moonflake

We've Moved

2006-07-20T16:29:00.000+02:00

That's it, blogspot is driving me up the freaking wall. Party's moved to Wordpress, people.

Yes, Mr Angry, you were right.

Midweek Cuckoo: Wiolawa

2006-07-20T09:39:00.000+02:00

Since the Bad Astronomer posted about Wiolawa last week, i've been just itching to introduce her to my cuckoo collection.

Barbara Crouse-Brown aka Wio aka Wiola aka Wiolawa (depending on which forum she's ranting on) would make David Icke proud. She is a member if the "lizard aliens disguised as humans are running our government in league with the nazis and illuminati and templars" brigade, usually characterized by people who dropped acid while masturbating to reruns of "V". Her little spin on it is that somewhere along the line she learned to use Adobe Photoshop, and it has become her little helper in identifying the lizard men inside their fleshy suits, through a process she calls "variance analysis" and the rest of the world calls "messing around with those cool PShop filters".

The Bad Astonomer sent her a photo of himself and asked what her method could tell her about him. These were her findings. Seems Phil is one "kreepy" "AS_tronomer".

She also sees very interesting things in rock formations, but there must be something wrong with my eyes because they just look like piles of rocks to me. And sometimes she takes high definition images and zooms into them, filtering as she goes, until she discovers marvelous images of lizards riding mopeds in the rings of saturn. At least, i think that's what she says they are, sometimes it's a little difficult to understand what she's on about.

Wiolawa's name was given to her by an indian (feathers, not dots), and according to her it means 'spirit song'. Or it could be moon song. Or it may have something to do with owls. Or walls. It's all very confusing in Wiolaland, and trying to read her spittle-flecked rantings makes my eyes hurt. I think it's got something to do with the utterly random capitalization, which even switches mid-word (and why is it that all crazy people seem to buy keyboards with faulty capslocks?).

Wiolawa likes to comment on posts about her, so i really hope she finds this one. She tends to make really interesting replies, like this:

find the comments interesting and idiotic.. taken out of context.. continually.. no appreciation of science, truth, human suffering. nasa lies.. jpl lies.. what the photos are actually showing or the processing used"variance analysis" etc.. ofcourse it is easier to disparage then to say perhaps..
such is the way on this planet EArth.. how many learn that the name EArth came from EA.. a genesis scientist.. is that taught in schools of geography on EArth? yet.. NO!!!

Now isn't that lucid?

Wiolawa also seems to blame everything that goes wrong in her life on the lizards. Take this example from her bio:

all of us in his class had to present a paper on one of the planetary systems.. and discussion.. i chose the formation of moons and the sound and alignment of the moons of Saturn and exactly how they were placed and created..- the rest of the students loved the paper and presentation.. but MALIN gave me back my paper without a grade or even looking at me!@. that said exactly whose side he was on.. the LIZARDS!).

As usual though, the creepy side of kookdom rears its ugly head. The reptiles have not been kind to Wiolawa, and will do almost anything to stop her in her quest to expose them. In the last few years many people close to her have died: her husband, her niece, her nephew, the guy who taught her website construction (three gunshot wounds), and the guy who helped resurrect her website after it was shut down (driven off the road). The lizards told her they did it to slow her down. But I have my own theories. Read her website and tell me that you don't think she's just crazy enough to have a split personality that is offing people to reinforce her belief that there really is a conspiracy against her. Add to that her admission that she is rated as a sharpshooter, and that she teaches children... and you have one spine-chilling mixture.

ah ho WIOLAWA

Has he even read the bill?

2006-07-18T16:31:00.000+02:00

Bush has declared that he will veto HR810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, after it passed the House of Representatives at 238 votes to 194.

So what does HR810 say that has Bush so determined to use his power to veto? It allows for stem cell research to be performed on embryos that were created in fertility clinics and were meant for in vitro fertilization but were in excess of the need, that will otherwise be disposed of, and that have been donated with written consent and without any form of remuneration.

That seems perfectly sensible, so what are some of the objections? House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex) calls it a "vote to fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation." He obviously didn't read the bill because it doesn't provide for any kind of funding from the taxpayer. Nor can something be dismembered when it has not yet developed any members, but that's besides the point. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill) obviously didn't read it either: "For the first time in our national history, taxpayers' dollars are going to be spent for the killing of innocent human life." Again, no provision for funding is specified. Some other people tried to make comparisons with slavery and the Tuskegee experiments, and i'm not even going to dignify their stupidity by quoting it.

But Bush takes the cake with this whopper:

This bill would take us across a critical ethical line by creating new incentives for the ongoing destruction of emerging human life.

He really must not have read the bill, because it specifies that only those embryos that would otherwise be destroyed may be used! The embryos are not going to be any less disposed of whether they're used for the research or not, retard.

It makes me sick that there isn't an IQ test before an election.

Pathetic Pete Rides Again

2006-07-18T16:21:00.000+02:00

Salon has an interview with Pete, the blogger who caused outright hilarity on the intarweb recently with his belief that an Onion post on abortion was the real deal.

A few choice facts from the article:

Pete is 45. I was really surprised at this one - surely by that age you are meant to have gained a smidgen of wisdom?
Pete struggled with drugs and alcohol after moving to the US when he was 19. This brought him to Christ. It also brought him to a critically low density of braincells, evidently.
According to Pete: "I'm kind of used to people laughing at me." No surprises there.

Apparently he's made a few more posts trying to defend himself, so i guess he'll just keep digging til he gets to China. I couldn't be bothered to go and look at them. I've seen the quality of his stupidity, i doubt anything has changed.

Middle East Mayhem

2006-07-18T15:50:00.000+02:00

I've never really commented on the Middle East and the ongoing turmoil there, but yesterday a friend made a blog post that I have to support.

My friend is a South African who is living in Isreal and serving in the army. Like most people serving with him, he's doing it because he has to, because the only alternatives are jail or being unemployable in yet another country. He is no more keen to be kidnapped or blown up than anyone else on the street, civilian or not. But he's caught up in the middle of the only logical result of an attempt to reason with fundamentalists, and for that reason I am afraid for him.

Yes, you read me right, I agree that Israel has made the right choice, purely because it was the only choice they had. They have been trying to do the impossible - to reason with religious fundamentalists and try to make them obey laws other than those of Holy Writ. This is impossible, by the very definition of what makes someone a fundamentalist: the insistence that the holy word is the last word in any argument.

So yes, the inevitable happened. The Lebanese government has ignored all attempts to negotiate peace, and continued to associate themselves with Hezbollah, whose only mandate is the murder of Israelis and the destruction of Israel. And you cannot negotiate with Hezbollah, because they are insane. I see no difference between standing up and saying 'we will go to war because god commands it' and saying 'we will go to war because the space aliens command it'. You've got to be equally deluded to make either of those statements, and good luck reasoning with someone who can make them.

So Hezbollah crossed the line, as anyone should have expected they would, and now Israel must answer force with force. You have to fight at the level of your opponent - sticking to Queensbury rules in a streetfight will only get you killed. I don't see it as Israel making the right choice, or the moral choice, or the ethical choice. I see them making the only choice.

On days like this, I allow myself to wonder what the world would have been like without religion...

Kent Hovind Arrested

2006-07-14T18:17:00.000+02:00

Evangelist Kent Hovind has been arrested on 58 federal charges including all manner of fraud and tax evasion. For those of you who don't know him, Kent is a Young Earth Creationist who created his own dinosaur theme park to teach children that god made the dinosaurs and the rest of the earth in six days. He calls himself Dr. Dino, although Dr. Dunno might be more appropriate.

Hovind has a history of behaving as though man's law does not apply to him. His dino land was shut down in April because Kent believes zoning laws are against his religion. Here's some more detail on his past brushes with the law, and more detail on his current arrest. Here's an entire site dedicated to an analysis of his various stupidities.

So why didn't I save this for a Midweek Cuckoo? Because i don't believe Kent is crazy. I'm not even entirely sure he's a christian or a creationist. I think he just likes money a lot, and religion is a good excuse to claim tax exemption. I think he's a crook, not a kook.

Midweek Cuckoo: Nancy Lieder

2006-07-12T16:48:00.000+02:00

The Zeta Reticulans are talking to Nancy Lieder. They tell her all sorts of wonderful secrets about astronomy, human history and impending doom. They share these things with her because she is special, and because they want to give humans a chance to mend their ways, avoid disaster and move toward a great galactic civilization.

That is, if you believe Nancy. But if you believe her, you also have to believe that the Zeta Reticulans, or Zetans, are either liars, pranksters, or failures at astronomy. Because nothing they predict ever comes true, and nothing they tell Nancy about the universe ever bears any resemblance to reality.

Take their 2003 prediction for example: Nancy was adamant that Planet X was zipping towards our solar system, followed by a tail of meteors. It would pass near Earth on May 15, causing the planet's magnetic pole to flip over, creating massive, worldwide disaster a la The Core. Naturally since we're all here the Zetans were just having a laugh at Nancy's expense.

Or how about in 1995 when Nancy claimed the Zetans had assured her there was no such thing as Comet Hale-Bopp, that what astronomers had seen was just a star and would get no closer. Those Heaven's Gate guys just can't catch a break, can they - first people are trying to tell them there's no spaceship behind the comet, then Nancy comes out claiming there is no comet. Nancy predicted that the date on which the comet was to make its closest approach would be a non-event. It certainly wasn't a non-event for 39 people in San Diego. And the rest of the world saw a rather nice comet in the night sky. Those nutty Zetans!

Then again, I hate to be the one to suggest it but Nancy may not be the butt of an intergalactic running gag - she may just be crazy. Go look at her website and judge for yourself. This page is a prime example - you can see 'kook' rubber stamped all over it. I had to stop reading after the first few lines, in fear that my brain might implode.

I'll wrap up with a quote from the Chosen Conduit of the Zeta Reticulan Empire:

So, I had a visitation from Pumpkin heads (the big guys, see Zeta Types in Worlds) and they told me that when I went into my office I'd find the MUFON mags turned face down, not up as usual, and that would be my sign. So I went in, all excited, and they were face up. Got hysterical. Another visitation, and they said "this is why we don't give signs on demand! If they go wrong, or are perceived wrong, hysterics, etc." So I understood, not on demand.

Nah, she can't be crazy. It's those naughty Zetans and their fickle, fickle nature.

Look at the Silly Monkey!

2006-07-11T20:32:00.000+02:00

Our illustrious leader, Thabo Mbeki, has lashed out at South Africans who are sceptical about whether our chance to host the FIFA World Cup in 2010 is going to be a success. People are quoting the issue with our stadiums or lack thereof, the pathetic state of our public transport network, and the high level of violent crime that can only make tourists a target in 2010. What does Mbeki have to say about this?

There are some people in the country, within South Africa, who think they've got a permanent job to paint a negative image of South Africa. I suspect they are people who essentially were not happy that apartheid came to an end and that South Africa became a democratic country. They've never accepted the transition to a democratic society. They retain the hope that the country will fail, but they're the ones who are going to fail.

I'm likening this to the Chewbacca defense, so don't mistake me for a racist when i say "look at the silly monkey". Understand that I mean this is a classic example of distraction tactics, the practice of shouting "apartheid" or "racist" every time someone points out that the government is fucking up. When it looks like people might be noticing how corrupt the government is, they order an investigation into corruption during apartheid. When someone points out to the Health minister that african herbs aren't a cure for AIDS, she calls them racist. This is par for the course around here. It's the easy out.

Our ministers like to ignore the fact that blacks, coloured and indians are also voicing their disatisfaction with the way things are. More and more you are hearing black people say that while apartheid was awful and they are happy it is over, the crime is worse now than it ever was under the apartheid government. After his mother-in-law was killed for her cell phone, coloured comedian and TV personality Soli Philander told journalists he wanted the Safety and Security minister to know that the worst week of his life was not under the apartheid government, but under this one. You all remember our Safety and Security minister, right? He's the one who said that South Africans must either stop 'whinging' about the crime rate or leave the country.

I expect it from his cronies, but to hear this from our president's lips only goes to show that this fatuous attitude goes all the way to the top. I've said it before, and i'll say it again: moron.

Like Kryptonite to Stupid

2006-07-11T14:22:00.000+02:00

You gotta love the internet. When you're stupid, people find out, and then they tell other people, and the next thing you know the entire intertron is trying to tell you in graphic detail just how stupid you are. Overnight, you are infamous.

Take this guy, for example. He's a pro-lifer who took an Onion article on abortion so seriously that he blogged about it, trashing the ficticious character and her opinion. Honestly. He didn't get that it was all made up, and that the 'author' doesn't exist. What a wonderful testament to pro-lifer thought processes.

So what does he do when the entire english speaking web tells him he fucked up? He tries to spin doctor it in this equally hilarious follow up. He ends several paragraphs of frantic back-peddling with this definition of 'satire':

witty language used to convey insults or scorn; "he used sarcasm to upset his opponent"

Isn't it funny that a) it's not an entirely relevant definition, b) that isn't even the full definition provided, and c) the identical definition is given for sarcasm, irony and caustic remark. The average internet user would conclude from point C that WordNet is probably not the best source of a definition. They would perhaps have taken the more relevant American Heritage Dictionary definition, also provided by dictionary.com: "A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit". Not this guy, which only goes to show that his skills at separating the wheat from the chaff are seriously lacking. As one person aptly commented: 'you fail at the internet'.

And then he wraps it up with a flourish:

Either way, I think I did a good job of turning the “satire” right back at them, don’t you?

Um, no. Asshat.

Midweek Cuckoo: Robert Gaylon Ross Sr and Cecil Ross

2006-07-06T18:28:00.000+02:00

The place of honour this fine Thursday* is held by Robert Gaylon Ross, Sr, an expert on history, politics and government secrets. Or at least he thinks he is. Ross is an example of that most kooky of species, the paranoid conspiracy theorist. When no one would publish his book on the secret Elite who run the world (I wonder why?), he set up his own organization, Ross International Enterprises (RIE), and published it himself. He now offers his publishing services to a handful of equally nutty authors.

Ross makes all the standard claims of a secret Illuminati-esque society pulling all the strings. His first novel, The Elite Don't Dare Let Us Tell The People, apparently "unleashes alarming new evidence of the Elite's monumental crimes against humanity". If they don't dare let us tell the people, how exactly did they let the book get published? Another book of his, The Elite Serial Killers of Lincoln, JFK, RFK & MLK, claims to tell "who the shooters were, where they were standing when they fired their shots, who organized the events, and who wrote the checks to pay the killers of these four fine men." Ross seems to be so well informed, one wonders if he isn't a member of the Elite himself.

All of this would be fairly run-of-the-mill kookiness if it weren't for the second half of RIE's mandate - alternative physics. Ross apparently supports the alternative physics theories of Cecil Ross, and relates them to his own theories of an Elite conspiracy (don't ask how, i'm not going to read his books to find out). There's no indication of whether Cecil is a relation, but I have my own theories, which I will expound on in a moment.

Cecil Ross's alternative physics is fairly standard stuff from those who wish to believe that they have a solid grasp of theoretical and experimental physics, but don't. As usual he claims to have revolutionised, nay replaced, the theories of Maxwell, Newton, Einstein and a host of particle physicists of the modern era. Here are a few snippets - judge for yourself:

Waves of light only appear to be in motion. The apparent motion of light is the result of an influence conducted from one atom to another. This proposition requires that the "space" between stars is not void of matter; it consists of a medium of matter, which Aristotle called ether.

I believe that the single, most important quantity that physicists and astronomers have not been able to prove, beyond any doubt, is the speed of light beyond our atmosphere, or the speeds of radar waves over great distances, which have been assumed to be the universal standard for long-distance measurements.

I cannot define it; yet, I am led to think that light is nothing more than a visible influence that helps us to "feel" something without touching it.

...spiral galaxies are actually evolving "solar systems", appearing as our own maturing solar system must have appeared long ago.

Cecil has also ventured into the genre of science fiction (some might say that is the only genre he has ventured into), with a book published by RIE entitled Friends of the Ezekians. The author adds the following note to the synopsis:

This book contains no explicit or otherwise undesirable language, and no sexual behavior, either explicit or implied. It does contain three brief incidents of inoffensive violence. Although it is not intended for preteen aged children, it should not, in my opinion, be detrimental to their character if they choose to read it.

Robert Gaylen Ross Sr adds his 2c:

The above Author's Note is his way of telling the reader that this is not an offensive piece of work. My personal opinion is that this book can be read and enjoyed by anyone who can read. The intent is not to be politically correct, but is simply that the author's moral and ethical base is so straight that he finds the typical novel offensive because of the heavy dependency on violence and sex to tell the stories. It's about time that authors and publishers produce novels for anyone who enjoys reading. This one is a WINNER.

And this was when I realised that Cecil Ross and Robert Gaylen Ross Sr are not related. They are one and the same man. The proof is right here:

From Robert Gaylen Ross Sr's bio: "Born in Big Lake, Texas, he holds a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A & M University. While active in engineering, he was a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Texas, and a National Certified Manufacturing Engineer."

Cecil Ross: "I am an engineer. "

I rest my case.

*Owing to the fact that I had Monday and Tuesday off work (Happy 4th of July!) and that I have no internet connection at home and hence no ability to go freak fishing, your wednesday weirdo comes to you one day late this week.

The Devil's Dictionary

2006-07-05T17:57:00.000+02:00

I recently purchased The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. It is a satirical dictionary that was begun as a newspaper serialization in 1881 and continued erratically until 1906. It was first published in a single book under the title The Cynic's Word Book, because (according to Bierce) one of the papers in which it was originally published was a Christian paper and found the use of 'Devil' in the title to be offensive. Considering that they did not find the use of 'nigger' in one of the definitions to be offensive, it seems the hypocrisy of Christians has not changed much in the last 100 years.

I highly recommend owning this book, or at least having a browse of the online version, available for free. It's for definitions like this that the man has my respect:

HOMEOPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.

Burning Issue

2006-07-05T17:43:00.000+02:00

Recently Americans had their panties in a twist again about the flag desecration amendment being put before parliament... again. More or less every two years the issue is raised, is passed by the House of Representatives, and is thrown down by the Senate. As it rightly should be, of course, because it's utterly stupid to propose an amendment to the constitution that is in direct contravention of another (in this case, the First Amendment).

But what I find funny about the whole thing is this: the amendment proposes banning the descration of the flag, which includes a lot of things but in the public eye is mostly focused on the act of burning the flag. Other methods of desecrating the flag include when it is torn, or when it is allowed to fall and touch the ground. When a flag is desecrated it must be disposed of in an approved manner. What is the approved manner of disposing of such flags, according to the US Federal Flag Code?

Burning them.

Mothers who want their daughters to die

2006-07-01T13:41:00.000+02:00

The CDC is recommending a widespread program of immunizing females against the human papilomavirus (HPV), an oncogenic, sexually transmitted virus known to be the chief cause of cervical cancer. They advise immunizing girls as young as nine.

Interestingly, a number of mothers are saying they will fight the decision. Why? They believe that immunizing a child against a sexually transmitted disease will make that child think it's okay to go have sex right away. That kind of perverted thinking says a lot more about the mind of the mother than the morals of the daughter, if you ask me. Never mind that it's utterly illogical. Being vaccinated against polio doesn't make kids want to eat shit, so why would being vaccinated against HPV make them want to have sex?

I can only conclude that these mothers must hate their daughters and want them to die. Their argument makes no sense - even if their daughters are saving themselves for marriage, there's no guarantee they won't be raped and infected. If you love your daughters and want to give them a chance against getting cancer later in life, get realistic and protect them now.

Am I the only person thinking the same stupid arguments are going to get trotted out if we find a vaccine against HIV?

Atheism is OK

2006-06-30T18:12:00.000+02:00

Pharyngula has expounded in this post and this follow up post on the nature of atheism and whether we should try to avoid associating evolution with atheism in an effort to make evolution seem more attractive. It sort of morphed into a discussion about what happens when a scientist thinks about religion scientifically.

I agree with PZ on all his points. When a scientist looks at any religion, and demands all the same levels of evidence, consistency and cogency from it as he does for anything from physics to biology, he cannot avoid the conclusion that it is a hypothesis on a level with the idea of a 'luminiferous ether' - not only useless but false. Such a person who has come to that conclusion is an atheist by definition. You cannot evaluate religion scientifically without reaching the conclusion that it simply doesn't reflect the real world.

But no one says that as a scientists you have to consider religion scientifically. Scientists do compartmentalise their lives quite well, in that they are still swayed by instinct and emotion and bias in their personal lives. There's no reason that a scientist cannot switch off her logical, curious, enquiring mind to go to church. But you have to understand that this is what she has to do in order to accept religion.

In fact, it is the religious who continue to seek science's stamp of approval, trying to make ideas like creationism seem scientific by inventing Intelligent Design, or trying to explain how Moses could have parted the Red Sea. The only result of focusing the scientific lens onto religion is that you will either show how poor your 'science' is, or you will show how weak your hypothesis is. You are not going to convince anyone but the gullible, and they probably believe you already.

And what's wrong with associating something with atheism anyway? Atheists are moral, secular humanists for the most part, not slavering maniacs ready to tear your throat out at a moment's notice simply because they do not have the ten commandments to tell them not to. According to US prison statistics, you're far more likely to be a criminal if you're religious, so I don't get why the religious seem to think they're better people than atheists. They aren't. Judging by their consideration of religion, atheists are mostly people who see the world in a rational way, who think before they make a leap of faith, who consider an argument on its merits rather than on their own emotional bias, and who believe something when they've seen the evidence. I would much rather have such a person with their finger on the Big Red Button than someone who believes without question that God is on his side and wants him to protect the believers at any cost. I would much rather that person wanted to see evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction before declaring war, rather than taking it on faith that they would be there.

Theists need to accept the fact that theirs is an illogical choice not supported by evidence, fact, or any relation to the physical world as we know it. And that's okay, as long as you're not trying to pretend otherwise. Many people require the belief that someone is looking out for them, just to get from one day to the next. But many people do not, and if someone is a functional whole person without the need for religion, then the religious shouldn't be offended by that.

To quote PZ:

If we insist on treating people like four-year-olds who mustn't be told that Santa isn't real, what we get is people with the wisdom and attention spans and screwy ideas about how the world works of four-year-olds.

So, do you believe in Santa?

Midweek Cuckoo: W. John Martin

2006-06-28T11:58:00.000+02:00

Dr. W. John Martin, MD, PhD, seemed to have everything a medical researcher could want. He was during the course of his career the chief of the Immunology/Molecular Pathology Unit at the LAC/USC (University of California) Medical Center, a professor of pathology at the USC School of Medicine, the director of the Viral Oncology Branch of the FDA's Bureau of Biologics and worked at the National Cancer Institute. So it was probably with some degree of trust that the medical community accepted his announcement in the 1980s that he had discovered a kind of virus that was undetectable to the human immune system, a "stealth virus" of sorts. He even claimed to have a method of detecting it. He received oodles of funding from the CAA, a non-profit organization funding reasearch into Chronic Fatigue and Immune Disfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), an affliction that Martin thought may be caused by these "stealth viruses".

But then things began to fall apart. Those who have read previous midweek cuckoos will recognize one of the first signs of kookdom when I tell you that Martin claimed stealth viruses were the cause of not only CFIDS but also fibromyalgia, attention deficit disorder, autism, Lyme's Disease, Gulf War Syndrome, and a host of other psychiatric and oncogeneric diseases. That was warning sign number one, the universal causative, second only to universal cure. Naturally, alternauts around the world picked up on the stealth virus and never let go. Then in 1992 the CAA funded an investigation into Martin's research, and thereafter cut his funding. Only later did the reason come out - Martin had claimed that he had a potential therapy, called Epione, that was already in stage 2 of federal testing. The CAA's investigation proved warranted when they discovered this was a blatant lie. With no published results after two years, and proof of his dishonesty, funding was cut. Martin later claimed it was due to a 'misunderstanding'.

But things got worse for Martin. In 1995 he was escorted off USC campus by security, and while he is still listed as a tenured professor, the university will only say that he is on 'indefinite leave', even a decade after the event. In 2002, after a patient complained to the State of California Health and Human Services Agency, the agency suspended Martin's license to conduct clinical studies, and ordered him to cease all laboratory testing immediately. And yet there is no evidence that he ceased anything. In fact, Martin published a few papers even after his license was suspended, leaving me wondering how legal the studies were. Reading them makes me suspect that a) the reviewers should be fired and b) Martin has slipped further and further into kookoo land. Here's a few snippets from the abstract of a paper from last year:

Several observations made during the course of studies on stealth-adapted viruses are explainable by a pervasive, energy-rich, ether environment… ACE pigments convert conventional forms of physical energies into a biological cell healing energy… ACE pigments may also capture etheric energy… also seen with several natural products, including a homeopathic formulation.

