Our Wacky World—8/31/2015

Oliver Sacks, M.D.  dead at 82:

'Dr. Sacks discomfited some readers, who maintained that he capitalized on his patients’ suffering to form handy parables. Tom Shakespeare, a British disability rights activist, called him “the man who mistook his patients for a literary career.”'

Yeah, right. They said the same sort of shit about Carl Sagan's celebrity. Just can’t please everybody. Titicut Follies, anyone?

Sacks filled a gap that no one else did. Having read most of his books I find the criticism misplaced except for the possibility of his having been fooled by some charlatans, specifically some patients considered “savants”.  (Washington Post)

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina the lies are still going strong:

"There was, of course, the purported chaos at the city’s two shelters of last resort: the Superdome and the Convention Center. The rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl at the convention center, dozens of killings at the Superdome, bodies piled up at both. 

"But by the end of September 2005, reporting by The Times-Picayune debunked many of these stories. In fact, officials only confirmed one killing at either site: Danny Brumfield, who was shot by police."

The Lens

Well fuck me

'One of the “rarest creatures in the world” has been spotted for only the third time ever off the coast of Papua New Guinea by a US biologist.’

We can photograph a rare animal in the wild but there’s not so much as a decent shot of Bigfoot, let alone any bones. What does this tell you? (Doubtful News)


The latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer has an apalling article by one of the “guerilla skeptics” saying that all the talk of a Wikipedia “conspiracy” is just a “myth.” Here’s an overview of what’s really happening there (among other things):

'...the only hard conclusion I can reach is rather simple: that Wikipedia as an active community is dying, and no one can stop it. Because it is based on lies. The content? Hell with that. It was just the "honeypot" to build the community.'

Wikipedia Sucks Badly


How to make creationism sound… better, through bad science:

'If I'm holding a rock in my hand and I educate you that it has always existed, since infinite time in the past, and it's going to be around for infinite time in the future, do I need to stoop and concoct some ridiculous fairytale as to "What created the rock ?” NO ! It has ALWAYS existed . . . Period ! When things don't have "beginnings" and "ends", there's no need to entertain juvenile thoughts of "Where did it all come from ?". 

[C- so far for the really bad grammar etc. I don't have time to insert "sic" everywhere.]

'IF . . . you understand this, please help us. We are in a new era of atheism and need to unite this world. We can't be presenting ourselves as buffoons to the religious world. We're asking you for a puny $ 10 to assist us in spreading this HISTORIC awakening. 3 months from now you certainly won't be hurting that you gave 10 dollars, so why hesitate ?’

Are you saying that this theoretical “rock” has existed forever? As in “before our solar system formed” and “before the super nova that created the transferric elements in our solar system?”

What happens when our sun becomes a red giant? (sorry, it has to run out of fusible material some time). Where will this planet be then? Forget the fucking rock…

The only thing remotely infinite here is the sheer vacuity of this pseudo-scientific ass-cheekery. When did YOU turn up, son?

Big Bang No No No

'Our “Conspira-Sea Cruise and Seminar-at-Sea” takes place right on our luxury cruise ship during our seven-day cruise, in conference rooms on the ship, and during our port calls in Mexico. During this incredible, mind-blowing, truth-telling, spiritually enriching event, we will do our best to uncover the truth about things conspiratorial, including: 

'GMOs, Monsanto, bee colony collapse, ecology, global warming, climate change, fracking, HIV, autism, big pharma, medical suppression, vaccinations, flouridation [sic], political corruption, government corruption, forbidden archeology, forbidden religion, Federal Reserve, truth about money, World Bank, IRS, strawman, property title, admiralty law, martial law, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, JFK, cover-ups, September 11, Star Wars agenda, nuclear plants, chemtrails, HAARP, crop circles, IRS, MK-Ultra, Fukashima [sic], NASA, NSA, Bilderbergs, sustainability, military industrial complex, pentagon [sic], Waco, Malaysia 370, Pan Am 103, TWA 800, Gulf Oil Spill, Halliburton, Obama, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Vatican, New World Order, false flags, Montauk, privacy, surveillance, Area 51, Dulce, Project Rainbow, Nazi Bell, Vrill, U.S.S. Eldridge, Iron Mountain, psyops, population mangement [sic], subliminal ads, Nibiru / Planet X, Cointel Pro, technology suppression, entity possession, electoral fraud, identity chips, 2nd amendment, and so much more.’

