Our Wacky World—1/1/2012

There's been a running debate over this for centuries but it's now official–Europeans can thank Columbus for bringing home syphilis. Meanwhile, I've been waiting for a good take-down to turn up before mentioning the passing of this colossal charlatan:

'Sathya Sai Baba died in April 2011 after illness due to respiratory and kidney problems. He was a “living god” for nearly forty million people worldwide, and his believers have credited him with resurrecting the dead and healing the sick. To his Hindu followers, Baba was an avatar, or an incarnation, of a god who performed miracles, including materializing jewelry and vibuthi (holy ash) out of thin air. With schools in more than thirty-three countries and educational programs in 166 countries, Baba became a global figure despite having left India only once (to visit Uganda in 1968). His supporters, including high-profile Indian politicians and American businessmen, proudly celebrated his mystical feats and humanitarian efforts. But his critics denounced him as a fraud for decades, claiming his feats were common magic tricks. Later, former followers accused him of child molestation, after which the U.S. government issued travel warnings to its citizens about the allegations.'

CSI

Late-nite TV has lost one of its bigget assholes:

"Kevin Trudeau, the king of too-good-to-be-true late-night TV scams, must pay $37.6 million in fines and restitution after he ignored an FTC order to stop making infomercials."

Thus ends a 13 year legal saga. (Business Insider)


Meanwhile, there's serious trouble in James Randi's world:

"Mystery has shrouded Alvarez’s true identity since he was arrested under the name “John Doe” at Randi’s Plantation home on Sept. 8. The legal predicament swirling around Alvarez also raised questions in skeptic circles and beyond: How much is known by Randi, whose very reputation as a truth-seeker may now be jeopardized?"

Rather disturbing. I'll withhold judgement until all the facts come out, if ever. (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)


Remember the 2008 election? The one with the nig-, uh, black guy? Boy were we all mesmerized:

"Obama is not just using subliminal messages, but textbook covert hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming techniques on audiences that are intentionally designed to sideline rational judgment and implant subconscious commands to think he is wonderful and elect him President. ...The polls are misleading because some of Obama’s commands are designed to be triggered only in the voting booth on November 4th.

✂. . .

This document contains over 60 pages of evidence and analysis proving Barack Obama’s use of a little-known and highly deceptive and manipulative form of “hack” hypnosis on millions of unaware Americans, and reveals what only a few psychologists and hypnosis/NLP experts know."

Paranoid navel gazing with lots of NLP woo to boot. Reads like a 66 page sleeping pill. The host site is run by a bunch of religious nutters who sell food to survivalists. And they have links to Kent Hovind videos. (Internet Grocer)

"...when the pagan lay leader at the Academy was looking for a suitable site for a worship area, he realized that there already was one — the circle of boulders that had been moved to the top of the hill during the erosion control project. All that needed to be added to the already existing site to turn it into a worship area was some flagstone to make a floor and a small altar in the center of the circle. So, no, the Academy’s outdoor worship area didn’t cost anything even close to $80,000. The only other significant expense has been the installation of security cameras, made necessary when some nice Christians decided to send a message by placing a large wooden cross at the site. (Anyone seeing a need for that religious respect training?)"

This Week In Christian Nationalism

'The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot length of linen cloth that bears a stylized picture of a bearded man. Legend holds the Shroud to be a burial cloth wrapped around the Biblical Jesus following his execution. This linen was allegedly flash-imprinted with an image of Jesus during his miraculous resurrection, presumably by an intense burst of energy released under such circumstances. The case for fraud has been strong since the 14th century, but enthusiasts insist on rolling that wheel ‘round again. According to news reports this week, Italian scientists used an infrared CO2 laser to scorch images onto cloth and ”conducted dozens of hours of tests with X-rays and ultraviolet lights” in an effort to prove that the image could be created by a burst of electromagnetic energy'

I really like the third comment. (eSkeptic)

"New York Attorney Eliott Dear was pulled over for going 84 in a 55 mph zone and given a ticket. He tried to fight the ticket by claiming that the officer had called him a “Jew kike.” He didn’t know that the entire situation was recorded by the dashboard video camera in the car and by an audio recorder on the officer’s uniform."