Need more? In the same paper, he had this to say in support of the existence of an ether:

Based on rather simple assumptions, 19th century physicists unsuccessfully tried to detenct an effect of an ether on the transmission of light.

What's he referring to? The Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, of course! You know, the one that proved to scientists around the world that the luminiferous ether did not exist, and set them on the correct path of realising that light could propogate in a vacuum? The experiment that set Michelson on the path to his nobel prize? Martin tries to imply that they were bumbling idiots and would have found the ether had they only been better scientists.

So where is Dr. Martin now? His website, www.ccid.org seems to be shut down. A blog search reveals mutliple blogs affiliated to him, none of which seem to be up and running (stealthviruses.blogspot.com, wjohnmartin.blogspot.com, drwjohnmartin.blogspot.com). But what revealed the most was that a search online for the address of his Center for Complex Infectious Diseases (CCID) at 3328 Stevens Ave, Rosemead California reveals hits for two establishments - the CCID, and also Ingleside Hospital. But Ingleside also pops up with another address, also in Rosemead, CA. But compare the two addresses (Stephens Ave vs Hellman Ave) on googlemaps: they are one block apart. And Ingleside Hospital, or more accuractely City of Angels Medical Center (Ingleside Campus), states its grounds as covering 5 acres of Rosemead. So it seems that the CCID is in fact part of Ingleside Hospital.

Why is this interesting? Ingleside is a phyciatric facility. I wonder if Dr. Martin's an in-patient?

(Thanks again to Brian for the tip-off)

Lunch and the Intartron

2006-06-27T12:53:00.000+02:00

Yesterday i was so busy i didn't eat lunch, which i feel is about the right kind of busy. Today is a lunch day at work, though (tuesdays and thursdays lunch is provided) so i'm taking quick break to eat lunch and blog. This post may be somewhat incoherent, as i'm just taking down thoughts while reading my usual selection of favorite sites.

Bad Astronomy has a link to a cute optical illusion. Nice.

Ugh, the news is just too much to mention. Over the last few days south africans have been murdered left, right and center, and yet our minister of safety and security still will not apologise for saying that south africans who winge about crime can get out of his country. It makes me so mad i can't even begin to comment.

Skepchick has a couple of funny articles about church building without a permit and some guy who claims he can read your baby's palms while it's still in the womb. Kooks and the religious, always good for a laugh.

Ah, Pharyngula is scathing as always. People who call themselves educated and don't know the name of Nyarlathotep deserve our scorn.

Hmm, maybe more later. Time to get back to work.

A Walk on the Science Side

2006-06-23T17:38:00.000+02:00

Some sciencish headlines for you:

Space Shuttle to Launch Despite Urge for No-Go - Even though the NASA engineers are strongly pushing for a cancellation of next month's shuttle launch, NASA head honcho Dr. Michael Griffin has given the go-ahead. When the crew are trapped in orbit, necessitating a multi-million dollar rescue operation, and the shuttle program is killed forever, we all know where the finger will be pointing.
Stem Cells Repair Paralysis in Mice - embryonic stem cells have successfully been used to repair the spinal cords of paralyzed mice, allowing them to take steps after only six months. This could mean a world of difference to people with spinal cord injuries or motor neuron disease (what Stephen Hawking has). But the religious right want all research into this field stopped, because the creation of a stem cell line involves the use of gasp embryos or bigger gasp therepeutic cloning. Is this the Dark Ages, or what?
Test Tube Meat on the Way - Dutch researchers are working on a method to grow meat in a lab. Henk Haagsman (Professor of Meat Sciences - how cool is that?) and his colleagues believe that within the next few years we may be eating in vitro mince. A few meat cells need to be harvested to start the cell line, but that can be done without any actual harm to the animal, so i wonder if people who are vegetarian for moral reasons will consider in vitro meat to be okay? Is it kosher? Halaal? Either way, i'll eat it.
Gravity is the Strongest Force - well, at least according to DaveScot, who appears to have revolutionised physics over at Uncommon Dissent. This is the kind of science IDiots do.

Have a good weekend.

Midweek Cuckoo: Dr Andrew Wakefield

2006-06-21T18:54:00.000+02:00

In 1998 a paper appeared in premier medical journal The Lancet, claiming to have shown a connection between the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. What followed was a noted drop in children receiving the vaccine (from 92.5% in 1995 to 78.9% in 2003), and the authors becoming instant heros of the anti-vaccination movement.

But not for long. By 2004, all but one of the 13 original authors had disowned the results, and the editor of The Lancet had apologized for publishing the paper. The last man standing was Dr Andrew Wakefield, and he is the reason the other 12 eventually withdrew their support of the paper. They had discovered that while Wakefield had lead them to believe that the patients who were selected for the study were done so at random, this was not entirely true. In fact, not only had they not been randomly selected as stated in the paper, some of the patients had even been supplied to Dr Wakefield by the lawyers of families who were specifically looking for medical support for pending law suits. Dr Wakefield also forgot to mention he was being paid a lot of money by said lawyers and families for results that were to their liking. Today, Dr Wakefield is facing charges of serious professional misconduct, initiated by the General Medical Council of Britain.

The good doctor still supports his findings, though. He has appeared all over the US in the intervening years, speaking at anti-vaccination conferences and continuing to tell people that MMR will give their children autism. According to the Millenium Project:

[Wakefield] recently spoke (to a standing ovation) at a conference run by America’s leading anti-vaccination organisation, the National Vaccine Information Center, about his ongoing research. I watched his speech live on the Internet but I had to turn it off when he said that one of the subjects in his current project was not autistic - yet. He included the child in the autistic group because the child had been vaccinated and was therefore probably going to be autistic soon. This is supposed to be science.

Even if Wakefield is just a money-grubbing slimeball who thinks the Hypocratic Oath is some guy swearing in greek, his 'findings' have become an article of faith to certain people who can only be called insane. The disowning of his work by every other person involved, the revelation that he was paid to get the exact results he got, the fact that children are by virtue of their natural growth vaccinated at around the same age as they develop noticeable-enough symptoms to be diagnosed with autism... none of this matters to them. They believe it, therefore it is true.

But how do the crazies justify the link? Well, they blame it on something called thimerosal, a preservative used in some vaccines which contains a compound of mercury. In altworld, compounds or alloys of mercury (like the fillings in your teeth) magically lose their chemical binding on contact with the human body, releasing massive amounts (sometimes more than was contained in the original alloy!) of mercury into your system. And we all know that mercury poisoning is bad for you. But here's the interesting bit: while some vaccines use thimerosal (which is safe, in case you didn't notice the sarcasm), MMR doesn't. It never has. And it cannot contain a preservative, because it is a live vaccine; preservatives would kill it and make it useless. But facts rarely stand in the way of people like this.

Here are some other lies that people tell about vaccines:

Measles, Polio and other vaccinatable diseases are actually harmless. Lie. Just ask any one of the several people who recently died in Namibia after the polio outbreak there, precisely because they were born before widespread vaccination began in that country 15 years ago. Oh, wait, you can't. Because they're dead.
Measles, Polio and other vaccinatable diseases are extinct. Lie. Just because these have been all but wiped out (by widespread vaccination you'll note) in the western world, that doesn't mean they aren't still prevalent in africa and asia. And they're just a plane-ride and a handshake away from you. See point above re Namibia.
DTP causes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Lie. Studies have shown no connection, and there was no sudden rise in SIDS after the introduction of DTP. In fact, it has dropped slightly since.
The rubella vaccine is made with aborted foetuses. Lie. From the Millenium Project again: "One of the materials used in the manufacture of rubella vaccines is a cell line derived from a legal abortion carried out in 1962. This is a tissue culture, very many generations removed from its source, and could only be considered aborted foetal tissue in the minds of people with, well, no minds at all."
Vaccines cause Shaken Baby Syndrome. Lie. Shaking babies causes shaken baby syndrome.

Crazy. Just crazy. Here's more if you can stomach it.

The Man Who Should Have Been President

2006-06-21T14:01:00.000+02:00

In a recent interview with Al Gore, the following exchange was recorded:

OLBERMANN: People who don‘t believe in global warming have said everything to you and about you and about the science in this, except to say global—there‘s no globe. The earth is flat, we all know that.
GORE: Well, they‘re in the—the people who still say that global warming isn‘t real are actually in the same boat with the flat earth society. They get together and party on Saturday nights with the folks that believe the moon landing was in a movie lot in Arizona.

Now that man has a quick wit. Why, oh why, was this man elected instead:

Bush: I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

Book Review: Flim-Flam!

2006-06-20T16:11:00.000+02:00

I have recently finished reading James Randi's Flim-Flam!, and believe me, there's a reason they call him James "The Amazing" Randi.

For those not in the know, Randi retired from a successful career as a professional magician and turned his considerable skill as a trickster to investigating the paranormal. He's been a member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) since the 70s, and started his own organization, the James Randi Education Foundation (JREF), all with the intent and purpose of delving into the truth of psychics, spiritualists, faith healers and other woo-woo artists. Flim-Flam! explores some of Randi's early work in the field, ousting dowsers, card-readers, table-tippers, spoon-benders and the like. There are two things that make Randi's approach unique: he doesn't pull his punches, and he's not afraid to put his money where is mouth is. At the time of publishing (early 80s) Randi was offering $10,000 to any person who could prove, under conditions agreed to in advance by both parties, that they could perform some kind of psychic or paranormal act. Today, that figure stands at a whopping $1 million, guaranteed. There have been many takers, but so far not a single person has been able to perform under even the most basic of scientific conditions, even those they agreed to themselves.

During the course of the book, Randi describes several examples of psychics and divulges the methods they used to dupe even so-called 'paranormal investigators'. Uri Geller features prominently, and is in fact the subject of a later book by Randi, The Truth About Uri Geller. Geller, it turns out, is not just some Isreali bumpkin who discovered he had a talent for bending spoons - he's a professional magician who is incapable of performing his 'psychic' tricks under conditions that do not allow him to use prestidigitation, and refuses to perform when other magicians like Randi are in the audience. Randi also discovers that so-called 'scientific' investigators that 'proved' Geller's psychic abilities failed to disclose simple facts in their reports, such as that his magician's assistants were allowed to wander in and out of the supposedly secure room in which he was doing his 'readings'. Randi strips away the nonsense and reveals the truth beneath - most paranormal investigators will see what they want to see, and get the results they want to get, regardless of how obvious the trickery is. And sometimes, the trickery is really very obvious to anyone who bothers to actually look.

On the flip side of the coin are those sad individuals who are not tricksters but who honestly believe that they possess some paranormal ability. Near the end of the book, Randi describes a challenge where four dowsers were subjected to a very simple test: three pipes following different paths were laid under a square of ground. Each dowser was given three tests, where a random pipe was opened to allow water to flow through, and the dowser was required to mark out the path of the water on the ground. As a double-blind test, not only did the dowsers not know which pipes were being used for which run, neither did Randi. Beforehand, to be fair, Randi requested that each dowser walk the field to first eliminate any natural water sources that might interfere with the test (and to make sure none could use this as an excuse later). All the dowsers agreed that they could perform under these conditions. The results were somewhat predictable: not one of the four dowsers came anywhere near the correct path on any of their runs, and they could not even agree on the position or existence of natural water sources in the area. They failed spectacularly, and were to the man completely shocked at their own failure. Unfortunately, instead of accepting defeat with grace, they soon began to make up all manner of excuses for why they could not perform, despite saying beforehand that the conditions were acceptable.

This book is a great read for anyone interested in finding out how the tricksters fool the masses, or themselves, and how even the most basic of restrictions (like cutting the deck of cards before allowing a card-sharp to perform their 'psychic' reading) can foil them utterly.

South Africans: Tough

2006-06-19T16:23:00.000+02:00

At the weekend a 21-year-old Zimbabwean national took an air waitress hostage on an SAA flight, holding a syringe to her neck and demanding he be let into the cockpit or she would die. An off-duty SAA pilot and two other passengers promptly tackled him, bore him to the ground, and beat him senseless. Then they handcuffed him and tied him to a seat, before turning back to land at Cape Town International. One thing you can say for living in a society as violent as South Africa - we don't scare easy.

Last week I read an article about an Irish couple who had been cycling through Africa raising AIDS awareness. They'd been through many of the poorest countries on earth, including war-torn Sudan, on their six-month trek, but it wasn't until they hit South Africa that their experience soured. They took a night off and went to the Suncoast Casino in Durban to see a movie, parking their rental car in a 'secure' parking lot. They were gone for only a short while, discovering that there was nothing showing they wanted to see and returning to the car immediately. They discovered the car had been broken into, and among the valuables stolen were their digital camera, the woman's handbag with all the usual contents as well as all the jewelry they'd purchased from various countries on the trip, and a removable hard drive with over 25,000 photos from the last six months. They say they'll return to Africa, but never to South Africa. And my first thought is, who is stupid enough to leave a camera, a handbag and a harddrive in a car? Here, we're pleasantly surprised when we get back to our car and it's still there, never mind anything you may have left inside it. I suppose we're just desensitized, but it's almost inconceivable for me to leave something of any value in my car, regardless of how safe the area appears to be. It must be nice to live in a country where you can do something like that and expect your things to be there when you return. Here, you're on your guard all the time or you may as well be walking around with a sign saying 'victim'.

Speaking of how tough life can be here, I always chuckle when people talk about the danger posed by Killer Africanized Honeybees. In SA, we have Killer Africanized Honeybees, only we just call them 'bees'. They kill people too, but only those stupid enough to think that a sangoma chanting some mumbo-jumbo is going to be enough to protect you from them when you're trying to steal their hive. Or those who crash their car into the structure that is currently housing a hive. Or try to remove them from pipes without professional assistance.

I think the next FIFA world cup is going to be interesting. I can't wait to see English soccer hooligans meet Sowetan soccer hooligans, or soccer hooligans from Mitchell's plain. I think we have a thing or two to teach them about violence, plus the tourists are going to be easy pickings for the local 'entrepreneurs'. It's going to be hilarious.

Midweek Cuckoo: Ear Candling

2006-06-14T15:00:00.000+02:00

Since my last couple of kooks have been of a serious nature, I thought today we should look at a brand of kookiness that no one in their right mind could possibly take seriously: the practice of ear candling, or ear coning (also called Audio Thermo Auricular Therapy by people who use terms like 'Home Executive').

In short, ear candling is the process of placing a hollow tube of (usually) unbleached muslin that has been soaked in (usually) beeswax into your ear, and lighting the exposed end. This is meant to create a gentle vacuum which sucks the cerumin (that's doctor for 'earwax') out your ear. It's claimed to be useful in treating everything from excessive ear wax to auricular zona (herpes of the ear, basically) to vertigo. It also clears your brain, nerves, emotions, sinuses and lymph nodes, because in the altmed version of human physiology the ear is just an open hole to the rest of your head, everything is connected by tubes, and any way all this stuff will osmose through your eardrum.

In the United States, the sale of ear candles marked as a treatment of any kind is banned. Locally, i don't believe we have any such ruling - you can buy ear candles online and ear candling is offered at several spas around the country (see for example Ingwenya African Retreat). All make claims of effective treatment.

So what's the scoop on ear candling anyway? Does it work? So far the unanimous decision among those who've bothered to actually test it is an emphatic no. After a session of ear candling, the practitioner will often slice open the candle and proudly display a lot of earwax-looking gunk to the patient. This, they claim, is earwax mixed with dead skin cells and other impurities, magically sucked out of your ear. Actual sampling and analysis of the gunk shows it to be exactly what any thinking person would expect - beeswax and ash. As for the 'vacuum' produced, measurement has shown that the ear candles produce no vacuum at all. In fact, according to Lisa Dryer, M.D.:

...the negative pressure needed to pull wax from the canal would have to be so powerful that it would rupture the eardrum in the process.

Sounds like fun, and indeed a number of people have discovered that the only measurable outcome of ear candling is infection, burns, and ruptured eardrums. This is why the FDA bans this kind of thing, people.

At least one site is putting this theory to the only use it deserves: they market the Butt Candle™, the gentler alternative to laxatives, enemas and anti-flatulence pills. Read the procedure for use if you need a good laugh.

(For more info on ear candling, see the Straight Dope, JREF and Skepdic entries.)

Judge This

2006-06-13T14:40:00.000+02:00

Judge John E. Jones III, who shot to relative fame during the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial, is still receiving death threats from good Christians and being branded a traitor by the Republicans, six months after the trial has reached a close.

For those not familiar with the back story, Judge Jones ruled against the Dover School District in a case that was expected to allow the Pennsylvania science curriculum to include a statement that evolution was only a theory and that alternate theories (ie intelligent design) should be explored. Judge Jones ruled that the intelligent design was clearly a thinly-disguised form of creationism, that it contained no science whatsoever and was thus disqualified from being considered in a science curriculum, and that the inclusion of the statement was a violation of First Amendment Rights.

The IDiot camp were shocked by the ruling. You see, Judge Jones is a Republican judge appointed by a Republican president, and both party and president are supporters of biblical creation over evolution. They expected the ruling to be a shoe-in for ID. But Jones showed them that a Judge must leave his beliefs at the door, and consider only the law and the evidence brought before him. Amazing then that in the face of such judicial impartiality, he is being treated like the Judas of modern times.

A quote from the article linked above:

One particularly strident commentary piece by conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly, published a week after the ruling, really set Jones off.
Schlafly wrote that Jones, a career Republican appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2002, wouldn't be a judge if not for the "millions of evangelical Christians" who supported Bush in 2000. His ruling, she wrote, "stuck the knife in the backs of those who brought him to the dance in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District."

Just replace 'millions of evangelical christians' with 'mafia' and you get a sense of what's going on here - the people who feel they are responsible for getting the judge his position tried to call in a favor, and are sending death threats because the judge they appointed turned out to be a man of the law. What next? A horse's head in his bed? Cement boots and a tour of the Delaware?

Republicans and Christians alike need to get it through their heads: Jones ruled on the law and the facts, not on faith and favors. In this, he may have been a poor Christian, but he was an excellent District Court Judge. Good for him.

Maybe God Just Hates This Guy

2006-06-08T16:39:00.000+02:00

A guy shouts out "God will save me, if he exists!" and steps barefoot into the lion enclosure ala the biblical Daniel.

Does God save him? Of course not. God doesn't exist, and they guy is mauled to death.

Will this change anything for the faithful? Again, of course not.

Holy Headshot, Batman!

2006-06-08T15:34:00.000+02:00

What new hypocrisy will Christians think of next? They preach 'Love Thy Neighbour', and then bring out a video game like Left Behind: Eternal Forces.

The synopsis on GameSpy reads:

Based on the renowned series of Christian-faith novels about the aftermath of the Rapture and the lives left behind in the ensuing turmoil after those who are saved by their faith in God are gone. Left Behind: Eternal Forces will put players in command of the apocalyptic battles raging in the streets of New York City between the angelic Tribulation Forces and the demonic Global Community Peacekeepers during the End of Days. Gamers will participate in events from the Left Behind book series in single player mode and battle to capture territory from other players in the multi-player online game mode.

But what does this marketing blurb really mean? Well, you play a man of god who must convert the infidels (i.e. Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists and Gays) before the coming apocalypse. If you can't convert them, what do you do? Blow them away, of course. But don't forget to say 'Praise the Lord' and pray a little afterwards. Cos that makes it all okay.

The good news is, in the multiplayer mode you can command the forces of good, or the forces of the antichrist. I know which side i'd play. Do you?

Official Site

Midweek Cuckoo: Dissenting Opinions

2006-06-07T14:30:00.000+02:00

My kooks today are a trifecta of sorts. They are linked in such a way that the two causal agents would never have been able to do the damage they had without the third, and the third may never have done the damage he did without the influence of the other two.

I'm speaking of South African President Thabo Mbeki, and his two 'advisors', Anthony Brink and Anita Allen. Together, they are the top three AIDS dissidents in the country [word doc].

So what is an AIDS dissident? In short, it is anyone who dissents the medically and scientifically verifiable truth about HIV and AIDS, and who thinks that their complete lack of education in the field qualifies them to disagree with 20 years of medical experience. These are people who believe such things as 'HIV does not cause AIDS', 'ARVs will kill you faster than the virus', and 'AIDS only happens to gay people.' These are all lies that it takes only a few minutes and an internet connection to disprove, yet no amount of evidence can convince the liars they are wrong. As I see it, when the truth is so easy to find, those who perpetuate blatant untruths are either medically insane, willfully lying, or fatally ignorant. It may be that they are lying to themselves as well as you, but that doesn't make it any less of a lie. I would compare AIDS dissidents to Holocaust deniers (a subject for another Wednesday, perhaps). Someone who can say that HIV doesn't cause AIDS is just as deluded as someone who can say that there were no Nazi death camps. The big difference comes in that while Holocaust deniers only insult the families of those who died, AIDS dissidents have the power to kill, and have done so. As such, they deserve all the scorn and disgust you can level at them.

Anthony Brink was an advocate and part time jazz musician, practising law in Petermaritzburg. In 1996 Brink came upon the writings of international AIDS dissidents and fell headlong down the rabbit hole. He hasn't come up to breathe since. He is the convenor and international chairman of the Treatment Information Group, who have declared a veritable war on AZT, a widely-used antiretroviral. They claim it's more toxic than the virus, and Brink even tried to take Glaxosmithkline to court because he says it 'killed' a friend. Doctors say the friend died of an opportunistic infection, all too common in HIV patients whether they are on medication or not. We'll never really know what the outcome of the trial might have been, because Brink claims he ran out of funding. Personally i wouldn't be surprised if the multinational gave him a call saying 'We know you're full of crap, you know you're full of crap, and we can prove it. We will murder you in court so go ahead, make our day.'

According to Allister Sparks, Brink gained the president's ear as follows:

[Brink] became convinced ... that the drug AZT was dangerously toxic. ‘A medicine from hell’ he called it in an article in a Johannesburg newspaper in March 1999. This prompted a response defending the drug from Desmond Martin, president of the Southern African HIV/Aids Clinicians’ society. After more exchanges, Brink contacted Mbeki and sent him copies of the debate between himself and Martin. ‘That was the first time I became aware of this alternative viewpoint,’ Mbeki told me.
[Allister Sparks, Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa (Jonathan Ball: Cape Town, 2003) pg. 286]

Let's get something straight: yes, antiretrovirals have side effects, and some can be quite serious. None of them are serious as dying of AIDS. People regularly take drugs that are just as dangerous for cosmetic problems (Accutane, a common treatment for acne, causes liver damage and severe birth defects and is a schedule 5 drug). No scientists denies that there are side effects. But they are managable, and are blown out of all proportion by AIDS dissenters like Brink. So why lie about it? Well, this is one case where i get to turn a favorite altmed argument around - Brink is currently employed by the Rath Foundation, a 'pharmaceutical company' that makes multivitamins and claims they treat AIDS. Brink tells people AZT will kill them, Rath sells them some vitamin C tablets instead. I wonder if Brink earns commission on everyone who buys Rath's pills?

Anita Allen describes herself as “not a member of the HIV-causes-Aids sect”. In my opinion, she's not a member of the "firing-on-all-cylinders" sect either. Here's another quote from her:

No one as far as we know has been able to come up with evidence proving the HIV-causes-Aids hypothesis anywhere in the world. Plenty have tried, but no one has yet succeeded.

Even if she knows she's lying, you'd have to be insane to think you could get away with a whopper like that one. If you're really interested in this woman's insanity-fueled diatribes, go read some of her articles. The titles alone should warn you they contain hysteria and conjecture, and no real facts. Anita's qualification for making medical statements about AIDS and HIV? She's a journalist. Yup, you know, one of those people trained to report the truth and the facts without bias.

Anita says it is she who is responsible for Mbeki's view on AIDS:

It was close to midnight and the fax machine went off…what came through the fax was a handwritten letter from Mbeki, saying he had read her letter expressing concern about the HIV/Aids question and that he wanted to meet with her in the morning to discuss it. [ http://www.purewatergazette.net/farber.htm ]

Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, took this information and instead of gaining a real medical second opinion, he used it to delay ARV rollouts in South Africa, shortening unnecessarily the lives of tens of thousands of people. How Zuma can be fired as deputy president for a little corruption, but Mbeki stays in power after negligence leading to genocide, is beyond me. Here's a quote from our esteemed leader that says it all:

Now I do believe that is a sensible thing to ask: does one virus cause a syndrome? A virus cannot cause a syndrome. A virus will cause a disease.
[Reply to a Parliamentary question; 20 September 2000]

Lets look up the dictionary definition of 'syndrome': A group of symptoms that collectively indicate or characterize a disease. Maybe if he had taken the two minutes to pick up a god damn dictionary, he wouldn't have mislead so many people, or been so mislead himself.