Did they forget anything? (Science Based Medicine)

'“You know there isn’t a single hamburger to be found on Taco Bell’s menu,” Clem asked our interviewer rhetorically while adding, “there is nothing more American than a hamburger. So I have to ask, what is about America that Taco Bell hates?” Would it kill them to put a nice steak and potato meal on their menu? I mean, steak and potatoes is American as fuck. But no, it’s all taco this and burrito that. It’s offensive to me…'

Hoax site.

Some good ones on Turlely's blog this month...

"Teixeira has been a regular critic of the mayor and officials in the City of Inglewood and has posted excerpts from city council video recordings. In an outrageous act, the city responded to the criticism by accusing him of infringing copyright laws in posting public meetings.”

Jonathan Turley

"There is another gruesome case of practicing medicine without a license in Florida where Mark D. Schreiber, 60, is accused of mutilating a patient’s penis while attempting to remove an implant from it. It probably should have tipped off the victim that something was not quite right when he was sent to meet Dr. Mark at a warehouse to pay him $1,000 cash to remove the implant.”

Jonathan Turley

"Florida Mom Jailed After She Allegedly Abandoned Kids In Running Car To Drink And Had 4-Year-Old Son Use Breathalyzer To Start Car”

Jonathan Turley

'Deaths related to the main pollutant...total 1.6 million a year, or 17 percent of China’s mortality level... “When I was last in Beijing, pollution was at the hazardous level: Every hour of exposure reduced my life expectancy by 20 minutes… It’s as if every man, woman and child smoked 1.5 cigarettes each hour.”'

Washington Post

"‘Fake’ Doctor Prescribed Ventura County Cancer Patient Bag of Dirt, Charged Her $2,000”

KTLA

Here’s the good “doctor”’s web site.

"I got a phone call on the phone telling me to bring the delivery back, saying that I couldn't do the delivery," Bradley said... "I asked him why I couldn't do it and he said because you're black and they don't want you at the house… I thought that Lowe's would take up for me."

IB Times

"At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal. Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.”

Guardian

Our Wacky World—8/3/2015

We came in peace for all Whitemankind:

'While the parade of Confederate flags were passing through [the 77% black] town, video captured what appeared to be a bottle of water being thrown at Oliver's truck. "My initial reaction was, 'What the hell?'" Oliver recalled, adding that he could not understand why he had not been welcomed into the community.’

Crooks & Liars


Jesus is down with oral sex because god made men horny:

“...most doctors advice [sic] women not to have vaginal intercourse for 6 to 8 weeks after giving birth. If a man were to try and have vaginal sex with his wife during this period it would be highly painful for her and it might cause complications with her healing process. But that does not mean a woman cannot meet her husband’s sexual needs in other ways during this time. God has given her the ability to manually or orally satisfy her husband in order to meet his sexual needs...”

Very small penis and an apparently bottomless ass. He digs the hole deeper in the (mostly very negative) comments so you might want to appall yourself even more by reading them:

"Look up Stockholm Syndrome, Sarah, because what you and the writer of this blog are advocating fall under that disorder. If there is a war against Christianity, you people are on the forefront of the destroying army; this swill turns more people against Christ."

Gosh, what would Jesus say? "Bloody WANKERS" (Biblical Gender Roles)

Have to pay for all that neon

"Rene Quinton did experiments on abandoned dogs in 1897. In one experiment he completely removed a dog’s blood and replaced it with diluted seawater. The dog developed an infection and fever, but recovered and by the eighth day had become exaggeratedly exuberant and ran about wildly. Five years later the dog was still alive and well. 