Dispatches From The Culture Wars

'Well, members of the Montcalm County Board of Commissioners wondered why the county needed a snow cone machine. They wanted to know the justification for its purchase. According to an article in The Daily News, “The Michigan Homeland Security Grant Program’s Allowable Cost Justification document, dated May 9, 2011, says the snow cone machines can make ice to prevent heat-related illnesses during emergencies, treat injuries and provide snow cones as an outreach at promotional events.”'

Turley's Blog

"Every evening I first pray for there to be power -- and then I pray that the grasshoppers will come." Stripped of their wings and fried with onions, grasshoppers are a delicacy in Uganda's central region -- gobbled up by the handful and washed down with beer in bars around Kampala. This time of year should be peak season for the insect catchers but Turyamugumya -- who uses bright lights to attract the flying insects before disorientating them with smoke and trapping them in disused oil drums -- says that business is tough. "The problem has been power, it is on and off. Like last night, the whole night it was off"

France 24

A Kentucky woman says special education teachers put her autistic 9-year-old son inside a net ball bag as punishment at his school. ...she was called to her son's elementary school on December 14, because he was being unruly. "I saw a big green bag with the drawstring pulled and the (teacher's) aide sitting next to him," Baker said. "As I approached the bag, I heard Christopher say, 'Who's out there?' "

CNN


Here's an example of a comment that's arguably better than the article itself:

"My observations are that most of these sprain and strain musculoskeletal pain patients seem to act as though they have won the lottery. They usually have an attorney by the time they get to my office, and often have begun a large series of chiropractic treatments with associated modalities in that office, like massage and electrical stimulation, etc. Since exceeding the 10,000 dollar threshold allows a lawsuit for big damages within the tort system, there seems an effort on behalf of the patient, chiropractor, and attorney to get past that threshold. The patient seems to get that permanent injury is more lucrative in settlements than temporary symptoms, and the distinct impression in most cases is that the patient is clinging tenaciously to their pain and refuses to let it go. Herein lies a fertile bed for 10,000 dollars of placebo treatments and a subsequent personal injury lawsuit. Some patients describe being referred to a high profile personal injury attorney by the towing service which hauled off their car, then the attorney refers them to one of several chiropractors who seem to work with the PI attorneys. 

After the 10,000 dollar PIP threshold is exceeded, the chiropractor seems often willing to opine serious permanent injury in legal proceedings, often bolstered by MRI studies, which are usually abnormal in some aspect, since a normal MRI of the spine or shoulder is unusual in most adults, and the persistence of subjective pain along with abnormal imaging is cited as evidence that permanent injury occurred due to the accident in question."

Science-based Medicine

Ho Ho Fuckin' Ho

Click here for one of the best rage comics I've ever seen

Our Wacky World—12/22/2011

And now for something really awful—Billy Idol singing "White Christmas"

Yep, that hella sucked. On another holiday note, here's some skateboard hooligans trashing stores. It's a good thing they got it all on HD video. Hope their families can afford lawyers.

Now, with all the Xmas cheer out of the way, here's this week's quote from Michelle Bachmann:

If she were president and a U.S. drone crashed in Iran, as one did last week, Bachmann said she would "seek to obtain that drone." However, she would not provide further details because "it's not prudent to say as a president what I would do ahead of time."

Not that any voters would want to know what she would do as president. (CNN)

As you may have already heard, Christopher Hitchens is now burning in hell. A few people have had the temerity to call out some of his "mistakes"

I first became aware of who Hitchens was when he suddenly popped up as a supporter of the war against terror Islam. All of the lionizing of him has fallen flat for me since. People who knew him before then (Randi being a good example) no doubt have a different perspective. He was a great wit and writer but also a classic example of a flawed human being. I'm assuming that his drinking was the cause of his cancer. At the risk of beating this to death, here's Glenn Greenwald's longer essay about his Iraq war nonsense. I'm just a bit sus of Richard Dawkins, too. Maybe it was was his hysterical screeching about Stephen J. Gould. Well, actually it was that that soured me.