Granted, this was a while ago and the controversy has died down. Do you think that Mbeki has rescinded his views just because his minders steer him clear of the subject these days? Sometimes he slips through their grasp and is able to talk to the press before they can shut him up. The results would be funny if so many people didn't idolize this man and take him seriously. For all the damage Zuma may have done by telling people he took a shower to reduce his chance of getting HIV, Mbeki has done much, much worse.

The man is a moron; it's a crying shame you can't impeach him for it. And the people who lead him to his moronic views are a self-important liar and an ignorant fool. It's our responsibility to shame them to the best of our ability, and hope they are eventually so publicly humiliated they retreat into their little delusional world and are never heard from again.

Thanks to Brian for the tip-off.

Begging for Change

2006-06-06T18:47:00.000+02:00

New bylaws passed in Cape Town now make it illegal for beggars to:

Touch someone without their consent.
Follow someone in a manner or conduct that influences reasonable fear for bodily harm.
Continue to beg from someone after being turned down.

The bylaw also prohibits fornication, urination, defecation and spitting in public. And living in your car. Hell yeah.

Let's be very clear: it doesn't make begging illegal; it makes aggressive begging illegal. Anyone who has actually been accosted by aggressive and sometimes even violent beggars welcomes this bylaw. Certainly, anyone who ever encountered 'Cyclops', the one-eyed beggar in Rondebosch who begs with a stick raised in his other hand, would welcome the opportunity to call the police and have the violent fucker thrown in jail.

But not these bleeding hearts. They say it's retrogressive and out of the dark ages. Interesting that they all seem to think it outlaws begging, but never mind that. None of them seem to recognize that while it's not a crime to be poor and have to resort to begging, it is a crime to threaten someone in order to get money from them. Here's one example of the idiocy: Sandra Morreira, director for The Homestead, which deals with street children, said:

This bylaw does not want to see beggars in town and it will make it impossible for them to survive.

Really? So is she implying that currently the only way beggers get money from people is to harrass and threaten them, and that begging in a non-aggressive manner will result in them being unable to survive? Interesting. I thought she was on their side. Here's another one: Colin Arendse, secretary for the Homeless People's Crisis Committee, said:

Given the social standing of homeless people, most are indigent and such a bylaw is out of sync with our new-found democracy.

I'm sorry, out of sync with our new-found democracy? Which party was it that was promising violent begging in exchange for your vote? Where in the constitution does it protect the right to threaten people with bodily harm if they don't give you money?

Let me be clear on something: i don't give money to beggars, because it only perpetuates the cycle. But i am never, ever rude. I turn them down politely, and if they are respectful in any way of their fellow citizens they will leave it at that. Those who harrass you, follow you, grab at you and continue to demand money long after it has been made politely clear you are not going to give them any, are stepping over a line. I am very glad that we now have a legal recourse when they do so.

What is this, the Straight Dope?

2006-06-06T18:20:00.000+02:00

Bast asks:

I have a question, with regards to the possible impact crater found in antarctica. If an asteroid 50 km in length slammed into the earth could it alter the orbit around the sun? and by alter I mean not just a little wobble but actually push the earth further away (or closer I suppose depending on whether it hit at night).

The full solution to this problem is likely to be quite complex, so forgive me if i do a bit of handwaving and back-of-the-envelope calculating here. The way i see it, at the bares bones we're talking about a collision. When it comes to collisions, at the very least we know that momentum will be conserved so, to start with, the important factors are mass and velocity. If i know the mass and velocity of the two bodies (the earth and the impactor) prior to impact, i can use those to work out the final velocity of the earth after impact. But how does knowing how fast the earth is moving help me?

Well, when it comes to orbits there is an inverse proportionality between orbital radius (the distance of the orbit from the sun) and orbital velocity. Decrease the earth's orbital radius, and it will increase it's orbital velocity. Similarly, if you decrease the earth's orbital velocity, it will increase it's orbital radius (this what makes it difficult for shuttle pilots to manoeuvre in orbit - changing your speed can have undesired effects).

Knowing the change in velocity allows us to calculate the change in radius as a result of the change in velocity, assuming conservation of momentum. This is of course the simplest way of getting an order of magnitude answer - i could go to a lot of effort calculating the exact orbital mechanics, but for this i think we just want a feel of how big a change can be made. I'm going to make assumptions like a circular orbit for earth, and a constant orbital velocity for earth, anyway.

So, we are going to need to set some bounds to the problem. How massive is a 50km wide asteroid? How fast can it be going when it hits us? How elastic is the collision. The following are the extrema i've selected for each variable:

Density for observed meteoroids is between 3-8g/cc.
Impact (i.e. relative) velocity of impact has been recorded in the range from 11-72km/s.
The collision can range from perfectly inelastic (all impactor's energy released, final mass = earth mass), to perfectly elastic (no energy released by impactor, final mass = earth mass + impactor mass).
Direction of impact can range from travelling in exactly the same direction along the orbital path, to travelling in exactly the opposite direction along the orbital path.

I calculated the range of possible values for all combinations of these extrema, and came out with a range of variance in final velocity from 0.000094% increase to 0.0000067% decrease. So on order of magnitude we're talking roughly a 0.00001% change one way or the other, depending on how the impact happened. Since orbital velocity is inversely proportional to orbital radius, this translates to a 0.00001% change in our distance from the sun.

The question is, how big a change is this, really? Is it enough to significantly affect life on earth?
One of the measures of whether life can exist on earth or not is the so-called Habitable Zone, the range of distances from a star where water is in a liquid state. For our sun, this is in the range 0.7AU to 1.5AU (one AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from the earth to the sun). We would therefore require at least a 30% change in our orbital distance to radically affect all life on earth.

But all life on earth isn't us. We would be severely uncomfortable at temperatures that many bacteria would thrive in. How big a difference is 0.00001% to us? Another way of looking at it is to measure the change in energy we're receiving from the sun. This is usually measured in terms of the Solar Constant, the amount of energy received by 1 square meter of the atmosphere when the sun is shining directly at it. This is naturally related to the distance from the sun. Given the numbers from the previous calculation, we're looking at a variance in the solar constant on the order of 0.000002%. Again, how big is this in terms that mean something to us? Normal changes in the earth's distance from the sun due to axial tilt, precession and orbital eccentricity (the Milankovitch cyles) are thought to be a factor in the causation of ice ages, but the factors involved create changes on the order of a few percent, much larger than our variance.

In other words, any change in the earth's orbit due to a collision is going to be negligable, even for an object as large as 50km across. Even then, an object of this size impacting the earth is extremely rare (there are no measured Near Earth Asteroids greater than 25km across at present). At the end of the day, it's the dust kicked up by the impactor that has the real long term effect - it only takes a 2km meteor to throw enough ejecta into the atmosphere to result in serious environmental damage, and anything larger than that is guaranteed to cause mass extinction.

Here's a good page on meteorites, with plenty of good links.

And here's NASA's comet and asteroid impact hazard site.

Proviso: any and all calculations made in this post may be completely and utterly incorrect.

Search for Terrestrial Intelligence

2006-06-02T17:50:00.000+02:00

Should aliens turn their intelligent design filters to earth, i think that William Dembski would be surprised to find he does not register. I mentioned yesterday that Bill was mouthing off again about how if people accepted that SETI was science, they had to accept that ID was science. The argument always makes me think of Johnnie Cochran saying 'if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.' Look at the silly monkey.

So in case you thought this was a relevant argument, here's a very very thorough refutation of exactly why it's a load of bollocks.

Also, more Intelligent Designers lying for god. So much for the whole 'thou shalt not bear false witness' thing.

Poking Fun at Scientology

2006-06-02T16:16:00.000+02:00

Do you know what an 'assist' is? Yes, i meant to use it as a noun. In scientology, an 'assist' is exactly this: pointing at people to heal them.

There are two kinds of assist: the Nerve Assist (pointing at people), and the Touch Assist (poking people). These are meant to heal you of psychological and physical trauma. Scientologists are so serious about this that they are training Volunteer Ministers and sending them all around the world to poke and prod survivors of tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and other publicity-gaining disasters.

I can train you to be a Volunteer Minister right now:

Take both hands and curl them into fists.
Now extend the index finger of your right hand without uncurling the other fingers of that hand.
Do the same with the left hand.
Now, angle both hands so that the tips of your index fingers are pointing directly at someone.
For a better effect, try pointing at the exact area that requires healing.
If that fails, try moving your hands closer to the person, until the tips of your extended index fingers are in contact with the area requiring healing.
Congratulations! You are now a qualified Volunteer Minister for the Church of Scientology!

Seriously, can you image it: you've just had your entire life swept away by Hurricane Katrina, you're lying on a makeshift stretcher, your only possession the tattered clothes on your back, no idea where your family is... and someone in a yellow shirt comes over and asks if they can point at you? How do people take this seriously?

Here's some more fun at the expense of scientology: The Onion reports on the new religion sweeping across the globe: Fictionology.

And a biography of L. Ron Hubbard in its entirety, online. I am so going to read this.

Too busy to blog

2006-06-01T18:10:00.000+02:00

well, not exactly, but i am pretty busy. Big project delivery, much scrambling, not enough time to blog (properly).

So i leave you with a few random thoughts for today:

X3: The Last Stand was awesome, a truly excellent final chapter in the trilogy. Frasier was surprisingly good as Beast. I am very disappointed that Gambit was not in the trilogy, other than a name on a screen in X2. I am mostly disappointed because Josh Holloway (Sawyer in Lost) was offered the part and turned it down because it was too close to his TV role. He would have made an awesome Gambit. Also, those of you who did not stay to the end of the credits are lamers, because there was a little somethin'-somethin' there for people with real staying power.
On the topic, my special mutant power is to remember the names of actors, no matter how obscure they are. My kryptonite is that if there is plumber's crack in the room, i will always be looking in that exact direction at the exact time of exposure.
sort of on the subject of mutants, on the subject of evolution, the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publishing of On the Origin of Species in coming up in 2009, and the Smithsonian isn't sure it's going to do anything for it. It's afraid it might offend people. Seriously, WTF?
and speaking of evolution makes me want to go and see what Bill Dembski is up to. Let's see, trotting out that tired old argument about how SETI is also looking for intelligent design and no one questions their science. I don't need to answer the question, it's been answered before. Oh, and the origin of the argument? Bill, in 1998. Fast forward to 2005 and he's till asking the same old tired questions that have been refuted over and over. When will he learn a new trick?

Yeah, i'm going home now.

Why We Love PZ Myers

2006-05-31T18:47:00.000+02:00

Because of posts like this.

Midweek Cuckoo: Tine van der Maas

2006-05-31T10:09:00.000+02:00

Tine van der Maas was a nurse for 9 months, 17 years ago. She is no longer registered to practice as a nurse in South Africa. She says she taught herself nutrition by reading many books and internet articles. Based on this, she not only calls herself a nutritionist and midwife, but also claims to have one of the most incredible cures for HIV/AIDS yet seen. All this despite having expressed doubt that HIV even causes AIDS.

Tine came to the attention of the South African public two years ago when she gained the ear of our Minister of Health, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Tine is convinced that her diet (consisting of garlic, ginger, olive oil, beetroot, lemon juice, spinach and african potatoes, plus various vitamin supplements all whizzed together) is a miracle cure that restores the immune system. Manto, herself a qualified medical doctor, has stated she has seen more than 100 AIDS patients "who have got up and walked" after going on the diet. She even gave Tine access to patients in hospitals around the country, to administer her as-yet-untested treatment to the desperately ill. However, no documentation of these 'trials' is available from any relevant institute or department. A search of PubMed returns no papers with Tine as author.

What reason does Tine give for there being no record of her patients? A burglar broke in and peed on all of them. All the records, for supposedly 40,000 people. That's one determined burglar, with one very large bladder.

So is it possible that patients can undergo a miraculous recovery after consuming what sounds like the most vile smoothie ever? In South Africa, it can certainly appear to be so. The issue at hand is that the majority of HIV and AIDS sufferers are also chronically malnourished. Even the tiniest increase in their nutrition can result in a seemingly incredible improvement in their condition, with many patients indeed getting up and walking. This means nothing: it can be seen with any improvement in nutrition, not just Tine's diet, and it has absolutely no effect on the progression of the disease. It is a temporary fix that makes the patient feel better for a while but ultimately does not change their diagnosis or their death sentence.

And yet Tine claims that her diet is all that is required for a healthy immune system, and is as good as ARVs. Well, except in one case: she has said, "I am not against antiretrovirals. If I were raped I would still go for nevirapine - but I'd also eat four carrots." Tine also believes that if you never hear from your patients again, it's a good thing because it means they are ok. If there's a problem, they'll phone. She doesn't seem to entertain the option that they might not phone because they're dead. Oh, and Tine also uses her diet for people with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, depression, asthma, ulcers, cataracts, high cholesterol and glandular fever.

Qualified nutritionists are dismissing her theories as bunk, yet our Minister of Health continues to defend her. So much so that she has now contributed, IMHO, to the deaths of two prominent figures in SA:

Yfm DJ Fana 'Khabzela' Khaba - Manto sent Tine to his house to take care of him and adminster her diet to him personally, when Khaba refused to take ARVs because he believed they would kill him. The Minister had an opportunity to persuade him to go on ARVs, and instead she sent him Tine and her garlic and olive oil concoction. He died, only 8 months after he was diagnosed.
Nozipho Benghu, daughter of KZN MP Ruth Benghu - Nozipho was one of Tine's most vocal supporters, and a follower of her diet. According to Nozipho, "It works, I'm the scietific proof." She died last week, and the Treatment Action Campaign called her death both unnecessary and premature.

These aren't poor, rural people, uneducated, easily swayed by those in power or unable to afford ARVs. These are wealthy, educated, upper class people who could easily have lived many years longer than they did. There is absolutely no excuse for deceiving these people into thinking that diet can prolong their lives, when they are infected with a rampant virus for which there is no known effective treatment except antiretrovirals, and for which there certainly is no cure.

How is it that someone with this obvious a fakery can bend the ear of our topmost health officials? Well, you only have to look at the officials themselves. Manto aside, KZN Health MEC Peggy Nkonyeni recently stated that people needed to be aware of unscrupulous individuals who manufactured certain viruses to infect communities so that pharmaceutical companies could benefit. She said this at Nozipho Benghu's funeral, standing over the grave of a woman who died because she and they couldn't see these theories for the bullshit they are. Tine van der Maas and her friends will always find a place in South Africa, as long as this kind of thinking prevails amongst our policymakers and politicians.

Does Guinness Know?

2006-05-30T14:36:00.000+02:00

Pat Robertson claims he can leg press 2,000 lbs, with the help of God and his special wonder smoothie.

But people have every reason to be skeptical. Firstly, Pat is 76 years old. Secondly, he has apparently broken the previous world record by 665 lbs, a herculean feat. Thirdly, i think Skepchic describes best why breaking the record is astounding:

Dan Kendra held the former record for a leg press at 1,335 pounds. When Dan performed his feat, his eyeballs exploded. Well, the capillaries in his eyes. Do you have any idea what this means? Not only does Pat Robertson possess the strongest thighs in the world, but also his eyeballs are blessedly protected by Jesus.

Not to mention that Dan was much younger, and an athlete, and they had to modify the leg press machine to hold that much weight?

I think if anyone actually buys Pat's shake and then tries to leg press 2,000 lbs, and is later found trapped under the weights with their femurs snapped like chicken bones and their eyeballs resting moistly on their cheeks.... they deserve it. Stupidity should hurt.

Long Weekend

2006-05-30T13:08:00.000+02:00

Well it has been a lovely long weekend, marred only by the usual lack of internet connectivity. Let's do a quick round-up:

The world didn't end last week. No surprises there. Eric has been flailing around, explaining how the comet may not actually cause the wave but merely be blamed for it, that he saw the comet enter the atmosphere, that we should be mindful of the upcoming resignation of the US Treasury Secretary.... blah blah blah. It didn't happen Eric, give it up. The aliens aren't talking to you, you're crazy.

Michael Jackson made his first official public appearance this weekend, and guess where he decided to go? An orphanage. That man should fire his publicist. Right now.

Also, here is another argument for requiring a licence to become a parent: putting a child in the tumble dryer because she spilled something on herself. The 13-month-old girl suffered severe burns to her feet and her left hand, after the mother's boyfriend put her in the dryer, closed the door and turned it on for 'a couple of minutes'. Granted, Samuel Siddall wasn't the child's father, but in a case like this i feel that castration should be part of the mandatory sentence. This person has proved that they are totally and utterly incapable of parenting a child, and should never be allowed to have a child of their own. Ever.

You may think i'm overreacting, but at least one person has managed to kill her own baby this way. Can you really believe that there's a god, when people who would make wonderful parents He makes infertile, and yet He gives children to people like this?

Everyone Still Here?

2006-05-26T16:30:00.000+02:00

Hah! May 25 passed without incident, it seems. But wait, what's this? An update on Eric's website? Let's see what it says...

Update May 25, 2006
According to informed sources, contacts in the American intelligence services confirm the existence of a time window of 48 hours, centered on May 25th at midnight GMT, for the impact a comet fragment south of the Azores.
This corroborates information of an evacuation exercise of the U.S. Congress to occur later in the day of May 25th, information which reached us this morning.
As a measure of precaution, I suggest the authorities do the utmost to protect the populations of the Atlantic coastlines. -- Eric Julien

US Congress evacuated yesterday? Surely that's something the papers would have noticed? And why do American Intelligence Services have knowledge of a window for comet impact when astronomers who are actually tracking the comet do not?

Oh well, it seems Eric has given himself until midnight GMT today. I wonder if tomorrow he will have a new window? Maybe a 2000 year one, centered on May 25, 3006?

Still here

2006-05-25T17:35:00.000+02:00

Well, no deluge so far. In fact, today we suffered an unusual lack of water, as workmen accidentally cut into a water pipe in our office and the water had to be shut off for several hours. Go figure.

Just remember this about predictions of the end of the world: when it's today in the US, it's already tomorrow in Australia.

Speaking of prophets of the apocalypse, i forgot to mention yesterday the Prophets of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an off-shoot of Mormonism. Rulon Jeffs predicted the end of the world would come some time between 1990 and 1997, and later he predicted the year 2000 as the big one to watch. When he died in 2002, his son Warren took over the position of Prophet, and all but two of his father's many wives (the actual number is unconfirmed but is quoted anywhere from 22 to 75). Today, Warren is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted, right there next to Osama Bin Laden. There's a $100,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, on various charges relating to sexual misconduct with a minor and statutory rape.

These, then, are your prophets. You wouldn't trust these people with your children, why trust them with your future?

Midweek Cuckoo: Prophets of the Apocalypse

2006-05-24T11:42:00.000+02:00

Since the world as we know it is about to end some time tomorrow, I thought it might be interesting to review some past prophecies made by people who all claimed to be in positions of some authority on the intent of God/ the Aliens/ Mother Nature. There are only two things that unite this diverse group: they all predicted the end of the world, and they were all proven completely wrong.

Here are just some of the examples that can be found at Religioustolerance.com's excellent End of the World collection:

Jesus Christ: literal interpretations of certain verses from the gospels (Matthew 16:28, 24:34 among others) have Jesus Christ predicting that the end of the world would occur in the lifetime of those he preached to. Since this didn't happen, biblical scholars now claim that those verses can't be taken literally.

Paul of Tarsus: similar for literal interpretations of the Epistles of Paul; similar for the failure of the prediction; similar for the church's excuse.

The Old Believers: Russian cult who believed the world would end in 1669. 20,000 burned themselves to death to protect themselves from the antichrist.

Pope Innocent III: predicted the world would end in 1824, a date he computed by adding 666 to the date of the foundation of Islam.

Joseph Smith: founder of Mormonism, predicted the world would end in 1890. He made a separate prediction that it would end by 1891. Neither came true.

William Miller: founder of the Millerites, predicted the world would end in 1843. When it didn't, he changed the date to 1844. Many followers sold their properties and possessions, quit their jobs and sat back to await their ascent to heaven. Nothing happened.

Ellen White: founder of the Seventh Day Adventists, predicted 1850 as the date of Rapture. She later predicted that the world would end within the lifetime of those attending the 1856 SDA conference. All attendees are long since dead.

The Watchtower Society: the premier society of Jehovah's Witnesses predicted the end of the world in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994. They evidently treat Armageddon like the Lotto.

The Branch Dividians: unsuccessfully predicted the world would end in 1952. Their second prediction that the world would end in 1995 lead them to renaming their ranch in Waco, Texas to Ranch Apocalypse. They believed that the apocalyptic end-game would begin at the compound. For 76 members, including their leader David Koresh, it did, two years earlier than they expected. They also predicted that in 1999, Koresh would return with 200 million horsemen and slaughter almost everyone on earth.

Leland Jensen: leader of a Baha'i World Faith group, predicted a nuclear disaster in 1980, followed by the establishment of god's kingdom on earth by 2000.

Sun Yung Moon: head of the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies, predicted the Kingdom of Heaven would be established in 1981.

Pat Robertson: predicted the world would end in 1982. You know Pat, he's the Reverend who agrees with Eric Julien that the world will end tomorrow. Or at least some time this year.

Benny Hinn: Assembly of God pastor, predicted the world would end in 1993. Later predicted that God would destroy all the homosexuals no later than 1995.

Marshall Applewhite: head of the Heaven's Gate cult predicted the world would end in 1997. His deceased wife Bonnie was to arrive in a spaceship disguised by Comet Hale-Bopp to save the believers from the coming apocalypse. 39 members commited suicide in March of that year, as the comet made its closest approach to earth.

Nostradamus: in one of his few prophecies that actually names a year, he predicted that in 1999, "From the sky will come a great King of Terror". Experts interpretted this as everything from a meteor to a nuclear missile.

Michael Drosnin: author of The Bible Code and The Bible Code II. According to his code, the world should have ended this Tuesday past. It pretty obviously didn't, but that's okay because he's now saying it's definitely some time this year.

These are only some of the more prominent figures in the business of predicting armageddon. There have been many, many others, playing off religious fears, superstition, and exciting-looking numbers (June 6 of this year is another big date, 6/6/6). I think we all remember new year's eve 1999 - with the double threat of the millennium (although not even the real one) and Y2K.

The question many people ask is, how is it possible that their followers continue to believe in them after they are proven wrong? In truth, not all of them do. But there is one common excuse that keeps many of the congregation believing - the world did not end when I said it would, because we were saved. God/ the Aliens/ Mother Earth heard our prayers and was merciful. How do you argue with logic like that?

I can't wait to see what Eric Julien's excuse is on Friday.

The Worst Blog in the World Mark II

2006-05-23T15:08:00.000+02:00

A while ago i mentioned the worst blog in the world. Now the author is at it again, and has created another blog. The blog description reads:

This blog is an extension of my earlier "Prescribed Evolution" blog which got cumbersome with over 800 posts.

When he says 'posts', he means 'comments'. It pretty much just consisted of a single post, and then John arguing with DaveScot and himself in the comments to that single post.

The new one also only has one post, and is at 200+ comments already. Again, mostly from John.
(It think there's something i need to make clear - John argues with DaveScot not because he is anti-ID, but because even within the Intelligent Design community, no one likes John. He is that rarity - an IDiot so crazy even other IDiots don't want to be associated with him. )

Intelligent Design: Lying for God

2006-05-23T14:24:00.000+02:00

In a move that only goes to show he doesn't mind lying, or at least bending the truth a little, in the name of god, DaveScot has posted a known urban legend on Uncommon Descent, with no disclaimer.

It takes the form of a chain letter showing a picture of american soldiers with their heads bowed in prayer, and then goes on to suggest that the ACLU is trying to abolish this. It's been doing the round for years and has been discredited many times. Yes, the soldiers are praying. No, the ACLU never had anything to say about it, and is not against soldiers praying of their own free will.

William Dembski seems to have had a glitch in his design filters at the time, though, because he immediately responded with 'Right On!' as the first comment. I thought he could tell false positives?

Anyway, the normal comment policy seems to continue - a comment on Panda's thumb mentioned that at the time of writing there were three comments pointing out it's a hoax. At the time i went to read it, comments were as follows:

Right On!
DaveScot saying "To everyone who’s pointed out that the ACLU story is a fabrication according to snopes.com - that’s hardly the point. The pictures of Marines praying are real. The fighting and dying to protect the interests of the United States is real. The request to pray for them is real. So I removed the fake names, noted the ACLU statement is rumor, and quoted a very real former Marine Sergeant’s sentiments instead. If anyone has a problem with that they can KMA. Google that."
More from DaveScot
Someone agreeing
Someone else agreeing
DaveScot saying "Now that everyone is happy that this article isn’t a fabrication the comments are closed."