"Based on this experiment, some people have suggested sea water could be used as a substitute for blood transfusions, which would be a great boon for Jehovah’s Witnesses if it worked.”

Science Based Medicine


Looks like the free ride is over in the UK. Cameron speaks:

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.”

'It is hard to see how much unpopular speech would not pose a “risk of harassment, alarm, or distress.” I am not even sure what “creating a threat to the function of democracy” means. More importantly, speakers will not know what the government will view as violating such ill-defined terms.'

Jonathan Turley

"Ninety-five percent of women who have had abortions do not regret the decision to terminate their pregnancies… The conclusion comes after a three-year research period involving nearly 670 women of all social backgrounds"

Time

The great Kevin Trudeau payback is about to begin:

'The plan greenlighted by U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman calls for the Federal Trade Commission to send several rounds of checks to purchasers of the hit book The Weight Loss Cure 'They' Don’t Want You to Know About using an address list turned over after the government sued Trudeau for lying about the contents of the book in his infomercials.'

Doubtful News


What a fucking surprise:

"Arizona tested more than 87,000 welfare recipients in the three years after the program began. The total number of drug cheats caught was exactly one — a single positive result, which saved the state precisely $560. 

"The net savings reaped from withholding benefits for those who either tested positive or failed to complete a drug test was around $3,500, once the $500 cost of testing the 19 is factored in, according to one state agency report. The haul is especially unimpressive when you consider the $1.7 million in savings state officials promised when they unveiled the program.”

Be sure to read the rest of it—it just increases in stupidity. Of course, their big mistake was not being conservative enough. They’ll try harder next time. (Policy Mic)

"God bless Ms. Coulter and hopefully some churches can throw in a prayer or two that she never has to sniff a fart by some uncouth immigrants in a crowded New York subway car, and her soul be saved from perdition. Maybe, a hymn can be rendered immediately to have her finely toned legs walk only on the finest of Persian red carpets in rooms full of Italian chandeliers instead of what Dominique Lapierre endured in the Pilkhana slum in Calcutta, living amongst lepers, to write the City of Joy. May degenerate peasant cultures never intrude on her lifestyle as she eats some artisan bread made by ‘peasants’."

American Bazaar

Also:

"Can you please not criticize Ann Coulter by talking about her prominent Adam’s apple, or saying she looks like a man? It’s sexist, and it’s transphobic. It’s sexist because you’re criticizing a woman in the public sphere by insulting her appearance, when that shouldn’t be relevant. And it’s both sexist and transphobic to insult women by saying they look like men: it reinforces the rigid gender binary, and reinforces the gender policing of trans people. There are approximately 879,500,403 legitimately negative things you can say about Ann Coulter. There’s no need to resort to sexism and transphobia. Thanks."

Yeah. (Greta Christina)

An exciting new form of ancient Chinese reflexology!:

"Pimples between the brows indicate an overloaded liver. People with pimples between the brows experience chest tightness, heart irregularity. May also be caused by bangs/hair fringe, as filth and bacteria accumulation from dirty hair stains the skin.

"Pimples near the eyes and nose indicate poor liver function. You are probably very tired, sleep very little, and are under constant stress. Your diet lacks essential nutrients."

Bun Bun Makeup Tips

"At the Y-12 facility, in addition to the three fences the protestors had to cut through with wire-cutters, there were cameras and motion detectors. But we too easily forget that technology has to be maintained and watched to be effective. ...20 percent of the Y-12 cameras were not working on the night the activists broke in. Cameras and motion detectors that had been broken for months had gone unrepaired. A security guard was chatting rather than watching the feed from a camera that did work. And guards ignored the motion detectors, which were so often set off by local wildlife that they assumed all alarms were false positives.”

