Our Wacky World—11/20/2014

Headline O' The Week: "Authorities Have No Idea How Family Bought LSD-Contaminated Beef At Walmart"

Shorter Richard Dawkins—"Help, help, I'm being repressed":

“I feel muzzled, and a lot of other people do as well,” [Dawkins] continued. “There is a climate of bullying, a climate of intransigent thought police which is highly influential in the sense that it suppresses people like me.”

Dispatches From The Culture Wars


$6.75 million in judgement and settlements to family fingered by "facilitated communication":

'...a controversial method known as "facilitated communication," had been widely debunked in the last two decades. Nevertheless, Oakland County [prosecutors] pressed on...even as news reports showed the method was unreliable. 

'Ian...was interrogated for two hours by West Bloomfield police who told him they had videotape of his father assaulting his sister. Police never had such a tape and the claim was a lie that a psychologist would later testify left the boy traumatized. Jurors did watch a video showing Ian's interrogation, in which the boy, then 13, doubled over in tears.'

Only took seven years. [Detroit Free Press]


Glenn Beck "reveals" that he had a mystery "illness" that made him "crazy"; was "cured" by "chiropractic neurologist":

"Most harrowingly, Beck said that at one point he took a traumatic brain injury test at a hospital in New York City and scored in the bottom 10 percent. Doctors told him he would have between 5 and 10 years before he would no longer be able to function. He then began to search for a successor at TheBlaze."

So I guess now he'll be shilling for Ted Carrick as well as gold and silver dealers. [Crooks & Liars]

'An anti-gay US pastor has warned his flock against drinking Starbucks coffee, claiming it is flavoured with the "semen of sodomites… They're putting it into the blends of coffees that they sell".

IBTimes


Worried about reinforcing stereotypes online? Don't call yourself the "Food Babe" and give brainless advice about, say, travel:

"The air you are breathing on an airplane is recycled from directly outside of your window. That means you are breathing everything that the airplanes gives off and is flying through. The air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this! The nitrogen may affect the times and dosages of medications, make you feel bloated and cause your ankles and joints swell."

Jesus christ, I'm breathing 78% nitrogen right now! No wonder I feel like shit. [NeuroLogica]

"I have autism-induced breast cancer (AIBC). While I am not absolutely certain that the 1.9 centimeter lump that grew in my left breast is the result of the stress of raising two autistic children, all indications point in that direction. There is virtually no cancer in my family, I eat organically, I exercise, I’m a good weight. OK, so I live in the toxic dump known as New Jersey, but that is the only other major risk factor. No, the drop in cortisol levels whenever one kid’s school calls or the other kid has a public “flare up” is enough for the cancer to take root."

 Stress causes a drop in cortisol levels? [Respectful Insolence]


Oxygen helps anti-oxidants?

"Oxygen is a miracle, an anti aging miracle! Oxygen therapy can help to jump start the body’s antioxidant defenses and ability to fight free radicals, boost metabolism, and counteract the hypoxia (low oxygen level) that leads to slower cell activity and oxidative stress. Research has shown that oxygen therapy can help to improve the efficiency of hemoglobin in transporting oxygen around the body, improve blood flow by helping to keep cell membranes flexible, and detoxify and fight infection by destroying bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi that thrive in low-oxygen environments and don’t have the antioxidant resources to fight back. 

"However, none of these benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been clinically proven."

Science Based Medicine

'Ultimately, the claim involving a 666 on Monster energy drink cans relies on the incorrect assumption the three claw marks comprising the logo represent three iterations of the Hebrew symbol "Vav," resulting in a Hebrew equivalent of "666." But "666" in Hebrew would be written "Samech Resh Tav Vav," or "six hundred sixty-six.'

The author of Revelation did not know about place notation. It hadn't been invented yet. [Snopes]

Our Wacky World—11/2/2014

I've almost entirely overlooked all the fear-mongering and disinformation from the current ebola hysteria—Michelle Bachman came close to winning the coveted MFAEECIA™ award but there were so many also-rans that she didn't stand out enough from the crowd. The governor of Maine did say that 13% of ebola victims die without any symptoms… But this charming piece was too much fun to overlook:

"My therapy to curtail and cure the Ebola virus infection is simple and inexpensive besides taking all preventive measures to come in contact. It is a precursor of a vaccine with production of auto-antibodies within the body of the infected patients. The therapy is called "auto urine therapy" (AUT). That is the infected person drinking his or her own urine..

"As soon as the disease is suspected or diagnosed, before waiting for any therapy: Start drinking all the urine that comes out the first day no matter what the condition of the patient is. If the patient is averse or has social stigma regarding this therapy, use a naso-gastric feeding tube to feed the urine. Collect the urine in a clean glass and feed the urine as soon as it is evacuated from the bladder through the urethra. Do not change the taste or save it to drink later."

Bolen Report

'Stefanie Russell...claims radiation from wi-fi internet and mobile phone signals give her headaches and nausea which make it impossible for her to be near some types of technology… “I’ve not been diagnosed by a doctor but my GP surgery is aware of my condition. Every time I am near wi-fi or mobile phone signals I feel ill… I know a 20-year-old girl who has to spend 23 hours a day in the dark after electro-sensitivity caused her to become light sensitive.”'