And the comments for that post are now closed. So I wonder, where are the comments pointing out it's a hoax? DaveScot mentions them, so he must know they were there. Have they been deleted? Because that would be so different to the normal policy on dissenting comments on Uncommon Dissent!

Also, not only did DaveScot not put on a disclaimer when he admitted he knew it was a hoax from the start, he also didn't mention in the post that he had edited the email from the original. Also, how does DaveScot admitting it's an urban legend make us happy that it's not a fabrication? Finally, how does it change the lie to add 'rumored' in one place, where it quite blatantly says in another: "Please send this to people you know so everyone will know how stupid the ACLU is Getting in trying to remove GOD from everything and every place in America. " He is using something he knows to be false to support his religion - bad form.

And these people feel that they are qualified to make scientific remarks on the origin of life on earth. They couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map, let alone find evidence for design.

It must be true...

2006-05-23T12:44:00.000+02:00

Rev. Pat Robertson says God told him a tsunami will hit the american coastline this year. Although i think he has the wrong coast. But then again it might be the aliens who are wrong, because Pat Robertson is never wrong about anything.

When God and the Aliens conspire, you know you're screwed. The only way this could get worse is if the evil pharmaceutical companies are in on it, too.

The Countdown Begins

2006-05-22T17:20:00.000+02:00

I thought i'd better remind people who live on the atlantic seaboard - don't forget about the Tsunami on Thursday.

If you haven't moved in with your relatives on the west coast yet, hurry the hell up. Lets not forget Katrina, people! I mean, we've all seen The Day After Tomorrow, do you really want to be in Times Square when that shit goes down? I don't think so.

And for my fellow capetonians, now is the time to reserve your spot on top of table mountain. As space is limited, i would suggest maybe taking a trip to Jozi this week (i hear Kalula.com has some good rates at the moment).

Also, here are some things you should stock up on for the coming apocalypse and collapse of society as we know it:

your towel (it is international towel day after all, and a towel will be most handy)
beer (i believe we all remember the fine example set by looter guy)
shotguns (to defend your beer)
shotgun shells (duh!)
an Ark
Two of each kind of animal in the world

Things you won't need are:

Condoms (we're trying to rebuild the human race here people)
Scientologists (let's just get rid of them now and say they all drowned)

I'm going to be here on Friday... are you?

Nice one, Sir Ian!

2006-05-22T16:05:00.000+02:00

Ian McKellan just became one of my favorite people in the world.

Sir Ian has a lot of experience with fiction. Firstly, he's an actor. Secondly, he has played two of the best know characters in fiction - Gandalf the Grey and Magneto. So when a journalist asked him for his take on the Christian reactionary division demanding the makers of the Da Vinci code slap a 'Fiction' disclaimer in front of their movie, Sir Ian understandably gave the best response yet:

Well, I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction.

Hoorah. That's the spirit. Put a disclaimer in front of your work of fiction only when they put one in front of theirs.

Sir Ian is not known to pull punches when it comes to the Bible. I think he has one of the best methods of dealing with a church that openly condemns his homosexuality - in every hotel he stays at, he rips Leviticus (the chapter supporting the condemnation of gays) out of the Gideon Bible.

You go, girl.

(story via Mr. Angry)

Tom Cruise: Zero - South Park: Denny Crane!

2006-05-18T13:17:00.000+02:00

Tom Cruise has lost his battle to prevent South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone from showing their Trapped in the Closet episode in the UK. The episode makes liberal fun of scientology in general and Tom in particular, and previously Tom had some success in getting it banned in the UK. He also managed to prevent Comedy Central from showing it by refusing to promote M:i:III if they did. However, as the movie has already opened in theatres worldwide, it seems Tom has lost his bargaining chip.

The episode was shown at London's National Film Theatre on Monday, in a free screening that accompanied a talk given by the show's creators. Afterwards, free copies of the episode were handed out. See, by making it all free, Parker and Stone completely avoid the argument that they are exploiting scientology and Tom's fame for their own commercial gain. Making it free leaves it completely in the realm of Freedom of Expression, and Tom doesn't have a leg to stand on.

What i want to know is, if he is so keen not to have the show aired, why doesn't he just zap Parker and Stone with his OT VIII super powers? Or control their minds so that they don't want to show it anymore and vow to attend at least one hundred scientology audits? Or, why doesn't he declare them Fair Game and send the scientology hit squad after them?

Because he can't, that's why. Cos there's no such damn thing.

The Da Vinci Code: Exposing the Cracks in Christianity

2006-05-18T12:22:00.000+02:00

The Da Vinci Code opens in cinemas in South Africa this friday, and ahead of its release runs the wave of Christian condemnation of the film. The local clergy and congregations have been sending sms chain letters around the country urging people to boycott or picket the screenings, and one group is even threatening to obtain a court order to stop the film being shown.

Why all the fuss? you may wonder. It's a work of fiction, right? If they are so confident in their Truth, how does a work of fiction threaten that?

How indeed. Even if Dan Brown is some kind of anti-christ, hell-bent on destroying christianity with his blasphemy (as opposed to a writer of fiction making a bunch of cash), he certainly hasn't done it in the way he would have meant to. Because it's not the conspiracy theories that expose the cracks, it's the way the church has responded to them. Their attempts to ban the book and film raise only one question in the minds of those prone to believing in conspiracy: why ban it, if it's not true?

I'll tell you why, and it's not because there is a conspiracy to cover up a lineage of christ. It's because even the church cannot know its 'truth' for sure. When all you have as proof is a single text, written by many, translated by many, and interpretted by many, you don't have a foundation on which to say for sure 'this is how it happened'. You cannot point at a different theory and say 'we can prove you wrong'. You have to admit that the theory of christ marrying and having children is based on as much evidence, if not more, than the theory he didn't. So what recourse? You make a noise, you get it banned. Because this is not an argument where you can take the high ground with evidence on your side. This is not an argument you can win in any way except to be the loudest voice, and drown out the rest.

And yet, for all their kicking and screaming, all the church is doing is making people wonder why they must kick and scream. If you are so confident in your truth, sit back and let the masses enjoy their fantasies, their fictions. Surely if you are not feeling threatened, there is no need to leap to the defensive?

Midweek Cuckoo: Betty Martini

2006-05-17T15:14:00.000+02:00

In the late 90s, a chain letter penned by a woman named Nancy Markle began to appear in people's inboxes, and on usenet sites, warning any who would listen of the terrible danger posed by a chemical we all consume to some degree or another. The email listed multiple health problems caused or aggrevated by this chemical, including:

Multiple Sclerosis
Lupus
Blindness
Gulf War Syndrome
Diabetes
Brain Tumours
Fybromyalgia
Spasms
Shooting pains
Numbness in the legs
Vertigo
Dizziness
Headaches
Tinnitus
Joint Pain
Depression
Anxiety attacks
Slurred speech
Blurred vision
Alzheimer's disease
Seizures
Obesity
Manic depression

"My God!" you exclaim, "what a horrific substance! Surely we could improve the health of millions and millions of people if we could cut this substance from our diets! Tell us what it is!"

My good people, the substance which causes this host of troubles is none other than aspartame. That's right, the artificial sweetner in your diet pepsi is the cause of nearly every sickness known to man. It does this by converting to formaldehyde (a chemical Nancy compares to cyanide in its toxicity) at 86 degrees F, which we all know is below body temperature, thereby poisoning anyone who ingests it!

If this seems at all implausible to you, then you may have a modicum of sense. Just as there is no one substance that will cure all diseases, no magical panacea, there is also no one substance that causes all diseases. Anyone claiming that one chemical can cause the above list of medical complaints should not be taken seriously. Another red flag is raised when the email claims that the reason aspartame hasn't been banned yet is because the Evil Aspartame Overlords are paying off every scientists, university and government health authority in the entire world to keep it a secret.

This is the point when you smile and nod and back away from the crazy person.

Here are a few facts to set the record straight: aspartame has been proven by study after study to be safe for the vast majority of consumers; the exception is in the case of phenylketonuerics, who cannot metabolise it (hence the warning 'contains phenylalanine'); aspartame does not cause Multiple Sclerosis (as stated by several MS organizations who are certainly not in the pockets of the evil aspartame overlords); aspartame is safe for use by diabetics (as stated by several diabetic organizations also not in the pockets of the EAOs); the vast majority of proof takes the form of unconfirmed anecdotes; aspartame consumption has been shown to cause headaches in a very small percentage of the population but then again so has caffeine; snopes.com lists the contents of the Markle Email as an urban legend; so does About.com.

So where does Betty Martini fit into all of this? Well, it is a point of contention as to whether the 'Nancy Markle' who supposedly wrote the article featured in the email even exists. It's widely accepted that the article was actually a talk presented by one Betty Martini at a conference. Whether Nancy Markle was someone in the audience who saw fit to transcribe the talk and present the work as her own, or whether she was a pseudonym adopted by Martini, is unknown. What is not contested is that the sentiment and statements made are Martini's.

So who is this woman who has seen fit to warn the world of the dangers of aspartame? A medical doctor perhaps? Betty claims in her bio that she worked in the medical field for 22 years, but also says that she had 3 children instead of a doctor's degree (but doesn't say what, if any, qualification she does have). It seems she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was cured by a miracle herb. This may have been the start of Betty's road from responsible medical worker to outright kook, and the FDA's banning of the supposed cure certainly turned her against them permanently. Then in 1993 Betty was investigating the cause of a friend's severe neurological problems, and diagnosed him with aspartame disease (remember, Betty is not a doctor). She promptly founded an organization known as Mission Possible International, commited to removing the aspartame from our food. It doesn't seem like they've had much success so far.

It's funny in some ways that the anti-aspartame movement distances themselves from her, yet embrace Nancy Markle. From website nancymarkle.com comes the following opposing statements (on the same page):

Nancy Markle, where are you? If you ever show up, please check in with us! It was the much-criticized Nancy Markle Letter that led a lot of people to aspartame awareness, and most of them are very grateful for that.

DISCLAIMER: The owners of the website, The Aspartame Victims Support Group, do not endorse any statements made by Betty Martini. Niether do we discount them on the the grounds that she might have disseminated them. We are not associated with her, and we will be re-doing this website in the future to clearly reflect that. We are aware that she has certain alleged credibility problems, and we do not want our efforts to be tied to the negative publicity that she has received.

And yet the also state on their site that "a whole lot of people, tens of thousands, perhaps even millions by now, have found out the truth about aspartame thanks to the so-called "Nancy Markle Letter", a piece really written by Betty Martini."

So they treat her like two different people when it suits their ends to be distanced from her disproved rantings, but still note that it is the same person. What we have here is a classic case of kookdom: a woman who began a career in the medical field, was sucked into woo woo medicine during a time when she was obviously desperate and vulnerable, and who has declared war on the very establishment she once diligently served.

See here the mark of kookdom: the long list of complaints, the single cure, the cries of conspiracy, the use of pseudonyms to maintain a semblance of legitimacy, the medium of the email chain letter. Learn these marks well, for you will know the kook by his actions.

Dembski at it again

2006-05-15T13:07:00.001+02:00

Well it seems Wild Bill has been at it again. Last week, on his blog Uncommon Descent (or should we call it Uncommon Dissent, given the rarity of opposing opinions?) former midweek cuckoo William Dembski accused NCSE President Kevin Padian of being a racist. According to Dembski:

In two recent “defend science” talks, one at Cal Berkeley and the other at Kansas University, Padian singled out an Asian-American church that supports ID. In March, Berkeley’s IDEA Club sponsored two talks that I gave to packed houses on the Berkeley campus (go here). Some of the key members in that IDEA Club are also members of this church. Padian now explicitly names this church (Berkland Baptist Church) in his public talks and describes the members of the church that attended my lectures as “young,” “Asian,” and “fundamentalist,” and that this is “what we are up against today.”

I would link to the post, but it has been removed, for reasons to be explained shortly. Panda's Thumb reacted very quickly, pointing out that Padian had not been at the talk (or even in the state) at which Dembski claimed this racial slur occured. Dembski parried with a lame excuse that his anonymous informants had been incorrect about the person involved in the talk, and his puppet DaveScot appeared on Panda's Thumb under a pseudonym (Ombudsman) defending Dembski's conclusion. Later, it seems that Pandian wrote to Dembski pointing out he had crossed the slander line, and had better apologise and remove the offending post. Dembski complied, and gave a very lame apology, of the "I'm sorry but it wasn't my fault and I'm still right anyway" variety.

We shouldn't really expect anything more of Bill, given his history. We're talking about a man who reported an innocent person to the Feds as planning to commit genocide, also based on second- or third-hand information and Bill's habit of taking quotes wildly out of context. But he has really outdone himself this time. By putting quotes around each individual word, Bill stretches the very limit of honest quoting. There is no indication that the words were consecutive, in that order, or even in the same sentences. And who cares if Padian did describe a particular church's congregation as young asian fundamentalists if it is true? Is it now racist to call an asian an asian?

It is blatantly obvious that Bill was quote mining in the extreme here, but he tries to defend even this. In his 'apology' he states:

Padian in his letter above does not dispute that he singled out "young" "asian" "fundamentalists" as supporters of ID

He doesn't have to dispute the contents of a talk he didn't give, and not disputing something explicitly is not the same as saying you were right! Moron!

I swear, when i finally get the power to explode heads from a distance, Bill is on my Top 10.

A few links for you on this fine friday

2006-05-12T16:11:00.000+02:00

Go to Rolling Stone to read a great article on Scientology. Learn some things you never realised, such as scientology's position on homosexuality (bad), interracial relationships (bad), and non-scientologists (referred to as Wogs). This gives you a lot of insight in LRH's personal beliefs - it seems he was a big homophobic racist. For those of you in the US who may not know (i think it's chiefly British slang), 'wog' is a disparaging term used to refer to a person of color, usually those of african origin. The US equivalent would be 'nigger'. LRH would have been very aware of this as the UK was his base of operations for quite some time while he was being investigated by various US federal authorities.

Michael Shermer reviews SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless by investigative journalist Steve Salerno.

The Treatment Action Campaign succeeds in getting the Chambe HIV and AIDS Healing Scheme ads pulled for falsely claiming they can cure "HIV and AIDS and related diseases". It's only one small battle won in the war against HIV/AIDS fraud.

And Tony Snow, the new spokespuppet for Bush, puts his foot where his mouth is when it comes to evolution. Here's a quote that shows exactly how much Snow knows about evolution and how qualified he is to talk about it:

Today, evolutionary theorists find themselves at wits' end because the fossil record provides no evidence of any species ever turning into another. We know species adjust to environmental conditions -- ever notice how tall kids are these days? -- and that natural selection does occur. But there's nothing to vindicate the notion of an evolutionary leap.

Wow. To quote the Index to Creationist Claims:

We would not expect to observe large changes directly. Evolution consists mainly of the accumulation of small changes over large periods of time. If we saw something like a fish turning into a frog in just a couple generations, we would have good evidence against evolution.

Nuff said.

She should have seen it coming...

2006-05-11T13:54:00.000+02:00

"Gypsy Psychic" Linda Marks has finally been brought to book for years spent defrauding the foolish and the gullible. She was sentenced to 4 years in prison and ordered by the court to pay back $2-million to her victims.

Linda, with the help of husband James and police detective Jack Makler, stole millions of dollars from the desperate, who believed her when she told them their money was cursed, and they had to give it to her for cleansing. For some reason, they believed her when she said she'd give it back. Linda commited fraud again, and again, and again, and again (and that was just from the very first page off a google search). Each time she managed to slither out of trouble, with the help of her paid-off police officer. So it was only fitting that when she finally went down, she brought him down with her.

There is a lesson to be learned here - not every psychic out there is a well-meaning but delusional fool. Some of them are master manipulators, who will exploit your credulity for all it is worth. Marks' scam only worked because people believe in things like curses, magic and miracle cures. As far as I'm concerned, the court should certainly have jailed Marks and Makler, but they shouldn't have made her give the money back to her victims. They don't deserve it, and an example needs to be made of them, fools that they are. Because her 'victims' were practically willing accomplices, so quickly and unquestioningly did they fall for her tricks. Their punishment for idiocy and for believing in flim-flam is that they got burned, and they shouldn't be made to feel any better about that. If anything, they should be put up on the stocks next to her.

She should have been forced to donate the cash to the JREF or some other organization dedicated to teaching the slobbering masses not to fall for this kind of crap.

Midweek Cuckoo: Eric Julien

2006-05-10T13:35:00.000+02:00

According to his bio, Eric Julien (aka Jean Ederman) is a retired French Military air traffic controller. Eric is very concerned about what will happen to our planet on May 25:

What will occur on May 25, 2006? Perhaps a planetary catastrophe originating from the Atlantic Ocean due to a medium size impact event. On this assumption, a series of giant waves, including one méga tsunami almost two hundred meters in height, will be born from a succession of underwater eruptions. These watery giants, decreasing with distance, will touch the majority of the Atlantic coasts; in particular, those most at risk lie between the equator and the tropic of Cancer. The victims of May 25 2006 will be tens of millions. The devastated survivors will be more numerous still. The economic losses will be enormous, well beyond the scales of destruction hitherto tested by our civilization. North America and Europe will not be saved, but will be affected in less dramatic proportions. By extension, other remote countries will be also affected.

What could have lead to Eric believing, in the face of all evidence, that this terrible event is about to occur? Three things:

On May 14, Comet 73/P Schwassmann-Wachmann will pass within 10 million miles of earth. The comet broke up in 1995 and is composed of a number of fragments of various sizes.
Two crop circles corroborate his story: one which appeared in 1995 showing the entire solar system, but with the Earth missing, and another that predicted that Julien himself would be the one to bring news of the great destruction to earth.
The aliens told him so through their telepathic mind link with him.

And there you have it! Irrefutable proof that a terrible tsunami will take thousands of lives on May 25! Ignore the astronomers when they point and laugh, for they know not what they do!

Or maybe it's not May 25 exactly. Eric himself isn't quite sure:

I received on April 7, 2006 a telepathic message from extraterrestrial friends. According to them, a méga-tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean I had experienced in a lucid dream three years ago, would occur around MAY 25, 2006 . Perhaps two or three days before or after.

So, some time that week. Or thereabouts. Anyway, i'll be in my bunker. See you guys after armageddon.

Link-Whorage Allsorts

2006-05-09T18:29:00.000+02:00

(i realise it's possible only the saffers in the audience may get that title... do you people overseas have that manna from heaven known as liquorice allsorts?)

Anyway, over on scienceblogs they're asking the bloggers the question: if you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?

It's an interesting question, and there have been some interesting answers (none, scientology, embedded advertising, the nuke, landmines, etc). I think my answer would be:

Spam.

And i mean all sorts of spam. Phone spam (no, i do NOT want another credit card). Door to door spam (yes Jehovah's Witnesses, i'm looking at you). Email Spam (half of Nigeria would suddenly be unemployed). Comment Spam (not even really sure who's responsible for that shit). That weird not-quite-meat-stuff that comes in a can. Well, maybe not that last one, because then we wouldn't have that wonderful ditty brought to us by the gentlemen of Monty Python's Flying Circus. But you get the drift. I think the world would get along just fine without spam.

My second choice would be scientology, but someone else already picked it. And speaking of scientology (see that segue?), while TomKat insist that their baby's name 'Suri' means Princess in Hebrew, some scholars are not only saying that it doesn't mean Princess, they're also saying what it does mean isn't all that flattering. Says Gideon Goldenberg, a linguistics professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:

"I really don’t know what they were thinking when they chose this name. It’s a term that denotes expulsion, like ‘Get out of here’. It’s pretty blunt.”

I think what the good professor is trying to say, although not in so many words, is that her name means Fuck Off. Can the Hebrish in the audience confirm (TW, I'm looking at you)?

Lastly, Al over at _villaLife (i just work with him, i take no responsibility) has posted that old chestnut, the MC Hammer Can't Touch This video. Watch it. Tell me you do not laugh uncomfortably at the memory of the Eighties.

Surely that's illegal, even in Africa

2006-05-09T18:09:00.000+02:00

Most days, living in Cape Town you could make yourself believe that South Africa has at least a veneer of the First World about it. But some days, you are jarringly reminded that this is the Third World, and that we are living in Africa.

Case in point: this weekend I was sitting in the shoe department of a middle class department store, in a middle class mall, in a middle class suburb, trying on a pair of Cats. This was also the men's shoe department, because I just so happen to prefer the style of boots they had there. I was sitting on the bench provided for the very purpose of trying on shoes, and next to me on the bench sat a large african woman breastfeeding her baby. Not subtly, i may add. Her tits were out for all the world to see, and she was just sitting there in the men's shoe department, staring off into space, while her child suckled at her exposed breast.

I'm no prude, i can assure you of that, but surely even in Africa indecent exposure is still illegal? Seriously, if someone was found breastfeeding in the middle of a department store in the US, UK, or Australia, how long would it be before she was hustled out by management, if not reported to security? In the states especially, the populace has a collective stroke if even a little side-boob appears in an advert - I think a woman with her entire breast out in public would be considered socially unacceptable, if not illegal. Not here though. People just walked past as if nothing was wrong with this bizarre and tasteless tableau.

And yes, we're adults, we should be able to deal with a little nudity. But I might add that the men's shoe department was right next to the children's wear department. Do you really want to be taking your child to get a new jacket, and have her shout at the top of her lungs, "Mommy! I can see that lady's boobs!"

Jacob Zuma - Not Guilty, Not Innocent

2006-05-09T10:30:00.000+02:00

Well, as most of you who read the papers or watch the news will know, Jacob Zuma has been acquitted of rape. This is exactly the outcome i expected, as it was the correct legal decision to make. I say this only because there was reasonable doubt, and in the presence of reasonable doubt the judge had no choice but to acquit him. In a move that was strangely reminiscent of the O.J. Simpson trial, Zuma got off because of shoddy police work. If the policeman who had investigated had thought to write down everything Zuma said, and had thought to read him his rights before questioning him, i believe things may be different. But as it stands, in the words of Zenstar, he got Cochraned.

Now, that's the verdict in the court of the land. In the court of public opinion, the man is guilty as sin. A man who can claim that a woman wearing a skirt is asking for it, a man who claims that a Zulu woman who wants sex will charge you with rape if you don't sleep with her, a man who can offer to pay lobola for her if she drops the charges, a man who was admittedly cheating on his wives and concubines with the complainant whether it was rape or not... if this man did not rape this woman, he is certainly capable of it. He has demonstrated that in his mind, women are either property or whores.

But that's the rape trial, over and done with. Now for the corruption trial. Does the fun ever stop for the ex-deputy president of our great land?

And the complainant? Still un-named, she is now being hurried into exile outside of the country - indeed, outside of the continent - because if her name is revealed, or if she remains anywhere within reach, there is a good chance that Zuma's supporters will kill her. And they will do it in his name, those proud 100% Zulu boys.

Random Friday Five

2006-05-05T15:50:00.000+02:00

I'm very tired today, due largely to a late night spent beating people at games of Zombies!!! Corps(e) and Cthulhu500, but also due to a little reading of A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin before bed. So here are 5 random (and by random i mean selected for being the most interesting ones i saw today) links for you:

Time Magazine's 100 Influential People: interesting read, 100 blurbs, some written by non-journos. Mostly very well written, except for the J.J. Abrams blurb written by Tom Cruise - that one just made me want to throw up.

Madman on Kuro5hin who supposedly cured his asthma by deliberately infecting himself with african hookworm. Yummy. I may have to do some further investigation on this, because it's very Hulda Clark, but then again it might work.

Dumbasses get what they deserve when they discovered that 'train-surfing' is a bloody stupid idea.

The CIA's world factbook on South Africa. Search for your own country.

And the real names of celebrities, in case you were wondering. Go look at Chuck Norris for a surprise.

Satan's Little Helper

2006-05-04T15:58:00.000+02:00

I tried out the Applied Kinesiology arm pushing trick on Zenstar last night, and it's so easy i actually got a fright as i effortlessly forced Zen's arm to his side. Then he did it to me, and even knowing how it's done i couldn't feel it being done, if that makes sense. I'm resisting, i'm expecting it, and next thing i know my arm just falls. Its so easy it's frightening. If you don't believe me, try it yourself.