The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists

'A French court on Tuesday jailed a woman, known as "Madame Yoghurt" for three years for conning thousands into buying a kit to make "magic cheese" that they could sell back to French cosmetics companies for use in luxury beauty products.'

The Local

"Dr. Schwartz started working with sub-audible sounds that interact with the same frequencies of human, biological cells. Being able to reprogram our cellular biology has led to major advancements in some of today’s most challenging health conditions. As Dr. Schwartz’s own research progressed, he began exploring the healing effects of musical instruments and other audible frequencies on the human body. This profound work provided the foundation for Bioharmonic Technologies and served as the origin of the Tonal Alchemy Series. Bioharmonic Technologies is currently working on a wide variety of healing music projects. Each CD will provide the customer with a unique listening experience while creating a lasting, therapeutic effect on one’s physical, emotional, and spiritual body."

Bioharmonic Technolgies

"The Raelian Movement...made a formal request to the government of Portugal asking it to build an embassy for extraterrestrials in the country. This space would serve not only as a diplomatic mission but also for the landing of spacecrafts. In a total area of 4,000 square meters (approximately 43,056 square feet), there would still be an expansive lawn, swimming pool, meeting room and accommodation aimed to the rest of the intergalactic visitors."

Folha de S.Paulo

Our Wacky World—7/8/2015

"Donald Feathertone, creator of the iconic pink plastic flamingo that has decorated lawns for decades, died Monday… Featherstone died one day before National Pink Flamingo Day, a day created in his honor in 2007 by Dean Mazzarella, mayor of Leominster, Massachusetts, to honor the 50th anniversary of the plastic flamingo's creation in his town."

CNN


Safety last; so little time, so many ways to die:

'Russian Interior Ministry concerned about the increasing incidence of trauma and even death when trying to make a unique self. Each of these cases can be prevented. To this end, the Russian Interior Ministry memo created "Safe Self", designed to draw attention, first of all young people to this problem. We have tried to visualize, in the form of icons, represent the most traumatic cases the creation of self, thus to warn citizens against undue risk for a memorable picture. 

'When a person is trying to take a picture of himself - he scattered attention, he lost his balance, he does not look around and did not feel in danger. Do Self, making sure that you are in a safe place and your life is not in danger!'

MVD

The high resolution pdf of the entire brochure is here.

Hillary Rodham, rebel

"Despite the fact that Dinesh D’souza is a convicted felon and a serial liar, he is still something of a folk hero on the far right... To his followers, whether or not his attacks against Democratic political leaders are accurate or not is largely irrelevant… However, by circulating a doctored photo of Hillary Clinton, Dinesh D’Souza has merely confirmed what was already obvious to all but the cable news networks and his most ardent right-wing supporters. Dinesh D’Souza lacks intellectual honesty and critical discernment, and he doesn’t have an ounce of integrity."

Politics USA

“...Gavrilo Princip. Most of the world view him as a fanatic who triggered World War I with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. However, Serbia just honored him with a statue — commemorated by President Tomislav Nikolic, who heralded Princip as a freedom fighter and hero.”

Jonathan Turley


What dyslexia looks like:

"A graphic designer, ...he designed a typeface that is intentionally difficult to read. Because it slows down reading time, it's meant to simulate how it feels to read with dyslexia."

CNN

"Some 553 patients were given the unnecessary cancer treatments to 553 patients before Fata was arrested in 2013. He was accused of $35 million in Medicare fraud. He pleaded guilty in the fall to fraud, money laundering and conspiracy charges.”

Jonathan Turley


Now for the really fun stuff. Let’s start off with the latest twist in the Duggar Family Molestation Saga™:

"A non-Duggar family molestation victim is preparing to file a civil suit against Josh Duggar, sources tell In Touch magazine exclusively in the new issue on newsstands today. 

"The shocking development means that Josh and his parents Jim Bob and Michelle could be forced to give depositions and testify about Josh’s molestation scandal. The Duggars likely will have to answer every question as they will not be able to invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because the criminal statute of limitations has expired.”