The Argus


The growing need for contiguous dirt:

'Jewish burial law is based in part on a passage in Genesis "For dust you are -- and to dust you shall return." Jewish law stipulates that the dead be buried separately on a layer of dust and earth. So while there is no restriction on multilevel burial, each body must rest on soil. To comply with religious law, the towers of the vertical cemetery structures have pipes filled with dirt inside their columns so that each layer is still technically connected to the ground.'

CNN

Forget roofies, you got yourself raped:

'In an odd video posted Monday, the prominent conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute reached out to young women and advised them to be less worried about drug-facilitated date rape. "Most commonly, victims of drug-facilitated sexual assault are severely intoxicated, often from their own volition"'

TPM

Because women have to protect men from their own urges. As always.

'The coloring book...features cartoon children performing Satanic rituals and drawing pentragrams in school, along with a word search for words like "acceptance" and "friends" and a maze to reach the Necronmicon, a fabled occult spellbook. The children in the book wear Satanic symbols on their shirts and spread anti-bullying and religious tolerance messages.'

Orlando Sentinel

"The Rossen Reports team set up appointments with several psychics, then rented a brand-new home in a New Jersey suburb where no one has ever lived, and rigged it with a dozen hidden cameras." [hilarity ensues]

Today


How many forms of acupuncture are there?

"Really. Not a joke. Watch a video but not, I repeat NOT, with liquids in your mouth."

Science Based Medicine


Jack The Ripper "positively identified"—FAIL:

"...the scientist who carried out the DNA analysis has apparently made a fundamental error that fatally undermines his case against Kosminski – and once again throws open the debate over who the identity of the Ripper."

Doubtful News


Disprovable fear-mongering by the FBI (includes "safety tips to protect your mobile device"):

'Powerful stories, right? Just imagine if the data on those phones were locked up and unavailable to law enforcement? Well, imagine-no-more, because people have been looking into these stories, and Comey's fear mongering doesn't check out. First up, The Intercept looked into these cases and their results can be summed up in the URL slug which includes "FBI Dude Dumb Dumb."'

Techdirt

FAIL

RatCave Book Club—10/19/2014

It's been a while. I've read dozens of books. Where to begin? Things have gotten a bit moldy...

Penicillin: Triumph And Tragedy—Robert Bud (2007)

"...an American physician made the telling comment, reported by sociologists in 1966, 'Nowadays you give a shot of penicillin for pneumonia and cure the patient but that's no credit to the doctor; all credit goes to the drug. An old doctor wouldn't have had so many patients; he would have sat at the patient's bedside until the fever broke.' Within a few lines he had captured the shift away from the world of the caring old-style physician to a new style drug-centered system. At the extreme, doctors were beginning to seem more or less interchangeable agencies by which canny customers obtained a desired medicine."

The advent of antibiotics during WWII led in the 1950s to a boom the likes of which pharmaceutical manufacturers could never have dreamed of. By the end of that decade there were attempts to reign in the gold rush mentality driving the business. But consumers knew what they wanted: more miracle drugs. Today earnings are better than ever, thanks to deregulation that allowed direct marketing to patients.

Thanks to the miracle of antibiotics old standards of hygiene slipped, making dependence inevitable. While some fixated on their horror of sexual promiscuity, the decline in quality of care in hospitals was far more real.

By the mid-Sixties antibiotics were being used to fatten farm animals (what could possibly go wrong?). Attempts to deal with that danger met with failure in the face of powerful lobbies and insufficient data. Today the rhetoric from industry is as strident as ever. Check out this expert opinion:

"About a third of livestock antibiotics used today are not used at all in human medicine."

Wow, I feel so much better knowing that "about" two-thirds of livestock antibiotics are used in human medicine. About the same portion of NRA members who favor tougher gun control laws. As it turns out MSRAs have moved from livestock to humans. What are these people smoking?

All in all a comprehensive, balanced history. The book, I mean. Next.

⌁

The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story Of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army—Stephan Talty (2009)

An entertaining account of Napoléon's great disaster (Waterloo? 'Twas but a scratch). Talty's twist in retelling such an perennial tale is to pay close attention to the effects of infectious disease on la Grande Armée. One gets the impression that Napoléon might have scared the Tsar into submission before he could muster more troops, of which Russia had an enormous supply, if only it hadn't been for Rickettsia, Shigella et al.

I've been told he would have never succeeded under any realistic circumstances. May well be. As it happens it was a death march. Marchons, marchons.

Bonus points for the decent maps. I hate it when there are no maps.

⌁

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession—Allison Hoover Bartlett (2010)

John Charles Gilkey is a man with a problem. No, make that several problems. He likes old books, valuable old books. He enjoys owning them. He tells himself that he deserves to own them, that the people he stole them from deserved to be robbed by him. And possessing them makes him feel like he's somebody. A man of if not wealth then certainly taste. He steals books to feel like the man that he will never be.

The author enters Gilkey's world and almost immediately finds herself fascinated and appalled. She becomes part of her own story as she listens to Gilkey tell his, in good time. She watches him case stores that he's stolen from before and talks to dealers who have been burned by him. And she tries to fathom this complex but all too simple man.

Here is a video of the author on BookTV.

There is a list of all my Book Club posts here.