify tablet, didn’t receive a lot of user reviews before being sold to waiting school districts; that may have been a mistake... One school district in NC put their 1:1 program on hiatus just one month into the school year. They discovered that some 10% of the Amplify tablets issued to students were being returned with cracked screens or suffering from malfunctioning power supplies.

10% failure rate in the first month. Mean little punks, aren't they? Meanwhile, in Thailand...


A classic psychic fail from 1921:
"What Thomas Bradford planned was no less than an empirical demonstration of the afterlife. Not satisfied with waiting to die a natural death, he decided that committing suicide would allow him to make the needed arrangements to send a message from the other side afterward. To recruit a willing partner in this bold project, Bradford placed an ad in a local newspaper for “someone interested in the spiritualistic sciences.” There seems to be no record of what kind of response he received to this ad but he managed to find one person... Doran would later insist that she had responded to the ad on a whim."
JREF