Emphasis added. Let the amnesia begin. (In Touch Weekly)


Religiosity vs. secularism—the latest poll results and the reasons for the changes in America:

"Just a generation ago, if you had religious doubts but lived in small-town America, you had no one to talk to. You had to keep your ideas to yourself and stay in the closet.

"Now, thanks to the Internet, you can connect with virtual communities of secularists all over the globe. In this day of instant information, any bizarre claim by religion [or anything else] can be instantly Googled. In many cases, the sites debunking religious claims will be in the top few hits (e.g, Scientology). Anyone with just a bit of curiosity or doubt, especially among the younger generations, can find things in just a few seconds that I never encountered in years of reading and searching when I was young and questioning my family’s Presbyterian faith.

No shit. Add to that paranormal bullshit artists like von Däniken and Berlitz as well. Astrology and the Bermuda Triangle. Debunkers were in short supply back then. (Skeptic)

Your Safety Last—click for story

Ex-Baltimore cop sees the light:

“...sitting in the van and watching people just living their lives, I started to see that these were just people. The main difference is that as a white kid growing up in my neighborhood, I was never going to get arrested for playing basketball in the street. I was never going to get patted down because I was standing on a street corner. There was no chance I was going to get a criminal record early on for basically being a kid. 

"When you watch people for hours and hours like that, you start to see the big picture. You start to see the cycle of how these kids get put in the system at a young age, often for doing nothing wrong, and how that limits their options, which pushes them into selling drugs or other crime. You start to see that they never had a chance."

Washington Post


Boy does this refrain sound familiar:

'But what if your dog or cat doesn’t tolerate BARF World pet food? Not to worry. Some may exhibit brief symptoms of “detox,” like diarrhea and vomiting, but this is normal, especially when converting from a “processed diet.”

'BARF World also sells a lot of other CAM stuff for your pet, such as Kefir and “Eastern Medicine” herbal supplement formulas. For example, “G.I Tract Herbal Formula for Dogs,” “harmonizes the stomach,” and, as an added bonus, “helps maintain contentment during travel” for dogs that have digestion issues, as well as those who “don’t want to travel in a vehicle.” You can even get a consultation with a “holistic” vet.'

Science-based Medicine

Another day, another doomed victim of cancer + quacks:

'In addition, I did 4-5 coffee enemas per day. The vegetable juices act like magnets, pulling toxins out of the cells and into the bloodstream. The body's entire blood stream filters through the liver once every three minutes. With so many juices, my liver was capturing and managing a lot of toxins. The coffee enemas force the liver to open up and release its' accumulated toxins. I learned pretty quickly that the coffee enemas were a good thing. If I went too long without one, I experienced abdominal pain or headaches. [like caffeine withdrawal?] My Gerson doctor said the pain was caused by toxins in my bloodstream pushing on nerve endings. Once I took a "coffee break", the pain went away. (We began using the term "coffee break" consistently in our home after we learned that our two and four year old daughters were running around the neighborhood telling everyone that mommy was in the house doing coffee enemas)’

Yeah, that was a long quote but MAN (*facepalm*). She’s doing the infamous “Gerson protocol”, among other things.

'In the alternative world [aka the "not real world"], doctors realize it's not stable cancer cells that kill people, it's proliferative, active cancer cells that kill. So, if I could keep the disease stable, I could live a very long life.’

Curing Myeloma

Eddie Van Halen on oral cancer:

“I used metal picks -- they’re brass and copper -- which I always held in my mouth, in the exact place where I got the tongue cancer,” he says. “Plus, I basically live in a recording studio that’s filled with electromagnetic energy. So that’s one theory. I mean, I was smoking and doing a lot of drugs and a lot of everything. But at the same time, my lungs are totally clear. This is just my own theory, but the doctors say it’s possible.”

Right. (Billboard)