"A video camera recorded what happened next as DeAngelo Mitchell told his brother he couldn't afford another strike against him and that he needed his brother to eat the cocaine he had in his possession. Mitchell then appears to hand off the cocaine, which was stuffed in his buttocks, to his brother." [includes the video]

Mail Online

"Hair is an extension of the nervous system, it can be correctly seen as exteriorized nerves, a type of highly evolved ‘feelers’ or ‘antennae’ that transmit vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex."

Skeptic blog

"A New York woman claims her home got more than it agreed to when they brought an adopted toy poodle into their home that was demon possessed. Olga Horvat, a certified Lumia Science Color Therapist and writer of a book Paranormal Pooch writes that her pure-bred dog Princess brought with her a string of bad luck on her home and family.

✂. . .

...she is selling energy shield pendants for both animals and humans at $197 for the human and $189 for the pet. The Energy Shield is a device that will support and balance your body’s own magnetic field, while protecting you from the negative energy generated by many aspects of our environment,’ her website describes the small metal objects which resemble tiny water-tight canisters for holding addresses or other slips of paper – with the addition of ‘Energy Shield’ written around it. In addition her pendants, she says that dogs with pointy, opposed to floppy ears, she has learned, are more prone to demon infiltration, ‘because the spirit can get in there easier,’ she explained."

Skeptic blog


Well gang, what could possibly go wrong with THIS idea?

"The laser, resembling a rifle and known as an SMU 100, can dazzle and incapacitate targets up to 500m away with a wall of light up to three metres squared. It costs £25,000 and has an infrared scope to spot looters in poor visibility. Looking at the intense beam causes a short-lived effect similar to staring at the sun, forcing the target to turn away."

Telegraph

I'm sure this damn thing will be declared safe as the people who will be using it will be the ones interpreting the safety data. And then DHS will be giving them to every police dept. in America who will in turn use them to break up lawful protests and bust people with an ounce of pot.

I have lasers. A bunch of them. I even have a one Watt laser. It sets thing on fire. These things are not toys; I singed my fingers focusing the 1W! Here in the US lasers are a radiological hazard regulated by the FDA. It should get interesting when every "eye doctor" in the country comes out against this.

'Two former participants in the CIA’s Mars visitation program of the early 1980’s have confirmed that U.S. President Barack H. Obama was enrolled in their Mars training class in 1980 and was among the young Americans from the program who they later encountered on the Martian surface after reaching Mars via “jump room.”'

Exopolitics


The Alabama immigration law trainwreck continues:

'A young man interviewed by Human Rights Watch said he was stopped and detained by police for not having a driver's license and was told by an officer, "You have no rights." One permanent resident was told by a major store employee her prescription could not be refilled because she is not a citizen.'

CNN

"Thanks to a $374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn't do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could not. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine also helped pay scientists to study whether squirting brewed coffee into someone's intestines can help treat pancreatic cancer (a $406,000 grant) and whether massage makes people with advanced cancer feel better ($1.25 million). The coffee enemas did not help. The massage did."

Chicago Tribune

"Even though [sperm donor] Johnson has been helping lesbian couples become pregnant, one of his main gubernatorial platforms in 2010 was running against gay marriage."

The Sideshow

"For most of this week the air in Beijing has been rated as “very unhealthy” and “hazardous” by the US Embassy air monitor, reputed as the most reliable indicator of pollution in the city. On Sunday it posted a new record: “beyond index”, as it registered 522 micrograms of particulate pollutants per cubic meter of air." [includes pictures of what little you can see—and comments about how the pictures must be fake]

France 24