Today is the National Day of Prayer in the US. We can thank Dubya for that, he's the one who declared it. As Lippard Blog points out, the religious love to make a big deal out of praying, and ask people to come out and pray on this day, and quote from the bible to support it. One quote they tend to leave out is Matthew 6:5-7:

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
" But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking."

Jesus himself instructs his followers, right before teaching them the Lord's Prayer, not to pray in public. So much for your prayer rallies, your prayer meetings, your prayer circles. Jesus does not approve.

I have also just read a transcript of the Stephen Colbert speech that has everyone talking - and damn is it funny. Very witty, very accurate, and I can see why Dubya didn't enjoy it. Unlike his bizarre double-act with his impersonator, I don't think Bush signed off on Colbert's speech. I don't think Tony Snow did either, what with comments like, "Fox News gives you both sides of every story, the President's side and the Vice President's side." Genius. I can also see why the press are only talking about the president's slapshtick routine with his alter ego, which made him look like a stand-up guy with a sense of humour, and are not mentioning Colbert's genuinely funny monologue, which makes bush and the press look like the idiots they are.

Oh and apparently i'm a very naughty girl:

Satan's Lil' Helper

The results are in, and it appears that you have scored 85%...
Whoa. You're not just an atheist... you're an evil atheist! Satan's Lil' Helper sees atheism as a good excuse for covering up a whole array of misdemeanours and crimes, because after all, there's no divine punishment awaiting them when they meet their doom. Whilst not believing in God, Satan's Lil' Helper would be ready and waiting to give God a metaphysical wedgie should he ever pop into existence. Keep on sinning, you evil little thing, but just try not to get caught...

The Atheist Test written by chi_the_cynic on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Midweek Cuckoo: George Goodheart and the Applied Kinesiologists

2006-05-03T12:56:00.000+02:00

Dr. George J. Goodheart, Jr. DC (that's Doctor of Chiropractic) invented the practice of Applied Kinesiology in 1964. AK posits that diseases of the organs may be detected through changes in the strength of the muscles, detectable through muscle-testing procedures. It flows naturally from chiropractic because all that's been replaced in that last sentence is 'muscles' for 'bones'. That was Goodheart's big contribution to medicine. Both 'disciplines' believe in the existence of a life force that flows through channels or meridians of energy that more or less reflect the body's nervous system. Disease in one organ can, through affecting the complex structure of energy pathways, affect other areas of the body like the spine, or the muscles of the arm. Conversely, manipulation of the spine or the muscles of the arm may in turn either cure the disease or help doctors diagnose the disease.

If you think what i just wrote seems plausible, or if you think it doesn't matter that chiropractors and applied kinesiologists believe in magic and not medicine as long as it makes you feel better, you need to stop reading right now. As far as anyone with an iota of knowledge about biochemistry, anatomy or medicine is concerned, it's a load of bull. AK supporters often truck out all sorts of examples to 'prove' that it works - the achilles reflex test for thyroid gland disease is a common one - but fail to mention that for those tests used by real medical practitioners, there is a well documented anatomical reason for the seemingly unrelated chain of cause and effect. In applied kinesiology, there is no anatomical, biological or chemical connection made between cause and effect, except for these mysterious 'energy channels'. Nor is there any actual evidence that it works.

If the theory alone is not enough to warn you away from AK, then the methods used by the practitioners should be. The primary test used in AK is to have the patient hold a substance in their hand, over the organ in question, or place it under their tongue. The patient must then extend their left arm out to the left, parallel with the floor, and the practitioner then attempts to push the arm towards the ground. This is also done in a prone position, with the arm extended vertically upward and pushed down to a horizontal position. If the practitioner succeeds in pushing your arm down, the subtance you are holding or tasting is bad for your body. If you resist, the substance is good and is then prescribed. There are varying degrees between these two states, as there are varying degrees of 'goodness' and 'badness'. Applied kinesiology is so good at detecting what you need that you can even hold a piece of paper with the substance merely written on it, or your arm strength can be used to test the needs of your child who sits on your lap during the test. Seriously. They believe this.

Perhaps it would all be much more mysterious if it weren't for two things: firstly, the arm pushing technique is a trick, of the kind children learn at school and use to freak out their friends. Peter Bowditch of the Millenium Project has said:

"The parlour trick of pretending to test muscle strength by pushing against some muscle group and then doing it again under supposedly different circumstances is well known. I demonstrate it as a part of talks I give on quackery, where I ask for a volunteer from the audience and test how hard it is to push down an extended arm while they are holding something in the other hand. The test is then performed again with them holding something else and this time I can push the arm down easily. If the talk is being given in a dining room or in a convention hotel it is usually very easy to get packets of both sugar and an artificial sweetener, and I can show how sugar does not affect strength but aspartame makes you weak. If I ever have to demonstrate at a meeting of diet soft drink makers I will of course prove the opposite. It took very little time for me to learn how to do this, and I know of at least three methods of doing the trick."

Secondly, even if the practitioner is not a fraud and does not realise what he is doing, the principle of Ideomotor Action - the ability for the subconscious mind to move the body without the participation or even realisation of the conscious mind - is well known. Because the practitioner and the patient both have certain expectations as to what is good and bad for them, they will unwittingly conspire to obtain the desired outcome. In double blind tests, where neither the patient nor the practitioner know what the substance is, the results are utterly random. Dr. Ray Hyman describes one experiment he was involved in:

"The chiropractors presented as their major example a demonstration they believed showed that the human body could respond to the difference between glucose (a "bad" sugar) and fructose (a "good" sugar). The differential sensitivity was a truism among "alternative healers," though there was no scientific warrant for it. The chiropractors had volunteers lie on their backs and raise one arm vertically. They then would put a drop of glucose (in a solution of water) on the volunteer's tongue. The chiropractor then tried to push the volunteer's upraised arm down to a horizontal position while the volunteer tried to resist. In almost every case, the volunteer could not resist. The chiropractors stated the volunteer's body recognized glucose as a "bad" sugar. After the volunteer's mouth was rinsed out and a drop of fructose was placed on the tongue, the volunteer, in just about every test, resisted movement to the horizontal position. The body had recognized fructose as a "good" sugar.

"After lunch a nurse brought us a large number of test tubes, each one coded with a secret number so that we could not tell from the tubes which contained fructose and which contained glucose. The nurse then left the room so that no one in the room during the subsequent testing would consciously know which tubes contained glucose and which fructose. The arm tests were repeated, but this time they were double-blind -- neither the volunteer, the chiropractors, nor the onlookers was aware of whether the solution being applied to the volunteer's tongue was glucose or fructose. As in the morning session, sometimes the volunteers were able to resist and other times they were not. We recorded the code number of the solution on each trial. Then the nurse returned with the key to the code. When we determined which trials involved glucose and which involved fructose, there was no connection between ability to resist and whether the volunteer was given the "good" or the "bad" sugar.

"When these results were announced, the head chiropractor turned to me and said, "You see, that is why we never do double-blind testing anymore. It never works!" At first I thought he was joking. It turned it out he was quite serious. Since he "knew" that applied kinesiology works, and the best scientific method shows that it does not work, then -- in his mind -- there must be something wrong with the scientific method. This is both a form of loopholism as well as an illustration of what I call the plea for special dispensation. Many pseudo- and fringe-scientists often react to the failure of science to confirm their prized beliefs, not by gracefully accepting the possibility that they were wrong, but by arguing that science is defective."

Applied Kinesiology is a load of bollocks, and anyone who can come up with this nonsense is a quack of note. As an aside, one of the great sadnesses about this proliferation of woowoo is that actual kinesiology - the study of the biology, anatomy and chemistry of human motion - is besmirched by this pathetic hanger-on.

Wii are not impressed

2006-05-02T16:35:00.000+02:00

Recent events surrounding the Nintendo Revolution's renaming have reminded me of something i have often wondered - why isn't there a company out there whose sole reason for existence is to advise other companies on whether or not the product name or slogan they have chosen will incite ridicule? It seems that there must be a market for this kind of company because otherwise Nintendo would never have been able to get away with calling their console the 'Wii'.

There are examples locally that immediately spring to mind. CUM books, for example. Go look at their website, www.cum.co.za. Take note of the fact that they are a Christian organization. Called CUM. On the other hand there is Cape Union Mart, who refuse point blank (and their marketing department have been given specific instructions to this effect) to ever abbreviate the company name. Ever.

Or family restaurant The Spur, whose slogan is 'Come hungry'. Is that anything like cock thirsty?

I can understand when problems occur because you're translating into another language (everyone remembers how Pinto had to be renamed for the spanish speaking audience) but isn't english widespread enough by now that everyone should know to avoid anything even phonetically resembling dirty words? Apparently not.

I swear, this is a job i could do. Someone would come to me with a name or a phrase and say 'what do you think?' And if i laughed out loud, the answer would be obvious. Man, and i could even get paid!

War of the God Killers

2006-05-02T12:45:00.000+02:00

I just finished listening to a podcast of the Audio Martini debate between William Dembski (who has the dubious honour of being a previous Midweek Cuckoo here) and Michael Shermer, champion of skeptics. The debate topic was naturally evolution vs. intelligent design, and took place last december. At the time, the Bad Astronomer predicted that Dembski would display the usual tactics of "making false arguments, using incorrect analogies, quote mining, misrepresenting others’ work, and ... twisting the truth to match what he wants to see." Believe me, BA was not disappointed. Dembski trotted out all the usual engineering analogies, the circuitous arguments designed to avoid the actual question, the mined quotes to support his position as if arguments from authority (even quoted out of context) were real arguments, and consistently failed to give the host, Rick Wood, a straight answer when asked for even one provable tenet or prediction of the 'science' of intelligent design.

There were two things that interested me about his debate: firstly, that Michael Shermer sounds a little like Kermit the Frog, and secondly that Dembski came across as a lot less of a frothing maniac than usual. I think this may largely have been due to the forum - i don't think bufallo bill had the time to build up the head of righteous steam he often does in writing. Mostly, the debate was civil, with very few jibes thrown, and almost no talking over the other participant. However, as the debate progressed and the host began to bring out the Wedge document, the Dover trial, etc, Demski became increasingly flustered. His cool slipped a little, and that sheen of civility began to lose some of its lustre. He ducked, he dodged, he dived, and in the end it was very very obvious he was doing so. Apparently there was a more recent live debate between them, and Dembski did exactly the same thing.

Overall this is no big surprise - debates are not really the forum for discussing scientific questions, and neither are court rooms. At the end of the day it is the science that must speak for itself in the scientific arena, and in the case of intelligent design, there is no science to speak of. As far as the scientific community is concerned, there is no controversy to debate. I would agree with Richard Dawkins on this: there is no point to debating ID supporters, because in the end it comes down to whose rhetoric is better, not who has the facts. Nevertheless, Shermer does an admirable job and should be commended for at least trying.

Now i come to the reason for the title of this post: Shermer and Dembski both brought up points that have made me realise there is a similarity between IDiots and evolutionists that has nothing to do with their intended purpose, but everything to do with the inevitable results of their work.

Firstly, IDiots see evolutionists as having just as big a religious motivation behind their work as IDiots themselves. Dembski threw out a number of quotes to support this, but it's obvious that it's more about colouring evolutionists with the ID crayon than about any truth. ID is backed by a religious objective, so obviously evolutionary biologists must be backed by an equally sinister anti-religious objective. Biologists' only goal, in the eyes of ID, is to kill God. Whether this really is their intention (and for the vast majority it is not), Dembski is right in that it will be the result of showing creation to be a natural process needing no outside interference.

But here's the flip side of the coin: Shermer stated that if ID succeeds, it can only do so by reducing God to a piece of the natural world, no better than an alien from Vega, a smarter human, a tinkerer. Dembski doesn't think there's anything wrong with that, but i would put money on the fact that there are a lot of theologians out there who would not be happy with the metaphysical God being reduced to atoms and forces and physical laws, and his behaviour being that of an engineer and not a benevolent beard in the sky. On the other hand, if ID does succeed in developing real and reliable methods for detecting design in nature, and then do not detect any design at all, they will in the minds of many people, religious and atheist alike, have scientifically disproven the existence of God. In essence, if ID does the job it's meant to do, no matter what the outcome, its only real result will have been to reduce God to either little or nothing. They, too, are god killers.

So at the end of the day, all a debate about Evolution vs. Intelligent design really is, is a debate about which method of killing the God of the Faithful is more scientifically correct.

I love it.

And in local news....

2006-04-28T15:05:00.000+02:00

News from the Zuma trial: Closing arguments began this week as the trial winds down. The prosecution weighs in with questions regarding why Zuma would have unprotected sex with someone he knew was HIV positive, why he refuses to disclose his HIV status to the court, why he had in his possession herbs for treating HIV if he does not have it, why he lied about where the 'event' took place, why he claims that by wearing a skirt she was asking for it, why he claims that if she had wanted sex and he hadn't given it to her she would have accused him of rape anyway, and lastly why an HIV-positive lesbian who saw him as a father figure would want to have unprotected sex with him.

The defence's closing argument revolves largely around claiming that there is a big conspiracy to discredit Zuma so that he can't run for president in 2008. That's pretty much their strongest argument.

In more news from the offices of the mayor of Cape Town, the DA's audit to find out what the ANC has left them with has discovered R25 million of city assets and property missing, stolen or just generally unaccounted for. This includes not only the expected staplers and calculators and pens, but also guns, bullet proof vests, and 'heritage' artwork and valuables (which is alone worth R6 million). It's like the outgoing mayorship took everything that wasn't bolted down. Someone should check the kitchen to see if the sink is still there.

And lastly, the DA is now calling for the Home Affairs minister to resign after Home Affairs announced it temporarily could not issue any passports. Why can they not issue passports, you ask? Is this some terrible foreign affairs bungle that means South Africans are no longer allowed to leave the country? No, quite simply, Home Affairs has run out of blanks. Run out. Of blank passports. So they can't make anymore. Until they get more blanks.

*slaps forehead*

Snow Job

2006-04-28T15:01:00.000+02:00

Well, Bush has appointed Fox network's Tony Snow to replace Scott McClellan as White House Press Secretary, thereby confirming something we've all known, all along: that Fox News is merely the propaganda wing of the Republican Party.

There is no 'I' in 'Wii'

2006-04-28T14:46:00.000+02:00

Nintendo's decision to change the name of the Revolution to 'The Wii' is probably the single worst marketing decision to come out of that paragon of gaming companies. My god, these are the people who brought us the d-pad, what the hell are they thinking?

Wii. Pronounced 'wee'. As in 'taking a wee', 'i need to wee', and 'wee in your pants'. As in urine.

I mean, can you actually imaging saying 'I'm playing with my Wii' with a serious face?

If you think i'm joking, check out the official announcement. Attempt to keep your lunch down while you swallow such saccharine marketing drivel as "But now Nintendo needs you. Because, it's really not about you or me. It's about Wii. And Wii will change everything."

Excuse me while i throw up on my keyboard.

Linkage

2006-04-27T15:36:00.000+02:00

A few links for you today:

Body Autonomy put forward plainly and clearly as an argument for abortion here and here. Bluey the Body Rights Thingamabob sure knows his stuff. I'd never really thought of the right to body autonomy as the basis of all rights, but now that he mentions it, it makes more sense than a lot of other stuff about rights. The body defines the person, the person defines the need for personal right. Fuck with the right to someone's autonomy over their body, you fuck with their personhood, and subsequently undermine all personal rights. Simple, really. Also, Bluey is rather cute.

Zenstar rants about Snoop Dogg and other gangsters and their prison records (Snoop Dizzle has been arrested again, for the umpteenth time). The only industry where serving time should be a pre-requisite for doing well is organized crime. End of story. I'm reminded of SA's own Mzekezeke, who wins fans by always appearing in public wearing a prison uniform and a ski mask. Lovely. Teach those kids some values, why dontcha?

Tom Cruise sure doesn't seem to hold is duties to promote Mission Impossible III very highly. First, he uses them as a bargaining chip to get Comedy Central and Paramount's parent corporation, Viacom, to force Comedy Central to pull a South Park rerun that poked fun at scientology, now he ditches same duties to go shopping for baby clothes. I wonder what Paramount thinks of all this.

In local news, another stupid person dies doing something stupid. Someone pried open the lift doors of a building in Durban, to discover *gasp* an empty shaft on the other side. Then he slipped, fell, and died. There is a very good god damn reason the doors were closed. Darwin awards, anyone?

And finally, how to know if someone is a bona fide kook.

Midweek Cuckoo: Olga Visser

2006-04-26T17:47:00.000+02:00

Michelle Olga Visser has had an interesting journey into the fringes of medicine. She began her career as a perfusionist, the technician who controls the heart-lung machine during open heart surgery. She is not a medical doctor, or a medical researcher. So it was with some skepticism that crionics researchers treated the announcement that Olga, her husband Siegfried, and a handful of Pretoria academics had discovered a cryoprotectant substance that would allow organs to be thawed from liquid nitrogen without any damage. Indeed, she claimed that in tests, rat hearts had successfully begun beating after being thawed, and that there was reason to believe this would successfully be applied to humans. Were it true, it would mean great things for human cryonics, a big industry in the United States where many people are willing to pay a high price for a chance at cheating death.

Naturally eyebrows were raised, especially considering there had as yet been no papers published in any of the reputable scientific, medical or cryobiology journals. Olga defended her discovery, vigorously flaming posters on sci.cryonics who dared to question her evidence, claiming there was a conspiracy to suppress her work, and threatening to exclude the unbelievers from future lucrative licencing deals. Through all this, she insisted on keeping the cryopreservant formula a secret. When asked for more detail such as toxicity or side effects, Olga stated mysteriously that "Toxicity clinical trials with humans for use of the compound as a drug are almost completed here in SA, and results will be made available before the end of this year." Remember that... we'll come back to it later. For now, note that she was conducting human clinical trials using a substance for which she had not published a single journal article, and the composition of which she still would not even disclose.

Despite all this, Olga succeeding in attracting interest from The Cryonics Institute and Alcor Foundation, who offered to bring her over to the states to demonstrate her technique. She accepted the offer, and by all accounts the demonstration was a complete failure. This was of course after Alcor had already reportedly paid her $25,000 for the rights to the technology.

Finally, it seemed that the composition of Olga's cryoprotectant had slipped out. On Usenet, a message from three respected names in cryonics (Mike Darwin, Steve Harris and Brian Wowk) noted "Even the Visser agent (dimethyl formamide) and other peralkyl-amides, while more penetrating than glycerol, were found to be intensely hemolytic (membrane toxic) at vitrifiable concentrations. (Peralkylamides were also found to be poor cryoprotectants at lower concentrations, including 25%, in a variety of relevant systems.)"

Olga did not respond to this, which was unusual considering her vitriolic flaming of anyone who had previously sought to discredit her. It seemed that the agent had been discovered, and not only was it not remarkable or even novel, it has also been shown not to work. Many people thought this was the last they'd hear from Olga Visser.

Not so. Two weeks later, Olga was back on Usenet, this time announcing the discovery of a Miracle AIDS drug, code named Virodene. She had presented it directly to members of the South African cabinet, including Nelson Mandela and then-Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma (ex-wife of Jacob Zuma) and was looking for $800,000 from the government to continue research. Oddly enough, Olga would once again not disclose the formula, and had not published anything in any journals. Olga and her coworkers claimed: "Virodene kills the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in the body and allows people infected with HIV to live a long and normal life. One of the most dramatic trial results was that Virodene could apparently even pull full-blown Aids sufferers back from the brink of death, reverting their condition to that of HIV-positive, in terms of which they are no longer so susceptible to opportunist diseases."

Olga was apparently so convinced of the viability of this drug that she began tests on human patients before the SA Medicines Control Council (MCC) had given her the green light. That made her tests illegal in SA, but that certainly wasn't going to stop Olga.

When asked how she had stumbled across this incredible discovery, Olga claimed that she had discovered the anti-viral properties of Virodene while conducting cryopreservation experiments. Sound familiar? In fact, it wasn't long before the truth came out: Virodene was dimethyl formamide, the same supposed miracle cryopreservant, which is in fact an industrial solvent. Short term side effects included abdominal pains, nausea, vomiting, jaundice and rashes. Long term side effects included liver damage, cancer, and death. The MCC banned Virodene immediately. This was in 1997.

Fast forward to now: Virodene is still being advertised online, and Visser is claiming that not only is it non-toxic and efficacious, she is also claiming it has been cleared for use by the MCC. As I reported yesterday, they will be investigating. It seems that Visser is so determined to make money off a well-known toxic substance by passing it off as a miracle anything, she is willing to tell just about any lie.

I'll quote Dr. Steve Harris in closing:

"Do you suppose, then, that when Visser went to all those people with AIDS asking to use DMF on them (those that she did ask), she told them ALSO all about her interest in "Virodene P058" as a *cryoprotectant* for hearts -- one which she needed to be test in humans for reasons other than AIDS? Remember Helsinki and informed consent. Had these patients known of this other interest of Visser's, do you suppose some of them might have started to wonder if just perhaps they were being used as guinea pigs for some other purpose which had nothing to DO with AIDS? That perhaps they were in the grip of a madwoman?

What do YOU think?"

References:

The MCC bans Virodene
Hearts, Brains and Minds, an article on Visser by cryologist Charles Platt
Mail & Guardian profile on Visser
sci.cryonics posts

Quickies

2006-04-25T14:01:00.000+02:00

I've had one hell of a day today, what with being about 5 hours late for work due to my car's battery committing suicide. Turns out that replacing it is not enough, as it seems like there might be an electrical problem which caused the battery to be drained in the first place. So tomorrow morning i get to visit the auto-electrician too. Why do emergency expenses always happen right at the end of the month?

Anyway, not a lot of time to blog today, so I'll just throw some quickies out there:

Scandal rag You had an article about Kevin Ray Underwood, and mentioned his blog. They also had a nice shot of his profile including the Cannibal Outfitting question. What amazes me about their standard of journalism is twofold: firstly, they misquoted the question despite the screenshot being right there on the same page; secondly they stated that Underwood had asked the question when it was in fact Blogger that asked it of him. I have emailed them to set them straight. We shall see if they publish the letter.

Talking about the You again, their only reaction to letters of disapproval about their agony aunt's appearance in court in support of Jacob Zuma, and basic admission that she lied to letter writers to make sure they didn't commit suicide, was to make a small mention in the editorial that she was acting in her private capacity. Wimps. They should have fired her ass.

In parliament, Mbeki has questioned the constitutionality of a proposed ammendment bill that gives government control over independant communications industry regulatory body ICASA. Why would this be a problem, besides the fact that independant regulatory bodies should be, well, independant? Because the government owns a large chunk of every single major communications provider in the country. Lunacy. Isn't it interesting that the bill passed parliamentary scrutinizing without issue, and it took the president to turn around and question it?

In another unbelievable move, the Health Department has stated that it will be investigating the sale of a supposed AIDS cure that has not only not been clinically approved, but which is also largely composed of industrial solvents. Virodene is being marketed as safe, but so far the side effects have been those you would expect of people drinking industrial solvents. Now what i want to know is this: why is the health department suddenly so interested in investigating false claims of efficacy in AIDS medication, when in the same breath it's advocating the use of untested 'traditional' remedies? Maybe it's just that Virodene won't give them a slice of the pie.

And lastly, Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille was attacked yesterday by ANC members at a public talk about service provision in townships. ANC members in the audience hurled chairs at her, with one chair actually striking her in the head, and one ANC member threatened her with a knife before security hurried her out of the hall. Their cars were pelted with stones and half-bricks as they left. This is what happens when the ANC - who campaigned for democracy so well - lose a democratic election. They really can't believe that it's possible, and resort to violence. Or maybe they just can't believe that finally someone is actually doing something about housing and service provision, and it's not their party. I find it interesting that two news headlines i saw on my way to work today were 'Zille announces plan for housing' and 'Zille threatened with knife'. Does that make any kind of sense?

Naturally the ANC are denying they had anything to do with it. ANC provincial chairperson James Ngculu said it "worried" him that people automatically assumed that ANC supporters were responsible. Automatically assumed? This is yet another case of the ANC forgetting that video cameras actually record things: the chair-throwers are shown quite clearly wearing ANC shirts, and singing ANC songs. But then again maybe it's all just a conspiracy to discredit the ANC, just like everything else that's ever made them look bad.

SA Govt Ready to Seize First White-Owned Farms

2006-04-21T16:52:00.000+02:00

What did I say? What did i fucking say?

This is how it starts. Of course talks are going to fail. Government wants them to fail. Why would it pay market price for something it can get for peanuts?

