Our Wacky World—1/23/2011

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Our Wacky World—1/11/2012

After a long hiatus the Denialsim blog is back in action. Check it out for some superior anti-denialism.

It looks like the US military are taking "non-lethal" weapons seriously <roll eyes>. And you know that your local police dept. will need one of each, too. Because people smoking pot are so violent.

"According to local lore, Christ didn't commit any miracles while residing in Shingō, but instead was just an extremely pleasant fellow to be around. Additionally, the Takenouchi documents further detailed humanity's extraterrestrial origins, the history of Atlantis, and how the Sawaguchi family of Shingō are actually the descendants of Christ."

io9

I love that verb, "commit". Commit miracles. Along similarly cracked lines, are you ready for...the great Japanese earthquake/nuke disaster conspiracy?

"This is a massive report. If you have troubles understanding it, just look at THIS picture of the vanished reactor, THIS picture of the destroyed facility and THIS picture, of Magna BSP's camera. Then scroll down to the photos of the NON EXISTENT quake damage and seismic charts which prove there was no 9.0 and therefore the very real tsunami could not have been natural. The fact that what happened in Japan did not occur naturally has been very well documented by a skilled investigator, who spent hundreds of hours getting to the bottom of this story."

Note the various fun topics in the sidebar. Another suitable case for treatment. (Jim Stone, Freelance Journalist)

Guess who said this?

"A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby.  However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable.  If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life.  This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl's sister...

 ✂. . .

 It is better for a girl to marry at such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband's house, rather than her father's home.  Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.
... girl prisoners who are virgins must be raped before execution, to prevent them from entering heaven.  A Guard conducts the rape the night before execution.  The next day, a marriage certificate is issued by a mullah, who sends it to the girl's family, along with a box of chocolates as a wedding gift."

Australian Ethniko Hellenes

Just another asshole from a long line of assholes. The site appears to be concerned with the enemies of Hellenistic (Greek) paganism or something like that. There's quite a bit of amusing stuff there.

Along similar lines:

Ceci n'est pas un avertissement

"But it seems now that even this little necessary allowance for vision is offensive to the pious men of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. According to Daily Mail, the suggestion that women should cover their eyes too in public came after a pious member of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice fell to the wiles of a woman with "sexy eyes" as he walked innocently down a street. According to the story, when the man's eyes strayed in the direction of alluring female eyes, the husband took offense. A fight followed in which the man with straying eyes was stabbed twice in the hand."

Of course it's all the woman's fault. (Digital Journal) But let use not forget the children:

"A teenage boy underwent "unimaginable physical torture" before being drowned by his sister and her partner because they believed he was a sorcerer who was practising witchcraft... After being denied sleep and food and having being repeatedly attacked, Kristy admitted to being a sorcerer in the hope that the violence would stop. He finally begged to be allowed to die."

Guardian

Officially, the White House says Obama never went to Mars. “Only if you count watching Marvin the Martian,” Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, tells Danger Room. But that’s exactly what a secret chrononaut wants you to believe.

Wired

"The Republican party in Iowa reminds me of a patient with a terminal disease (Romneyitis) desperately turning to alternative medacine. They’ve cycled through homeopathy (Bachmann), naturopathy (Cain), chelation (Perry) and aromatherapy (Paul). Now they’ve hit the final frontier—urotheraphy. I’m glad that I’ve never been so desperately ill that I’ve contemplated drinking my own piss, but I can imagine what it might feel like if I consider the level of desperation needed to vote for Rick Santorum."

Balloon Juice

They've run out of not-Romneys and it's only January. Meanwhile, the GOP in New Hampshire has gone completely insane:

Liberated

"All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived," is the bill's one sentence.

Here's a line from the Magna Carta:

"No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the death of any other than her husband."

Concord Monitor

"This egregiously obscene amount was a reduction of 50 percent from the $11.4 million he trousered in 2009, because he missed performance targets. MIssed [sic] performance targets? Like what, not running the company into the ground? Kodak lost $442 million in 2008 and $210 million in 2009 against revenues of $9.42 billion and $7.6 billion respectively. How can you be that strong in a revenue sense, know your core market is in decline and still make losses because you don't cut costs enough?"

The Register


Trouble in Scientology-land:

Ceci n'est pas un avertissement

A rare expression of internal dissent has broken out in the world of Scientology, with one of its most senior figures sending a mass email to 12,000 fellow members complaining that the self-styled church has become obsessed with fundraising and has amassed unused reserves of over $1bn (£640m). ...the Church of Scientology dismissed the email, saying: "Ms Cook's opinions reflect a small, ignorant and unenlightened view of the world today. They are not shared by the thousands of Scientologists who are overjoyed by our 27 new churches and what they mean to the communities they serve."

Guardian

"A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test."

The punchline? He's now working as a prison guard. (ABC)

"...she had a habit of not bringing enough of the special rolls of paper used to chronicle the proceedings. At Chaviano’s trial, she again failed to capture the trial on paper, according to a courts spokeswoman. Afterward, Cowart erased the data from the stenography machine’s memory disc, but not before transferring it to her computer. But then a virus struck her computer, wiping out all her notes."

Miami Herald

"In that room, Truong will admit to suffocating her son. She'll be arrested and she'll spend almost three years awaiting trial for murder. But a videotape that police made of that interrogation...will eventually set her free. That videotape provides a rare look into the interrogation room, and the potential power it gives detectives to coerce false confessions."

NPR

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