Scientology population increases by one

2006-04-19T18:00:00.000+02:00

Katie Holmes gave birth to a healthy baby thetan yesterday, and if all went as planned neither she nor anyone else in the delivery room used any words during the birth. She was allowed to make noise and take drugs, you understand, just not speak any actual words. This is the basis of scientology's 'silent birth' theory, which says that any words spoken during a time of trauma (such as birth) may 'engram' the mother and/or child, creating problems later in life. Scientologists are not allowed to speak any words while enduring pain for this same reason, so you can forget about swearing if you've just stubbed your toe. You're doing yourself untold damage.

Anyway, back to the story at hand, Katie gave birth to an apparently human girl who the couple are naming Suri. Is it just me, or is it a bit odd that her name is made up of the middle letters of her surname? Suri Cruise. That's just retarded.

In a weird coincidence, Brooke Shields gave birth to a healthy baby girl on exactly the same day. Cruise made headlines (and a fool of himself) last year when he criticized Brooke for taking antidepressants to overcome her post-partum depression. I think it would be hi-fucking-larious if Katie developed a little post-natal psychosis of her own - let's see how Cruise handles that.

Midweek Cuckoo: Wilhelm Reich

2006-04-19T12:06:00.000+02:00

Wilhelm Reich, M.D. (1897-1957) claimed to have discovered "orgone energy", the most powerful force in the universe. Despite numerous attempts by many scientists, including Einstein himself, no one was ever able to find evidence in nature or in Reich's experiments that this energy existed.

Reich, who was initially trained as a psychoanalyst, became convinced that a biophysical energy permeated all things, and that this so called 'orgone' was massless, responsible for all life and is absorbed by all matter, both living and non-living. These orgones are responsible for, among other things, the colour of the sky, heat haze, gravity, galaxies, the failure of political revolutions, and a good orgasm. Reich, who was an associate of Freud, started all this muddy thinking by trying to find the energy responsible for libido, and apparently ended up discovering midichlorians. If he'd done it today, George Lucas would probably have sued.

Reich believed all disease was merely an imbalance in the body's orgone energy, and that these diseases such as cancer could be cured by addressing this imbalance. To this effect he built 'orgone accumulators' (basically just a telephone-booth sized box) that he had patients sit in. This apparently accumulated orgone energy, which was absorbed by the patient, leading to supposed miraculous recovery.

Another of Reich's inventions was his so-called 'cloudbuster', which used orgone energy to create rain. He also claimed that he had done battle with evil aliens who were attempting to increase the amount of negative orgone energy on earth.

Naturally the FDA was all over Reich and required that he prove that his orgone accumulator worked or quit making fraudulent claims. He responded that his science was so advanced that even if he tried to explain it, the FDA would not understand it. The FDA investigated anyway, found it to be useless, and ordered an injuction against Reich. When Reich continued 'treating' people with his orgone accumulators, he was thrown in jail. He died there of a heart attack a year later.

Despite the very obvious lunacy of his claims, Reich has his followers even today. Websites like orgonelab.org, orgone.org and orgonomy.org claim that his experiments have been verified, that he is a martyr to the evil FDA, and that orgonomy is a real science (they have their own journal and everything, so it must be). Also, you can buy their crackpot orgone devices and literature for plenty of money. There's even a museum. They get very upset if you tell them that their hero was a nutcase and that no one other than a true believer in orgonomy has every been able to reproduce his 'experiments' or 'proof'.

Some people say this guy was unfairly persecuted by the US Govt, that he didn't deserve to get thrown in jail. I think that when you are telling cancer patients you can cure their life threatening illness when you can't, you should either be in jail or an asylum. You certainly shouldn't just be left to run around giving false hope to people and taking their money.

The Straight Dope on Wilhelm Reich
Quackwatch on Wilhelm Reich
Skepdic.com on Wilhelm Reich

Google Blogger Predicts Man's Cannibalism

2006-04-19T11:51:00.000+02:00

Oklahoma - Kevin Ray Underwood is arrested for kidnapping, killing and dismembering 10 year old Jamie Rose Bolin. Police believe the motive was "part of a plan to kidnap a person, rape them, torture them, kill them, cut off their head, drain the body of blood, rape the corpse, eat the corpse then dispose of the organs and bones."

The interesting part: Kevin had a blog. Go check it out quick before the authorites get to it. Otherwise, Insomnia Report has a good synopsis and some excepts.

The even more interesting part: Blogger profile asks you a random question when you're creating your profile. If you answer it, the answer goes on your blog profile. Kevin's random question? If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner? His answer? The skin of last night's main course.

Explain that, skeptics.

Various Stupidity over the Easter Weekend

2006-04-18T15:04:00.000+02:00

Well, it seems the world didn't take a holiday from stupid this weekend. In the news:

People in the Philippines think it's a good idea to get crucified with actual nails over Easter. They say they do this for penance, or in prayer. In reality they do it because they are stupid. The only person who gave this practice the dignity it deserves is the Japanese guy who allowed the footage of his crucifixion to be used in porn (and what the hell kind of porn is that anyway?).

This person got what they deserved when it comes to superstition: they got ripped off. Learn a lesson, people, mystics are fraudsters. End of story.

Muslim sectarians (or maybe just one madman acting alone if you believe the government) in Egypt attacked worshippers in Coptic christian churches last friday, killing at least one person. The stupidity here, besides the killing of people for religion? It wasn't Good Friday for Coptics, as they along with Greek Orthodox churches celebrate Easter one week later. Stupid. If you're going to make a religious statement, at least get the god damn date right.

And lastly, South Africa bids farewell to young actor and comedian Brett Goldin, murdered this weekend. Brett and friend Richard Bloom were found naked and face down in a field, each of them having been shot in the back of the head. Brett is best known as a member of Crazy Monkey, the comedy team who created MTV-inserts spoofing Jackass, and who starred in the local comedy Straight Outa Benoni. The stupidity is that the only reason we know who did it is that the perpetrators were arrested in a random Easter Weekend roadblock, and the officer just happened to find Brett's credit card on them. This is how crime is solved in SA - by accident.

Happy Easter, motherfuckers. Nice to see your god was doing his job over the weekend. NOT.

In Farmland, No One Can Hear You Scream

2006-04-18T11:04:00.000+02:00

Zenstar and I went away for the easter weekend with my family, spending three nights in a glorified wooden shack on a farm near Velddrif on the West Coast. For those not familiar with the West Coast, there are only two things that happen here: farming and fishing. The land is arid, good for grazing of sheep, cows and ostriches. Close to the ocean the soil and water are high in salt content, and Cerebos produces a large chunk of their salt out here. The coast itself is dotted with fishing villages like Paternoster, tiny dorpies where the only income is the sea harvest, and tourists. Surrounded by so much barrenness, so much open space, the thing that came to mind was: if we were attacked out here, no one would hear us scream.

It may seem a little paranoid as thoughts go, but in SA it's utterly realistic. Just this weekend an elderly couple were brutually attacked on their farm, tortured and left for dead. The man was forced into a bath of hot water, and the soles of his feet were so badly burned that they peeled completely off, and were left by the attackers on the couple's dining room table. The wife was beaten so savagely that she ended up in the ICU for five days and suffered a heart attack. This was all apparently for R250 in cash and a few appliances. No one heard them scream.

A few years ago Interpol ranked South African Farmer as the most dangerous job in the world outside of a warzone, with 313 murders per 100,000 population. That's twice the death toll in Iraq, and four times as high as the murder rate for any other minority in SA. An estimated 1,700 farmers have been killed since the handover to the ANC. Organizations such as the Human Rights Commission and GenocideWatch.org have expressed concern about the death toll, and London's Sunday Times has even run an article detailing the numerous atrocities.

What has the government done about this? Well, for a start they disbanded the army veterans group known as the Commandos, who took it upon themselves to patrol the farms as volunteers, keeping the peace in the middle of nowhere. When residents asked who they should now call on to protect them, they were told to call the police or the army. Government fails to note however that for the majority of farms, the closest police or army are several hours away, whereas the Commandos were usually fellow farmers, only minutes away. Very constructive move.

Until recently, the refrain was always 'At least it's not as bad as Zimbabwe'. Our next door neighbour, celebrating this week it's 26th year of freedom, used to be known as the Breadbasket of Africa. It used to be Africa's greatest producer of grain, exporting all over the world. Today, thanks to the government's land reform policy that saw white owned farms seized and white farmers fleeing the country in legitimate fear of their lives, Zimbabwe does not have enough grain to feed itself. Those farms that were handed over are now being used for subsistence farming, whereas previously they were large scale producers feeding the entire country. As a direct result of the Zimbabwean government's meddling, inflation is over the 900% mark, leading to stories very similar to those heard during the great depression. Zimbabweans carry their cash around in trailers, their salary has devalued between the time they are paid and the time they get to the shops to buy bread, and everyone in Zimbabwe is now a millionaire in Zim dollars.

The only thing keeping South Africa from making the same mistakes has been the "willing buyer, willing seller" policy that had until recently been in place. Naturally, despite farmers being willing sellers, government was never the willing buyer. They demanded sale prices well below market value, and when the farmers refused to sell their farms at a loss, the government eventually gave up. They have now instituted a new, Zimbabwe-like land reform policy, under which they are free to seize farms whenever and however they like, with little to no reimbursement to the farmer.

How long will it be before things fall apart here, I wonder?

Sense of Humour: Absent

2006-04-13T16:41:00.000+02:00

A Kansas State Board of Education member on a recent tour of a middle school objected to an image on a teacher's door, and requested that the principal order the teacher to remove it.

The Board Member? Known Intelligent Design advocate Connie Morris, responsible in part for Kansas' tragic science education policies.

The image? His Noodliness the Flying Spaghetti Monster. All Hail His Noodly Appendage, Forever and Ever, Ramen.

I wonder if this kind of thing counts as religious persecution?

Tiktaalik

2006-04-13T16:29:00.000+02:00

Speaking of transitional fossils, a newsworthy item i missed while on leave was the momentous discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, which is important not only because it is a transitional form between fish and tetrapods, but also because the place and era of its discovery was predicted by paleontologists. Pharyngula has followed this story in a fair amount of detail here, here, and here.

Naturally, the Discovery Institute is scrabbling to explain why transitional fossils don't exist, why evolutionists have never found a transitional fossil, why this isn't a transitional fossil, and why even if it is a transitional fossil it doesn't hurt creationism anyway. In the process, they are only showing how poor their understanding of biology really is. Don't take my word for it, read PZ's articles above. He does a very good job of ripping them a new one, especially in the second article.

Suffice to say, the science vs. intelligent design scoreboard has not changed.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

2006-04-13T15:35:00.000+02:00

At home

A quick snipped from SA: under pressure from several AIDS activist organization, the government has lifted its ban on the Treatment Action Campaign attending an upcoming international conference on HIV/AIDS. The government attempted to bar the TAC from attending the meeting due to "a concern over its position on HIV". Government should very well be concerned over TAC's position, as it is quite simply that government is fucking over the south african people when it comes to AIDS education and treatment. And they're right. Government is only afraid that TAC might bring this up at an international conference and make the health ministry the laughing stock of the meeting. I sincerely hope they do.

Abroad

Archaeologists have unearthed a fossil in a rich human ancestry site in Ethiopia that may very well be a missing link between Ardipithecus and Australopithecus. The importance of the find rests on the fact that fossils from a massive span in the evolutionary history of homo sapiens have been found in a single area, making the argument for their evolution from one to another far stronger than if they were scattered all over the world. People like Erik von Daniken would have us believe that people had cars and space ships back then, but really early man didn't travel much outside of his area of birth, so the fossil finds in this area now form the most complete chain of human evolution ever found. Of course creationists would have us believe this is all a hoax, because according to them no archaeologist has ever found a transitional fossil. Ever.

On a subject with much more tangible impact on daily life, Iowa is in the throes of an outbreak of the Mumps. Whenever something like this happens, the anti-vaccination liars crawl out of the woodworks to lie about how this means that vaccines don't actually work. Of course it seems that none of them are capable of either reading or simple maths, as aetiology and good math, bad math point out. No one ever said that the MMR vaccine is 100% effective; in fact about 5% of the population never respond to the vaccine and do not produce the required antibodies. Even so, the actual number of infected in this 'epidemic' equates to only a tiny percentage of the 5% who are in danger of contracting mumps. That leaves about 99% of the population utterly unaffected by the outbreak. In addition, Iowa is accustomed to about 5 cases of mumps annually, which is why 500 seems like a lot. But it's nothing when you discover that prior to the introduction of routine vaccination, it was not uncommon to experience 20,000 cases a year. And that's just in Iowa.

Even more interestingly, the CDC suspects the outbreak is linked to a previous outbreak in the United Kingdom. And that outbreak, which was much worse, was directly linked to a run of children NOT being vaccinated.

And the award for world's biggest hypocrite goes to...

2006-04-12T17:38:00.000+02:00

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Yes indeed, Manto is now using the media as a scapegoat, saying that if the government's aids prevention campaign fails it is because of their reporting of Zuma's 'showering to reduce the infection risk' tactic.

Am i reading this right? The woman who tells people to eat garlic and african potatoes instead of taking their ARVs, the woman who says that african people should be allowed to use african remedies instead of ARVs, even if they are untested and unproven, the woman who is single-handedly responsible for more confusion about aids medication than anyone else in the country, is saying the media will be responsible if the campaign fails?

Manto, the fault will be yours and no one else's. As a health minister, you have done a piss-poor job. On the other hand, you're pretty damn good at genocide through misinformation.

Science Porn

2006-04-12T17:37:00.000+02:00

PZ shows us why science is fun.

Midweek Cuckoo: William Dembski

2006-04-12T13:44:00.000+02:00

William Albert Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. As such, he is one of the biggest, loudest, most prolific Intelligent Design advocates around. He has a blog on which he and his IDiot friends post plenty of noise with very little signal, and from which it is famously easy to get banned if you so much as hint that you may not agree with his views. Some people have found themselves banned pre-emptively, even, as Dembski's followers have been known to trawl the interweb looking for posters whose opinions may be contrary to Dembski's should they ever choose to air them on his blog.

This alone is probably not enough for him to distinguish himself as a Midweek Cuckoo. Recent actions of his, however, have upped his ranking in the crazy game.

University of Texas Professor Eric Pianka gave a speech in early March describing how the human population was expanding at such a rate that it was due for a biological "crash". Our growth rate coupled with our sociability and mobility is creating the perfect breeding ground for a massive virus to wipe us off the face of the planet. An airborne strain of Ebola, for example, would likely succeed in killing off 90% of the population. The planet as a whole, however, would probably be better off for it, as nature has a tendency to correct populations that have grown to unsustainable levels, and humans are doing more harm than good anyway.

Columnist for the Society for Amateur Scientists' The Citizen Scientist, Forrest M. Mims III, who was present at the speech, understood Pianka as intending to actually create such a virus to wipe out mankind, Dr. Doom style. Mims wrote about his concerns in his column, and the Sequin Gazette-Enterprise picked up on the story and published a scare-mongering article about it.

In response, William Dembski stated on his blog on April 2 that he had reported Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security. Shortly after, the FBI announced it would be interviewing Pianka.

Naturally the blogosphere exploded. Articles by Austringer, Pharyngula, Red State Rabble, the Bad Astonomer and many more have given this bizarre move all the ridicule it deserves. Other attendees of the speech have come forward stating that Pianka did not in any way imply that he had plans for genocide, and in fact he received a standing ovation.

Dembski was undeterred. He even made a public wager as to the eventual outcome:

"I'm willing to wager $1000 with David Hillis that sympathy not just nationally but at UTAustin for Pianka will take a nose dive once his TAS speech goes public. Of course, we need to set the terms of this wager more precisely. But it's a wager easily settled -- Pianka needs merely to make his speech before the TAS public (the actual speech -- not a bowdlerized version of it)."

Of course, a transcript did come to light, as these things do, and it made it pretty obvious that Pianka was planning nothing of the sort, only advising people of a very real, natural danger if we don't sort out our population growth. And what happened? The Gazette-Enterprise withdrew its story from its website, and pro-ID blog Tellic Thoughts retracted their earlier reports of Pianka's genocidal intent. Dembski has been stangely silent as to whether he paid the $1000 he now owes Hillis.

What makes Dembski truly crazy though is that to believe Pianka was serious, to believe strongly enough to report him to the Feds, he had to believe in the possibility that his plan might work. Considering this involves Ebola evolving to an airborne form, and that Dembski has stated time and again that evolution does not exist, he is either totally off his rocker, or lying about something. Personally, i think Homeland Security should be investigating him for falsely reporting someone he knew not to be a threat. Either that or the Discovery Institute should revoke his fellowship for supporting evolution.

But then again, Dembski thinks the Bible Code is a supportive argument for ID. Doesn't he know it's been thoroughly debunked? Of course, if proof and logic were enough the persuade Dembski that an argument is false, he'd have quit ID by now.

Food for Thought

2006-04-11T17:47:00.000+02:00

A capetonian man peddling fake cures to the desperate and dying is due to stand trial for fraud in the United States. Now they just have to find him and drag his sorry ass over there. I wonder what the extradition laws are like in SA?

Stephen van Rooyen and his girlfriend defrauded people with life-threatening illnesses by offering them a fake 'cure'. They are facing a potential 20 years in jail each. They deserve life. The funny thing is, if they had committed this crime in SA instead of USA, they likely wouldn't even be prosecuted. And if they were, all they'd have to do is show that it was a 'traditional' remedy, and they'd be protected by the constitution. Some people say that South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. This is not always a good thing, where it would protect people like this.

In other health news, in response to consumers calling for labelling of GM foods in south africa (one of the few countries to actually use GM foods without whining like little girls about the patents), tests are to be undertaken by the University of the Free State to determine the safety of genetically modified foods. I predict they will find there is no difference between foods genetically modified in a lab and foods genetically modified in the greenhouse, except for speed and accuracy.

It's interesting that consumers are so worried about the chance of genetically modified soy creeping into soy products, but thoroughly welcome the introduction of pork genetically modified to be good for you. What this tells me is that it's the vegetarians doing the whining. I think it's time to reiterate my standpoint on vegetarians: eating them will solve a lot of problems.

And lastly, the Templeton Foundation spent $2million to fund a massive study on the effects of prayer on recovering patients. For those not in the know, the Templeton foundations spends a lot of money on scientists who are religious, or whose science contributes to (christian) religious beliefs (i was actually lectured by George Ellis who won a lot of money from the foundation for being a religious cosmologist). While they often do fund good science, their objectives are pretty obvious: give money to scientists for being religious. Anyway, Dr. Herbert Benson, the scientist leading this particular study, set out to prove that prayer could affect patients recovering from heart surgery. He didn't try to hide his hopes for the outcome - he has always been optimistic when it comes to the subject of prayer and religion, or the foundation would never have given him so much money.

So it's not only a triumph for science, but a triumph for him as a scientist, that the study found no effect whatsoever. None. In fact there may be indication that patients who knew they were being prayed for actually did worse. Why do i say this is a triumph for him as a scientist? Because he reported it. He did the best science he could, came out with what for him was a negative result, and still reported it faithfully and accurately. That's what real scientists do, ladies and gentlemen. They don't hide negative results, they don't fix studies to come out with the result they're looking for. They do good science.

Of course, there will be absolutely no change in the viewpoints of those who believe in the power of prayer. Nothing as simple as cold hard facts or proof can be expected to sway them, now can it?

More from the homeland

2006-04-10T15:53:00.000+02:00

Zuma's rape trial is becoming the laughing stock of the century. Zuma, the former deputy president and former head of SA's National AIDS council, a man who has publicly stated on many ocassions that south africans have a responsibility to use condoms, has undone 15 years of AIDS education in a single bound. Zuma has claimed he had sex with a known-HIV positive woman without a condom, because his work with the AIDS council educated him as to how low the risk of infection was. Also, he had a shower afterwards.

Is he retarded? Seriously, is he?

Also, he says she must have wanted to have sex with him because she wore a skirt when she visited, and she'd never done that before.

Retarded. It's the only explanation.

One moment of actual levity in the trial was when Zuma took the stand. Kemp, Zuma's defence lawyer, asked him, "Mr Zuma, can you tell us whether you are circumcised or not?"

"I am circumcised," Zuma replied.

"Are you happy with that?" Van der Merwe (the Judge) asked De Beer (the lead prosecutor).

"Well, my lord," she said, "I certainly don't want to make an in loco examination."

In other news from the mother country, government is restricting sales of pornographic material to adult shops only. This in itself is not too bad. What's bizarre is the intended restriction of online sales too. And they're not just talking porn, they're also talking sex toys and 'performance enhancing' pills, the majority of which are obtained over the internet. Their claim is that they are doing it for the children, but surely internet sales have nothing to do with that? I mean, if a child is buying dildos online, (a) they are doing it on their parents' internet account without any kind of parental supervision and (b) are using their parents' credit cards to do it. How is this not the parents' fault? And must legitimate consumers and the industry be punished because people can't control their kids? And seriously, what parent doesn't notice a 10-inch black rubber cock arriving in the mail?

Stupidity abounding yet again.

back

2006-04-10T15:16:00.000+02:00

Apologies for the non-existent updation over the last while - i was on leave, and my home is an internet-free zone. You must understand this is not by any choice of my own, and two weeks without internet have made me decide it is time to get me some broadband.

Well, after i get burglar bars on the front windows. That takes priority.

For non-South Africans who may be reading this, allow me to explain why getting broadband in this country is a big decision. Due to the complete monopoly held by the only fixed line operator in the country, Telcom, and due to the fact that Telcom is one third government owned, broadband in SA is 1000% more expensive than in other third world countries, and 2000% more expensive than in first world countries. It is also about a thousand times slower (1mbps vs 1gpbs) and capped (maximum 3gigs download a month is standard). So take what you would pay for a month of broadband service in the US or UK, and multiply that by 2000. That's what it costs to get it here, only slower, capped, and with shitty service to boot. So it's a pretty big financial decision to get broadband, and one that i've been umming and ahing about for a while now.

However, 2 weeks disconnected from the world has forced my hand.

I discovered a few interesting things while on vacation that i will briefly share with you now. I would have blogged about them in more detail at the time, but hah! no internet.

South Africa actually has a law that makes it a criminal act to declare someone to be a witch. Despite the law, thousands of people every year are branded as witches, their houses and possessions burned, and in a best case scenario they are driven out of their villages and ostracized forever more. In a worst case scenario, they and often their family and friends are brutally killed. Who said witch trials went out of fashion with the Inquisition? They seem to be alive and well in sunny SA.
According to my grandmother's domestic worker, the ANC arrived in the townships the day before the municipal elections with crates of food that were then handed out with rallies to vote for the ANC. We're talking 5kg bags of sugar, rice, maize meal... all paid for with party funds, i'm sure. No chance that tax money was used for that.
From the same source, i hear that with the DA in power in the cape for only a few weeks, the difference in the townships has been marked. Houses are being built (when the previous ANC mayorship claimed there was no money or space to build houses), streets are being repaired, traffic lights are working. Surprised? I'm not.

More when i think about it.

Hail Xenu!

2006-03-22T10:17:00.000+02:00

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have come out to the world media as Xenuists! The South Park creators had this message for scientologists:

So, Scientology, you have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for Earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!

Hail Xenu, indeed. And the reason for this outburst of Xenuist loyalty? Tom Cruise threatened to pull out of all promotions for Mission Impossible: 3 if the scheduled re-run of the now-infamous "Trapped in the Closet" South Park episode was not pulled by Comedy Central. Considering that Paramount and Comedy Central are both owned by Viacom, this isn't implausible. Cruise's camp denies it, of course, but industry sources, and Parker and Stone themselves, have confirmed the rumours that have been flying around the blogosphere since the episode was replaced by a trite 'tribute to Chef'.

Yes, Tom Cruise is in fact a big girl's blouse.

Midweek Mayhem

2006-03-22T09:15:00.000+02:00

One of the clients is down from NY, I'm very busy and so my nettage is limited for the moment. Chances of getting anything meaningful this week are slim. However, i do have a few nuggets for you:

There's a possibility that Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park, contrary to last week's Midweek Cuckoo. Indeed, he is apparently recuperating from a stroke he suffered in mid January, and has not made any press releases or statements lately. People close to the singer are wondering who exactly issued the statement claiming that he was quitting due to South Park's religious intollerance. It apparently wasn't him. Scientology puppet masters, anyone?

The british (well some of them anyway) are being a bunch of babies about the institution of ID cards. Who cares? I carry my ID book everywhere with me. I have found it very comforting to be asked for ID when doing things like drawing large sums of money from my bank account. When i was in the states, i noticed that the majority of people do not sign their credit cards, or sign them 'Ask For ID' to ensure that they cannot be used without presentation of valid identification. How is it in any way an 'infringement of civil liberty'? Your rights and liberties are not being infringed by someone asking you to prove you are who you claim to be, especially when doing something that could be harmful to the real you, like clearing out your bank account. The carrying of an ID book or card can only protect you. Bunch of socialist, welfare-dependant, tea-drinking hippies.

Locally, the DA have come up against a wall in their efforts to take a snake oil salesman to court for claiming without evidence that his herbal remedy can treat HIV. It's not that it went to court and they lost, it's that the public prosecutor refused to press charges of fraud. Prosecutor Jabu Ngcobo defends his decision:

There was not enough evidence to prosecute, and when I looked at the evidence, I did not see fraud. He (Gwala) said he believes in his medicines, and said it in good faith. He told them (the DA) to come back after four months, and if it didn't work, then they should have come to us after that period. How can I dispute his medicine without testing it for that period of time?

Excuse me? Did i read that right? He's saying the because he can't tell until the four months is up whether the medicine works or not, that he can't prosecute? Is he a doctor now too? If he is, then he must have heard of things like standards boards, and official efficacy trials? But wait, it seems the law in South Africa actually protects this kind of charlatan from prosecution. In fact, the Department of Health has drafted an African Traditional Medicines Bill. According to sociologist Herbert Vilakazi:

The constitution of this country mandates us to recognise and to respect the cultural practices and models of African people, of which African traditional medicines is one. They should have recognised the fact that it wouldn't go far because Ubhejane is not bound by regulations. It is umuthi wenyanga, a herbal mixture, and it does not need to be registered.

So basically what he's saying is that African people are so physiologically different to westerners that they need a whole 'nother kind of medicine, that the clinically proven and tested western medicine will not be enough for them. Does he not see the inherent racism in that statement? Why are africans so different that they need different medicine?

And really, this bullshit about 'herbal mixtures' not needing to be registered is such a front for people who want to contravene legal testing of their 'cures'. In the States people do exactly the same thing to get around FDA regulations - declare it a 'food supplement', or a 'herbal remedy', over which the FDA has no jurisdiction. It's one way liars continue to sell Colloidal Silver to people, even though they know it causes argeria. Never mind that they are making all sorts of claims about efficacy that have not been proven, what have they done to investigate side effects? Contra-indications? Anything?

Oh but i forgot, it's herbal, nature would never create anything that could harm us. I'll just brew up that White Oleandar tea for you then, shall I?

And on a lighter note, i bet if Tom Cruise had a blog, it would be just like this one.

Why stop there?

2006-03-16T11:25:00.000+02:00

IOL is reporting today that a correctional services review is planning to curtail the privileges of prisoners convicted of rape and crimes against women and children. What i want to know is, why only them?

What is the point of giving prisoners any privileges at all? Why is it that someone who has proven themselves incapable of being a member of society should be granted any of the comforts afforded by that society?

As far as i'm concerned, there is no such thing as a 'human' right. There are only civil rights, the rights granted to you as a citizen of society, as a signatory of the social contract. You agree to co-operate with your fellow man, working towards the betterment of society as a whole by playing your part as a cog in the engine, and treating other citizens as you would treat yourself. In return, society affords you certain privileges, like life, food, shelter, self-determination and employment. You are not deserving of these just because you are human. Drop a human in the middle of the Amazon jungle, without his society, and see how far he gets shouting 'i have a right to live'.

Now, when you break that social contract, you should be removed from society and from the privileges it grants you. You have shown you cannot hold up your end of the bargain. As someone who has proven that they are incapable of being a citizen, you should not for example be allowed to vote. You should certainly not be allowed to have conjugal visits, earn money, buy cigarettes or eat anything other than a basic protein-vitamin paste that sustains your nutritive needs. You should be made to understand that society gives you certain things on tolerance of your co-operation, and without society, without your fellow man, they would not exist. You should be made to understand the consequences of your actions. And after a time, if you have shown willingness and understanding, you may be allowed back into society.

And if you transgress again, that is it - no second chances. You are removed from society permanently, and placed in prison for life. End of story. If you cannot learn from your first mistake, then you are unable to be rehabilitated. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

But instead, we have health spas that are stricter than prisons. Hell, there are play-schools that are stricter than prisons. We have prisoners who can pay someone R50 to let them escape, or pay someone R10 to bring a juvenile prisoner to their cell for 'entertainment'. We have prisoners who vote on who should rule the country, prisoners who can get a pizza ordered for them, prisoners who commit the same crime they were jailed for, the moment they are paroled. We have prisoners who are released for the president's birthday, who vow that if released the first thing they will do is go and kill someone, and who make good on that promise. We have murder and rape a common occurence in prison. And nothing changes.

You say you will curtail the privileges of rapists, of child abusers and mistreaters of women. I say what makes women and children so special that crimes against them are somehow worse than murder? Don't wimp out now - remove all privileges, from all prisoners, for all crimes. They have shown that they cannot abide by society's rules, now show them what society would be like if everyone behaved like them.

Midweek Cuckoo: Isaac Hayes

2006-03-15T12:00:00.000+02:00

There was a time when Isaac Hayes was cool. The man had soul, he could play a mean sax, and best of all he was the voice of the saltiest chef on tv. But this week, Isaac has proven that not only is he nuts, he's a hypocrite to boot.

Isaac has quit South Park, walking out on his contract in protest of the episode aired last november that poked fun at Scientology. Isaac, you see, is a scientologist. And scientologists don't take well to being mocked. Granted, they take it better than certain sects of certain religions who have offered a million dollars for the heads of certain cartoonists, but their reactions are still a little overboard for a supposed religion.

I've spoken at length about scientology before - about their beliefs (so much space opera even gene roddenberry would blush), about their itchy trigger finger on the sue-gun (and look, scientomogy is still standing), and about their fake personality tests used to lure potential cultists. So the scene is set - we all knew that when South Park finally took on the subject in their usual no-holds-barred style, there would be action. But i never thought that it would result in Chef quitting. I mean, Isaac Hayes can't be mad at Trey Parker and Matt Stone for taking a dig at Scientology, when he's happily participated in shows that mock Christians, Mormons, Muslims and Jews, right? That would be hypocritical.

Yes, indeed it would. Isaac appears to have caught self-righteousness overnight. In his own words:

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.
"Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored," he continued. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

Really, Isaac? Isn't it interesting then that according to Matt Stone,

"He has no problem — and he's cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians."

In fact, he very obviously didn't mind poking fun at Muslims either, in the episode Chef Goes Nanners, where Chef converts to Islam and renounces his slave name, changing his name to Abdul Mohammed Jabbar-Rauf Kareem Ali. This was a very obvious rip off of people like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Mohammed Ali who did the same. Later in the episode he renounces Islam. So really, he had absolutely no problem belittling not only conversion to Islam, but also the tendency of African Americans to see it as their true faith, taken from them by slavery. But mess with scientology and suddenly he's throwing his toys out the cot and behaving like a little girl.

Interestingly, the Scientology episode seems to be the only one that certain networks have declined to air, in fear of being sued. Showtime also declined to air an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! that dealt with Scientology, also in fear of being sued. Isn't it strange that you can make fun of every other religion on the planet, except for Scientologists who will sue you, and certain sects of Islam that will kill you. Then again, there have been rumours of scientology declaring certain undesirables 'fair game', and said persons disappearing without a trace. We shall see.

Anyway, you can file Isaac Hayes under 'Hypocrite' for now, with a cross-reference to 'Batshit Crazy'.

Incompetence: Catching

2006-03-13T17:03:00.000+02:00

Newspapers seem to be very confused as to exactly how long it took police to find little Makgabo Matlala's body under her own bed. First they said 'more than 27 hours'. Then they said 'nearly 24 hours'. Then they said 'more than 24 hours'. More recently, they said 'nearly 12 hours'. That's a big difference, that last one. Is it just me or are they trying to make it seem less pathetic?

Although really, even 12 minutes would be too long. Seriously, you're in a little girl's room, she's missing. Look under the bed. Look in the closet. Am I the only person on the planet who ever played Hide and Seek as a child?

Interestingly enough, Makgoba is the granddaughter of Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, the same judge who was meant to be presiding over Zuma's rape trial, but recused himself at the request of the defense. It was thought his judgment may be biased as he was the judge who signed the warrant to search Zuma's house in connection with his upcoming corruption trial. Now i'm not really one for conspiracy theories, but does this seem like a message to anyone else?

Speaking of the Zuma rape trial, trauma specialist Merle Friedman has testified that the victim's actions after the rape are consistent with the behavior of a rape victim, and of any sufferer of extreme trauma. No big surprises there. The man is as guilty as OJ, and will probably be walking as free very soon.

And speaking of missing children, Kelly Jolkowski is using the disappearance of her son Jason to bring a very important message to the world: when your child goes missing, do not trust the supposed 'psychics' who come knocking at your door promising to find your child (for only a small fee). Her son disappeared without a trace nearly five years ago, and she has been the victim not only of this tragedy, but of the bloodsucking parasites who descend on anyone in her position. Read what this woman has to say: she has combined her own experience, and extensive research, to bring you the real truth about psychics and missing children:

"There is not one proven case in which a psychic, using special powers or abilities not given to the typical person, has located a missing person, whether dead or alive. It may be possible that some persons have an ability that defies science and logic, but there is no known scientific evidence of this. These persons re-victimize families by taking away hope where it should stand, and giving hope where there is none. No person has the right to do this to another. "

Good Old South Africa

2006-03-10T19:24:00.000+02:00

Well, here we go again. It's been a while since i've read the news, but nothing seems to have changed.

Our health minister is out to ruin small pharmacies again, trying once more to institute controlled medicine pricing, even after the constitutional court ruled against her twice for trying the same crap. Last time the pharmacies that were worst hit were those in the rural areas and townships, forcing the poor people she was supposedly 'helping' to travel even further at greater expense to find medication, and forcing many many people into unemployment. I wonder what will happen this time?

The rape trial of our ex-deputy president continues, with the defence team using the standard pathetic tactics of attempting to discredit the victim rather than give any real evidence. Their story? Zuma did have sex with her, but she consented. And he didn't use a condom. And he knew she was HIV positive. Oh, and she's crazy anyway because she underwent treatment after losing her father, and had an abortion once a long time ago. Slut.

So, even if Zuma is found not guilty, one can only draw the conclusion that by his own admission he is too dumb to live. I hope he caught HIV during that little escapade, because anyone dumb enough to have unprotected sex with a known HIV-positive person deserves exactly what they get. Or, he was safe because he has it already. Either way, this is one man who is way too stupid to ever be president, and may just die before he gets the chance. I hope.

Ten days after the announcement that Koeberg was sabotaged and arrests imminent, we are still in the dark (haha) about how the mystery bolt got in the reactor, and where these 'suspects' are. I'm sticking with my story - some twit screwed the cover back on and discovered only three bolts, and quietly replaced the missing one, hoping no-one would ever notice. As soon as the unit crashed, he disappeared into Llanga or some place similar, never to be found again. Then the government used the tall tale of sabotage to avoid their votes sliding. It's a story with so much more local flavour and spirit.

Oh, and you should go and read schpat's blog to discover just how bad our local police force are. Couldn't find a four-year-old kidnap victim's body in her own god damn bedroom. Her own bedroom! Talk about running through the crime scene with a fine toothed comb! When we talk about 'crack police work' in this country, we mean work that would imply the police were on crack.

Midweek Cuckoo: Fred Hutchison

2006-03-10T14:28:00.000+02:00

You will all have to forgive me for not posting a wednesday whackjob in a couple of weeks, but power cuts and work have been conspiring against me. To make up for it, today i have someone who is not only nuts, but is a great big foolish ass on top of it.

Fred Hutchison is a retired beancounter who styles himself as a christian, lay philosopher who has "written hundreds of essays about religion, politics, history, philosophy, and science". He's an armchair physicist, theologian and political commentator. He's also completely out of his tree. The thing about Fred is that he's not your run of the mill conservative, right wing religious crazy, who claims he is against abortion, gay marriage, evolution and physics because the bible tells him so. Fred claims all his beliefs are based in unshakable science.

Fred has argued in the past that science proves from first principles that there is no such thing as gay marriage. His reasoning is that first principles state that man has an innate nature, and that nature is for man and woman to join together in marriage. Being gay is against man's innate nature. Of course, he has made a logical error right at the start by assuming that man has an innate nature, never mind his assumptions of what that nature is. In fact, he inadvertantly explains his own assumptions while attempting to show why they are so true. To quote:

The advocates for traditional marriage have the advantage in the debate over first principles. It is easy to persuade a man that he has an innate nature because the idea is simple and clear and is naturally agreeable to the instincts of the human heart. In contrast, telling a man that he is a construct of myriad external factors reduces him to a programmed automaton, an idea that diminishes man and is repellant to the human heart. One of the most effective lines a conservative can utter is, "We are not programmed automatons. We are men with reason, free will, consciousness, and conscience. Therefore, no one is compelled or programmed to become gay. No one who is gay is compelled by blind necessity to remain gay.

Indeed, Fred, it is exactly because it is the easy thing to believe, that it is simple and clear to the heart, that people are so easily swayed by the concept. You can also see here how Fred either completely misunderstands the concept of man as a product of his environment, or he is deliberately deceiving the reader. You be the judge. I might lean towards the former, as in the same essay he also says he takes the term Intelligent Design from science. Let me be very clear - the term Intelligent Design has as much origin in science as the term Astrology.

Fred has written many other essays for his column on Renew America, including one that states there's no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide can affect the temperature of the planet. Yes indeed, Fred has disproved global warming. Of course, it seems he has done so only to himself, as his understanding of how carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse effect shows such a deep level of misunderstanding, it appears that a grade schooler wrote his essay for him. His reasoning is pretty well ripped apart at Gristmill, including some responses from Fred, so i'm not going to repeat it here. But suffice to say, he makes a fool of himself.

But really, i've got no knowledge beyond the layman's about philosophy, religion, or climatology. So while i would say Fred is full of crap about these subjects, i'm not really in a position to be 100% sure beyond what seems logical and what i can look up for myself. What i do know, however, is physics. I did all my university studies in theoretical physics and astrophysics, and i taught astronomy for 2 year, so when Fred starts ripping into Einstein, that's when i can really spot the mistakes.

Fred thinks he has outwitted Einstein, and proven from his armchair that the great thinker was wrong on just about everything he ever said. Now this is a debate i can pull apart. Let's start from the top:

If reason and free will exist, then Einstein's cosmos is false. Exactly how does Fred come to this conclusion? Neither theories of relativity deny or make impossible in any way human consciousness or free will. They do not imply a deterministic universe on any scale other than that where gravitational effects dominate. Fred fundamentally misunderstands the effective range of gravity. Gravity does not determine neurons firing in your brain, idiot, although in your case you may think this as the proximity to the planet does seem to permanently affect your ability to cogitate.

Einstein claimed he was inspired by the beauty and harmony of the cosmos. But a picture of everything melting into every other thing is the epitome of ugliness and disorder, as we learn from surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali. Can anyone else say 'subjectivity'? For a start, how does Einsteinian gravity imply everything melting into everything else? And who says surrealism is ugly? I'm a huge fan of Dali, and I think his paintings are fantastic. And weren't you just complaining about Einstein's cosmos being deterministic? Isn't that the best example of harmony, where no foot could be put out of place? If you're going to misrepresent a theory, at least be internally consistent.

When he said, "God does not throw dice with the universe," he was referring to the seeming disorder of Quantum Mechanics... Wrong. He was referring to quantum mechanic's fundamentally probabilistic nature. There is nothing disorderly about probability or statistics, ask an actuarial scientist.

However, when Einstein tried to prove that movement and time are relative, he ignored his dictum about the relativity of the movement of two objects. Einstein proposed that if one twin brother took off in a spaceship flying near the speed of light and if the ship returned fifty years later, the twin which stayed on earth would be old and the twin in the spaceship would still be young. But this is nonsense. Indeed, the use of the twin paradox to demonstrate special relativity would be nonsense. But as any first year university student could tell you, the twin paradox is used to describe general relativity. So yes, during the phases of constant motion Fred would be right. But the whole point is the acceleration phases, where the twins are no longer in an inertial frame of reference. Dumbass.

During an total eclipse of the sun in 1919, Einstein predicted that when the sun peeked out from behind the moon, the first rays of light could be observed from a point on the globe which would lie beyond the horizon if the sun's rays are straight. For a start, Fred's got the experiment wrong. Yes, there was a solar eclipse involved, but it was used so that stars near the sun could be observed. The whole point was the star's light curving around the sun, not the earth, and it certainly had nothing to do with sunlight. But it gets worse...

...could not the sunlight bend when it passes through earth's atmosphere, like light refracting as it passes through water or through a lens? Yes, Fred, you complete nitwit, they took that into account. You think you're the first person in the history of the world to think of that? You arrogant ass.

Newton is more practical and makes more sense when it is applied to the human scale, to falling bodies and flying baseballs. Einstein's theory of gravity cannot explain why a falling bodies near to the earth fall straight downwards. Again, Fred shows his lack of any real research before running his mouth off. Einstein's theory reduces exactly to Newton's theory on a small scale. It encompasses Newton's theory within itself, a necessity for any universal theory of gravity. And who says Einstein's theory doesn't explain why falling bodies near the earth fall straight down? It does. A straight line is also a geodesic, numbnuts, and besides not all bodies fall straight down or have you never heard of parabolic motion?

Einstein's mathematics did not work. He made up a number to make his equations balance and called it the cosmological cosmos. Einstein cheats! Indeed, because Einstein's religious convictions led him to believe the universe was static, he did not believe his own equations when they described the universe as expanding. So he put in the constant, because he believed that he must have made a mistake. Later, when it was shown the universe was actually expanding, he called it the biggest blunder of his life. All this teaches us is you shouldn't assume religion trumps science when the two disagree. Einstein should have had more faith in his own maths. Without religious convictions, he would have beaten Hubble to the chase. In fact, if it weren't for his religious aversion to quantum mechanics, we may today be sitting with a quantum theory of gravity, that elusive holy grail of physics.

Pharyngula is about to engage in an email debate with the Hutch. I cannot wait to see what will happen, when a developmental biologist and university professor puts his mind to slicing through Fred's inane babbling on evolution. This should be entertaining.

Power Play

2006-03-07T14:38:00.000+02:00

Thanks to schpat, we have the dope on the supposed 'sabotage' at the Koeberg nuclear power plant. Now that the elections have been and gone, and the ANC are no longer at any kind of risk from backlash over their pathetic power management policies, Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin is now denying he used the term sabotage.

Here's the article that quoted him as saying "Let me be very clear on this. The bolt that caused the generator's destruction did not get there by accident." That was published on February 28.

Now, several days later and with the elections behind him, Erwin is saying "I did not use the term sabotage."

Very interesting then, that TV cameras apparently have him saying quite clearly, "It is sabotage."

This reminds me of the time E-TV accused government mouthpiece SABC of not showing a crowd, who supported axed deputy president Jacob Zuma, booing newly appointed deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Nguka off the stage, because it made her look unpopular. SABC retorted that they had not been able to get their cameraman there in time. E-TV responded with footage of their cameraman, filming the event. Enough said. People in the ruling party seem not to understand that tv cameras do actually capture their images and can be used to prove that they said things they claim not to. Maybe Erwin should ask his local witchdocter for stronger muti to stop the cameras seeing him, i don't think it worked this time.

Not that i'm surprised, of course. The announcement of sabotage without reinforcement of either evidence or arrests was immediately fishy. The fact that the ruling party has now practically admitted that it had no proof and no intent to arrest anyone only shows what a desperate, eleventh-hour attempt it was. The sad thing is, it was totally unnecessary. Are they really so out of touch with reality that they haven't noticed their supporters are not going to just stop supporting them for such fickle complaints like lack of service delivery? I mean, when has this changed voters' minds in the past?

The Real Tsotsi

2006-03-07T14:12:00.000+02:00

The South African film that won Best Foreign Language at the Academy Awards was Tsotsi, based on an Athol Fugard story about a young gangster who is forced to reassess his life when he hijacks a car with a baby in it.

Just so we don't all forget that real life is not like the movies, here's what happens to babies who are in cars that get hijacked. They get thrown out the window.

Night at the Oscars

2006-03-07T10:51:00.000+02:00

I'm watching the oscars as i type this. I watch it every year. What can i say, i'm a big fangirl when it comes to movies. This time i thought i'd try blogging as i watch. Because the difference this year is i'm sitting on the couch typing on my shiny new laptop. Operative words there are 'my' and 'laptop'.

Damn, Howl's Moving Castle should have won best animated film. Miyazaki is a genius. I just watched Spirited Away yesterday, and i will be watching Howl's Moving Castle as soon as i can get my grubby little paws on it. I loved the book by Diana Wynne Jones, i love Miyazaki's other films, so there is no doubt it will be great. Stupid academy. Not that Wallace and Gromit are not very cool, you understand.

I have noticed something about the technical oscars: they are always presented by a smoking hot actress. I think the logic behind it is this: the nerds are not cool enough to invite to the real oscars, so as a consolation prize we'll let them kiss a hot actress on the cheek. That's it. That's as close as we'll let them to the real stars, and even then there should be a big black guy with an earpiece and a gun in the wings, just waiting for one of those creepy nerd-boys to try get a little more than a peck on the cheek. God damn nerds.

Rachel Weisz just won best supporting actress. Do you think it's becoming a new good luck charm, to be pregnant when nominated? Catherine Zeta Jones. Marcia Gay Harding. I'm telling you, pregnant is the new black. I predict the next big thing will be actually conceiving at the oscars. Or giving birth while accepting one.

"Pimp: sort of like an agent, with a better hat." Damn, John Stewart is funny.

Holy crap! Something is trying to eat Charlize Theron! Get it off! GET IT OFF!!! ...oh, wait. That's her dress. Never mind.

Wow, i think that's the third official plug i've heard for going to the cinema. They're putting watching a movie on DVD at the same level as pirating and downloading movies off the intertron. Hollywood must really be feeling the box office slump, they're not even being subtle about it. Why bother with all the 'you can't enjoy these movies to their full extent anywhere but the big screen' rubbish? Why don't they just come right out and say, 'ZOMG we are losing monies! We cannot afford our Dolce and Gabana quadruple ply toiletpaper or our Gucci tampons! Go to the cinemas and pay for our ridiculously overpriced tickets so we can make millions and millions of CASH!'

What the hell is the honorary oscar for? It's like they decided that there had to be an oscar for people who'd been nominated for at least five oscars in their career but never won a single one, and who aren't talented enough to get the lifetime achievement consolation prize. It's the Losers' Oscar. It's the oscar that says, 'You aren't good enough for an oscar, but we're going to give you this one so you stop bitching about not having one yet.' It's the oscar that says, 'Hopefully you will now decide you have reached the pinnacle of your career and stop trying. Please. No, seriously. Stop.'

How did they give an oscar to 'It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp?' How? It's not the title that bothers me. It's not the fact that it's hip hop that bothers me. It's the fact that it's bad hip hop! Bad! It's like giving an oscar for Best Picture to a sex video starring 50 Cent and filmed in his basement. By his mom.

Tsotsi won Best Foreign Film. Nice. As a South African, the only thing i can say is that it was a directorial miss not to pick Charlize Theron out from the audience while they were waiting for Gavid Hood to get to the stage. What are those people up in the director's box doing? Maybe it's a testament to how well Charlize is doing at acting American, that Hollywood appears to have completely forgotten she's a South African.

Dion Beebe just won Best Cinematography for Memoirs of a Geisha. Another South African. w00t. Pity Charlize didn't pick up best actress, would have made a nice hat trick.

And in a surprise finale, Brokeback Mountain did not in fact win Best Picture. I guess gay cowboys were still not arty enough for the oscars. I bet Ang Lee is kicking himself for snipping the scene where they eat pudding. Oh well, he can save it for the DVD extras.

Oops, i forgot! DVD bad! Go watch cinema. Give monies!

And that's it. Good Night.

The Thot Plickens

2006-03-01T15:30:00.000+02:00

This is becoming quite amusing. Eskom is now denying any knowledge of sabotage. Still no suspects arrested, either.

Oh, and in more election news, the local Islamic party has signs all over Cape Town promising to ban porn. I think it's a typo. Surely they meant pork. :)

Here we go again

2006-03-01T12:18:00.000+02:00

Despite eskom announcing last week that the power cuts were over, we're back to load shedding. Apparently a transmission line went down and koeberg decided to 'take itself off the grid' to prevent failure. Now we wait for the line to be repaired, and we're back to random power outages.

Consequently i do not have much uptime to play with, so expect the midweek cuckoo to be late again this week. Circumstances beyond my control and all that jazz.

What i would like to mention very quickly is that the official word on the mystery bolt is now sabotage. Forces consipiring to create havok at election time. Police have suspects whom they will be arresting imminently. Any day now. Yep. Definitely going to arrest someone. Soon. Any time now.

Is it strange that the first reaction to a statement like that, coming as it does on the eve of municipal elections, unaccompanied as it is by arrests or proof, is that the ruling party is trying really hard to avoid any voters thinking they may have stuffed up provision of electricity in south africa? Because it would be terrible if some ANC supporters actually got angry enough with them to notice they do a shit job of running the country. I mean, someone might actually not vote for them because they haven't kept a single promise they made for the last 12 years.

Imagine that.

The Right not to Vote

2006-03-01T10:34:00.000+02:00

Today in South Africa we are holding municipal elections. It's a public holiday so that people can spend all day in queues, exercising their right to vote.

I'm at work, exercising my right not to vote.

Naturally, when i tell some voters that i have no intention to vote, their reaction is bizarrely similar to when i tell some religious people i'm an atheist. Their first reaction is to attack my position as if i am some sort of abberation, and convince me that i am obligated to vote. The fact that i don't try to convince others not to vote (or not to be religious) seems lost on them. But then again people seem to think that the right to freedom of religion only counts for people who have a religion, and the right to voter freedom only counts for people who want to vote.

Well guess what, it doesn't. Much like freedom of religion is there to protect both the religious and irreligous alike, the right to voter freedom is there to protect both those who wish to vote, and those who do not. Why someone does not want to vote is none of your business, just like why someone has made the religious choice they have is none of your business.

The standard argument from voters at this point will be 'think of all the people who died and struggled just so you could have the right to vote'. Except all those people also died so that i could have the right not to vote. People don't seem to understand that being forced to vote if you don't want to, for whatever reason, is just another form of tyranny. Forcing me to vote when there is no candidate i feel is worth supporting, is infringing my rights. That is all part and parcel of the freedom that was struggled for. If you don't like it, tough.

Of course, i wouldn't be me if i just stopped at explaining why you have no right to tell me to vote. Naturally i have an opinion about why i'm not voting, and things would just be crazy if i wasn't about to voice it. So here it is:

I don't agree with democracy. Democracy gives the average person the ability to decide who will govern the country. The problem with that is the average person is stupid, selfish and gullible. They will vote for a party like they're supporting a soccer team, regardless of how badly they perform. Their vote will not be educated, and it will not be for what they believe to be the good of the community as a whole. They will not seek to inform themselves of what each party stands for. In short, they will fuck it up.

What i would support is a meritocracy. All the same principles as democracy, only you have to earn the right to vote by doing something more than just reaching the age of majority. Anyone can earn the right to vote, you just have to apply yourself. Basic requirements would be things like a grade 12 education, attending voter education classes, and performing at least a few hours of community service of some kind. A criminal record of any kind will mean you cannot vote. Ever again.

The right to vote would be given to those who prove themselves capable of making an informed decision, and being a responsible citizen. And no, this is not reverting back to the days when you had to be a certain race or class to achieve the right to vote. Anyone from any background or race or religion should be capable of fulfilling the voter requirements by applying themselves and being socially responsible. If you cannot meet these basic requirements, you are either not motivated enough, in which case you don't really want to vote anyway, or you are basically incapable of casting an education vote and so shouldn't be allowed to.

Naturally, this is not going to happen anytime soon. So why don't i just be satisfied with what we have now? Well, maybe if i lived in a country like the US, or the UK, or Australia, where democracy functions as it's meant to, i would concede that point and vote. Except i live in South Africa, where there are majors issues with the way we practice so-called democracy. For one, we do not have a strong enough opposition to contest the ruling party in any meaningful way. We never will have a strong enough opposition, for the same reason that the ANC can do what it likes to its voters and will not lose - because people support their party because it's their party. The non-ANC parties will vote for their team: the christians will vote for the ACDP; the Zulus will vote for the IFP; the communists will vote for the ACP; the Afrikaaners will vote for the FFPlus. And those that have neither religious, racist or cultural inclinations will still be split between the DA and ID. And even if by some miracle everyone puts aside race, religion and culture and even party loyalty, and all vote for one opposition party, ANY opposition party, ALL THOSE VOTES PUT TOGETHER ARE NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE AN IMPACT.

People say it's not about beating the ANC, it's about winning enough seats for one other party so we can have a strong opposition in parliament to keep the ANC honest. Except that the ANC command over two thirds of the vote. One third, even united, is not enough to keep the ANC honest. With a two thirds majority, they can still steamroller just about any decision, and even change the constitution as they like. So the numbers don't add up.

But even if in just one city, like Cape Town, we manage to get an opposition party to win the election, it won't be for long. Look at last year, where the DA succeeded in winning Cape Town. Before the term was even through, the ANC with its offers of ministerial posts and fat salaries got enough DA members to cross the floor that the ANC was effectively back in power. Now you go and ask all those people who went out and voted DA if that was what they voted for. They voted DA, the DA won, and the ANC still has more seats in the end and has their mayorial candidate in the seat of power? Is this democracy? No. Not in any way, shape or form.

So there you have it. I'm not going to vote until there's a slot on that ballot that says 'Vote of no confidence in the electoral process', and someone is actually paying attention to how many people put their X next to it. Spoiling your ballot isn't good enough, because there's no way to tell on the spoiled ballots count how many were on purpose and how many were because they let the average idiot into that booth with a sharp pen and a dull wit.

Midweek Cuckoo: Milking it for all it's worth

2006-02-25T13:11:00.000+02:00

i was watching SABC Africa the other day, and Peter Ndoro was interviewing Dr. Magde Nkoane (from some south african Nutrition Center i didn't catch the name of) about the dangers of pasteurized milk. There are danger? i ask myself. I should watch this.

She started out innocently enough, explaining that the pasteurization process destroys not only the bacteria present in milk, but also some of the nutrients. Well, that doesn't sound so implausible, i think. She may have a point.

But then she went off the deep end. According to her, before africans drank pasteurized milk, there was no osteoporosis or allergies in africa. What? Are you trying to tell me that the process of pasteurization somehow imbues milk with the ability to leech calcuim from bones, or to trigger the body's autoimmune system into overreacting to bees (she didn't specify only an allergy to milk, so one can only assume she means all allergies)? She was billed as a doctor, but i wonder about that, given her apparent misunderstanding of how the human body works.

It got even worse, of course. She went on to claim you don't need to drink milk at all to get calcium, in fact you should never drink milk after about 3 years of age. Later, she suggested that in rural areas where no refridgeration means pasteurized, long-life milk is the only option, that africans return to drinking maas, or soured milk. Wait, so we shouldn't drink milk as adults, but africans should drink soured milk? I was shocked that Peter Ndoro didn't pick this up. You would think it was the job of a professional journalist and interviewer to notice when the interviewee is contradicting herself.

Later, Peter asked her how drinking pasteurized milk is affected kids today. She explained that we are now seeing higher incidences of allergies and ear infections. Ear infections? From drinking milk? What, are parents feeding their kids through their ears now?

But it's not just her. A little googling reveals a wealth of international crackpottery on the subject of milk, pasteurized or otherwise. Dr Gina Shaw (not sure what she's a doctor of, the letters after her name do not include M.D.) says that milk does not provide any calcium because "[t]he calcium in cow's milk is pasteurised and therefore inorganic which means that it is largely unusable to the human body". I'm not sure in what reality the element calcium has ever been organic. She goes on to say that "[t]he only type of milk which is fit food for humans (in particular baby humans of course) is the milk of our own species". Why? Is the calcium in that milk somehow not made of calcium anymore, and therefore usable? This woman demonstrates a complete lack of understand of the difference between an element and an organic molecule, or the body's ability to process either.

She goes on to say that because dairy products are mucous-forming, "[they] are implicated in almost all respiratory problems. Hay fever, asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis, colds, runny noses and ear infections can all be caused by the consumption of dairy products. Dairy products are also the leading cause of allergies." Again, no specification of only allergies to dairy. So again, somehow dairy products are the leading cause of allergies such as those to pollen, dust mites and nickel, one can only suppose. Also, again with the ear infections. Mucous causes ear infections?

Dr Shaw also argues that lactose intollerence occurs because we're not meant to be producing the enzyme that breaks lactose down after about the age of 3. People who drink milk after this age must therefore run the risk of becoming intollerent to it. Of course, she fails to mention the fact that many people are born lactose intollerent.

I did a little looking around for Dr. Shaw. She lists her full qualifications as DS, MA AIYS (Dip. Irid.). Now, DS could mean Doctor of Surgery, or Doctor of Science. But here's where it gets interesting. Searches for 'MA AIYS' or 'AIYS Dip Irid' with the inclusion of -shaw yielded zero results from google, so she seems to be about the only person in the world with this combination of qualifications. Breaking it down, MA might be Master of Arts, AIYS in a nutritional context is probably Association of International Yoga School, and Dip Irid. is very obviously a Diploma in Iridology. Only the AIYS doesn't seem to offer a Dip. Irid. Odd.

What the hell is iridology anyway, you ask, and i'm glad you did. Iridology, sometimes referred to as iris diagnosis, is the bizarre belief that each area of the body is represented by a corresponding area of the iris of the eye. I'm not kidding, you can see for yourself on Dr. Shaw's website. There are people out there diagnosing and offering treatment based on the colour of your eyes. You can read more about it here if you're interested.

She is a vegan, raw foodist, and has written a number of books on the subjects of why eating meat is suicide and how good raw foodism is for you. And she believes she can look into your eyes and tell you what's wrong with you. What more do i need to say?

Are You Crazy Enough for this Church?

2006-02-25T11:55:00.000+02:00

I received a scientology personality test in the mail the other day. It takes the form of a 200-question quiz that you answer, send in, and apparently receive 'in person an in-depth, accurate analysis of the results of your test form an evaluator, obligation free.' (their emphasis).

Now, the test is made up mostly of the usual wishy washy personality questions. Do your past failures still worry you? Do you make efforts to get others to laugh and smile? Can you "start the ball rolling" at a social gathering?Are you logical and scientific in your thinking?

Seems like a genuine personality test, right? Except the Oxford Capacity Analysis™, as it is called, has been dismissed by psychologists as having no worth. It also has nothing to do with Oxford university, regardless of what the salespeople will try and make you believe. A study in 1971 found the following:

Taking the procedure as a whole, one is forced to the conclusion that the Oxford Capacity Analysis is not a genuine personality test; certainly the results as presented bear no relation to any known methods of assessing personality or of scaling test scores. The booklet itself might produce genuine scores but these are not the scores presented on the profile. The legend 'produced and edited by the Staff of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International' which appears on the cover is totally inappropriate to a personality measure - such an instrument is not 'edited', it is developed through painstaking research. The validity of the OCA booklet itself is therefore in doubt.
{Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of Scientology Report, Sir John Foster, 1971}

Author Chris Owen has delved into the test in plenty of detail here.

The general consensus seems to be that it is just a recruiting tool designed by Hubbard himself, offering a means by which to introduce Scientology to a society that places a lot of value on personality quizzes, a la Cosmopolitan. It's designed to make you feel bad about yourself, and to want improvement. The job of the evaluator is then to offer you scientology courses as that improvement. Remember, they earn commission on each sell they make.

But reading through the questions makes me wonder if there isn't something more sinister at hand. Hidden amongst innocent questions that seem oh so familiar to anyone who has read a woman's magazine, there are a few that are just plain disturbing:

6. Do you get occasional twitches of your muscles, when there is no logical reason for it?
18. Does an unexpected action cause your muscles to twitch?
72. Do you ever get a single thought which hangs around for days?
130. Are you aware of any habitual physical mannerisms such as pulling your hair, nose, ears, or such like?
142. Do you get very ill at ease in disordered surroundings?
146. Do you have a tendency to tidy up a disorder of somebody else's household?

37. Do you consider there are other people who are definitely unfriendly toward you and work against you?
45. Do you often feel that people are looking at you or talking about you behind your back?
55. When hearing a lecturer, do you sometimes experience the idea that the speaker is referring entirely to you?
194. If you lose an article, do you get the idea that "someone must have stolen or mislaid it"?

61. Do you ever get a "dreamlike" feeling toward life when it all seems unreal?
71. Do you often "sit and think" about death, sickness, pain and sorrow?
106. Do you sometimes wonder if anyone really cares about you?
113. Would it take a definite effort on your part to consider the subject of suicide?
148. Do you often feel depressed?
191. Does life seem rather vague and unreal to you?
197. Do you have spells of being sad and depressed for no apparent reason?

14. Would the idea of inflicting pain on game, small animals or fish prevent you from hunting or fishing?
98. Would you use corporal punishment on a child aged ten if it refused to obey you?
136. Do children irritate you?
149. Are you ever ill at ease in the company of children?
163. Would you take the necessary actions to kill an animal in order to put it out of pain?

Is it just me, or does it look like they're really trying to single out the obsessive compulsives, paranoids, suicidals and potential serial killers? I think certain answers to any of the above questions will point you out to the evaluator as a definite candidate for scientology. After all, you have to be a complete nutjob to believe it.

Oxford Capacity Analysis, copyright 1997 Church of Scientology Intl. (CSI). Dianetics, Scientology and OCA are trademarks and service marks owned by the Religious Technology Center

Power to the People

2006-02-25T11:05:00.000+02:00

After a week of sporadic electricity supply, Cape Town is back in running order. For how long remains to be seen.

For those of you who may not know, this is the breakdown of what happened: Cape Town is supplied by South Africa's only nuclear reactor at Koeberg, which has two units. At the end of last year, Unit 1 was down for refueling, leaving only Unit 2 in operation. As could be expected, there were a number of power failures during the refueling process, as any trip on the grid would result in Unit 2 going down, with no second unit to back it up. These were only somewhat inconvenient (and it was a lot of fun to watch Eskom blaming one of the failures on fires under the transmission wires, with the Fire Department going 'There weren't any fires in the area at the time'). Eventually, just in time for christmas, Unit 1 was brought back on line and everything seemed peachy.

Until Unit 1 suddenly failed unexpectedly. Investigation found holes punched through the rotor and stator, by an 8-inch bolt that was rattling around inside the reactor. A bolt that was meant to be holding down a hatch on the outside of the reactor. Now, Eskom is naturally investigating everything from human error to sabotage, but word from people inside the plant is painting a different picture. One which looks much more plausible, at least to those familiar with local work ethic. The suspicion of the plant engineers is that during the refueling, that hatch had to be removed. There are four bolts holding down the hatch. When it was replaced and the worker discovered there were only three bolts left, what did he do? Open it again to check that it hadn't fallen in? Of course not. He went to storage, got another bolt, and screwed it in. Which is why on final checks before bringing the reactor online, no one noticed that there was a bolt missing. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the South African work ethic in action. The worry is not that you may have damaged something, only that you may get caught. Not surprisingly, no one has yet admitted to being the twit who left the bolt inside the nuclear frigging reactor.

Anyway, the result of all this was that Unit 1 went down again for repairs. And while it was down, Unit 2 suffered a massive trip on Saturday night, leaving the entire Western province without power for most of Sunday. Eskom's excuse? Mist and pollution caused it, in the grand old tradition of marsh gas, weather balloons and the light of Venus. I'm sorry to say, but if your power lines cannot handle mist, how the hell do they manage to operate in the middle of a winter deluge in Cape Town?

So while Unit 2 was brought back on line (a process that lasted until Friday) we were bringing power down from the north of the country. But because the transmission lines could only handle a fraction of the load, Eskom employed a process of rotating power cuts known as 'Load Shedding'. In the words of Synkronos, what this means is that Eskom proceeds to shed a load on its consumers. Despite the publishing of a timetable for power cuts, and the assurance that cuts in each area would last no more than 2 hours at a time, they proceeded to employ complete randomness. The power would go off for 18 hours at a time in some areas, and then come on for 3 hours at 2am. The list would say that power was due to come back on in an area at noon, instead it would go off at noon. Some residential areas that were near industrial areas were treated in the same way, having power during the day when everyone was away at work, and then no power all night. Traffic lights would be down, with no traffic officers there to keep the cars moving. In fact, the only traffic officer i saw directing traffic during the entire week was doing so at a working intersection.

What this resulted in was near-apocalyptic conditions in Cape Town. You really don't think about all the consequences of a sustained power outage. Petrol stations close because the pumps don't work. Shops close. Traffic becomes hellish because no one seems to understand the concept of a four way stop. Sewerage pumps stop working, food spoils, geysers cool, ATMs don't work. What you're left with is a city full of people who have no idea what to do with themselves. They can't work. They can't play. They can't eat a cooked meal, or take a bath, or draw money or fill their cars. It's just like a zombie invasion, only we're the zombies. And we don't want brains. We want power. Patience dwindles, tempers flare, and suddenly what you have is a city of people ready to snap. Keep it up for another week, and who knows what could happen.

Of course, we may very well find out soon enough. Unit 1 is still not back on line, as Eskom desperately tries to find second-hand parts overseas. If that doesn't work, it will take at least a year to manufacture new ones. In the meantime, Unit 2 is scheduled for refueling next month. The process takes a month at least. Eskom thinks they may be able to postpone the refueling by a month or two, but there's no guarantee that Unit 1 will be up by then. So stock up on gas stoves, torches, batteries, baked beans and toilet paper, my friends. It's Y2K all over again, only this time it's actually going to happen.

By the way, if you want to know how long the power would last if we really were invaded by zombies, check out this Straight Dope Staff Report.

We Will Resume Normal Service Shortly (We Hope)

2006-02-22T18:49:00.000+02:00

Thanks to constant, lengthy power outages since saturday, i have not been able to blog as i have been spending uptime doing valuable stuff like actually working. Cape Town and the Western Cape as a whole is experiencing drastic power cuts as the country's electricity provision policies finally catch up with it. Welcome to the third world, here are your candles and matches.

Anyway, i will return as soon as things are more or less back to normal, with posts about how sustained power outages are not unlike zombie invasions, and how pasteurized milk apparently causes osteoporosis and ear infections.

Stay tuned!

Serenity

2006-02-17T16:59:00.000+02:00

If you're a fan of either Warren Ellis or Joss Whedon, you have got to read the comments to this post at warrenellis.com. I think my geek gland exploded.

For those of you who do not know, Joss Whedon is the creator of Buffy, Angel, and more recently the greatest sci-fi show in the history of the universe, Firefly. The fact that this show was cancelled after less than a season will stand out as the greatest travesty ever committed by a network, ever. Yes, Fox, i'm talking about you. We should just start calling it 'Fux'.

If you are one of those people who 'always meant' to watch Firefly and never did (and damn you for dropping the ratings to watch whatever substandard drivel you did), i suggest you buy, beg, borrow or steal a copy of the box set. Now. And then set aside a weekend to watch it, and stock up on food and wetwipes, because once you start you're not going to want to stop to do anything like eat, talk, or clean yourself. I'm serious.

And then immediately go out and get the movie, Serenity. Watch it. Watch it again. When you find yourself compulsively watching it a third time, stop and acknowledge the fact that you were a dumbass for not watching the series when it was on Fox, and thereby contributing to its premature, abortive death. Shame on you. Self-flaggelate a bit. Then watch the movie again.

Oh, and go here and fill in the FireFly Season 2 survey.

And in the news...

2006-02-16T17:40:00.000+02:00

Bast commented that she was surprised I hadn't had something to say about Dick Cheney this week, so here goes:

For those of you who've had your head up your ass for the last few days, United States Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a friend while they were both hunting at a private ranch at the weekend. Now, hunting accidents happen all the damn time, and it's only to be expected when you've got a bunch of people running around with guns, shooting anything that moves. I also don't have anything against game hunting myself. But here's the list of things i find absurd or even worrying about the whole thing:

The VPs office didn't report the shooting to officials until 24 hours later, and only then after a local paper had already reported it online (after the ranch owner had called them). The fact that the vice president would shoot someone and not report it immediately to the authorities is just plain disturbing.
Cheney didn't have a legal permit to hunt quail at the time, so yet more law breaking going on.
Cheney's PR people originally started off blaming the victim, saying that he had gone to locate a lost bird and then failed to indicate to the VP and others that he was behind them. Frankly this kind of statement should get the entire PR department fired (or at least shot at a little). Cheney himself has finally come forward and said "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."
The PR office tried to pass it off as a minor incident, saying the Whittington never lost consciousness and was fine. They failed to mention he was rushed to ICU. On top of it all, he suffered a mild heart attack a few days later when one of the pellets of birdshot found its way to his heart. Playing down the gravity of the situation was certainly not going to save Cheney any face, so why even bother? Again, some mild shooting is required.
I'm not bothered by hunting when it's done by serious hunters and where the animals or birds have a fair chance to outwit or escape the hunters. But the birds Cheney was hunting were pen reared and released right in front of him, to be shot in large numbers as they flapped around in utter confusion. This isn't hunting, it's target practice. The 10-person hunting party downed 417 birds in one morning. There's nothing even vaguely skillful about it. Cheney paid good money for a guaranteed kill. He almost got one more kill than he bargained for.

Really, that's about all i have to say about it. The whole thing is really laughable.

Even more disturbingly in news from the States this week, child murderer Dena Schlosser is pleading insanity after she chopped the arms off her infant with a kitchen knife. While this would normally be an open and shut case of severe post partum depression, what makes it utterly creepy is that when she emergency personnel arrived at the house after she calmly called 911, they found her sitting in the living room, covered in blood and still holding the knife, listening to a church hymn. The day before, she told her husband she wanted to give the baby to God. The family is saying she was influenced by the charasmatic leader of the non-denominational church she attended, Rev. Doyle Davidson. Apart from telling her husband she wanted to give her baby to God, she also said she wanted to give her to Doyle. The fact that her husband didn't think this was worrying only goes to show how deeply imbedded they were in their religion.

Now, there's no doubt that she was crazy. She'd been charged with neglecting her children earlier that year, and had displayed symptoms of post partum depression after the births of her two elder children too. But had she not been a religious woman, entrenched in a religious community with a religious husband, it is entirely likely she would have been urged to seek psychiatric help, rather than religious help. She was not possessed by demons. She was not having trouble interpretting what her god wanted of her. She was crazy. She needed help. Maybe if she'd got it, instead of religious platitudes, she would have been stopped in time.

But that's just my opinion.

Things I've Often Wondered

2006-02-16T16:12:00.000+02:00

For those of you who are big fans of Bill Watterson's work, there is a searchable Calvin and Hobbes database.

I'm glad to see Calvin is doing important Exploding Head research.

Midweek Cuckoo: Playing with Jesus

2006-02-15T17:10:00.000+02:00

The whole idea of merchandising religion just seems somehow... wrong. But the Catholic Family Catalog doesn't seem to think so. They're making cash for jesus. And while selling holy shortwave radios and statues with Real Bleeding Action™ seems like a great idea, it's the toys that are the best.

You can have your very own Jesus action figure. And if he's lonely, get Samson, David and Goliath to keep him company in their biblically accurate costumes. Also note the true-to-life scale difference between David and Goliath. Accuracy is the name of the game here.

And if playing with their saviour isn't enough, let your children clothe themselves in the armour of the lord, including play safe plastic sword of the spirit, helmet of salvation, shield of faith, breastplate of righteousness, belt of truth, gospel of peace shin guards, and shoelaces of falling over in the dirt. No schoolyard smiting is complete without this set.

But they have some competition as far as jesus toys go. This one has Real Gliding Action (thanks to wheels in the base) and posable arms (for reaching up to heaven of course). This one comes with five loaves and two fish, and a jar ready to turn water into wine. He also features glow in the dark Miracle Hands! I hear he's a great hit at kids parties. There's also a Moses action figure, complete with tablets for delivering testaments and staff for delivering plagues. Just don't let your kids take it anywhere near the pool, there's no telling what could happen.

But this is the Chuck Norris of Jesus Action figures. He comes complete with Ninja-Messiah throwing nails, pump action over-under shotgun, and his own cross. This Jesus is not messing around.

What next? New Deluxe Jesus Action Figure, with Walk On Water™ Action! Comes complete with cross and three nails, and our patented EZRemoval® nail remover so you can crucify the Saviour over and over again! Small parts, not suitable for children under 3!

Malibu Jesus. Disco Party Jesus. Jesus PlayHouse. There is so much potential here.

Seriously, though, i wonder what the blasphemy ramifications are of your little sister stealing Jesus to join Barbie and My Little Pony for a tea party. Would Jesus want to be seen at the same tea party as a slut like Barbie? What if little sis decides Jesus' dress is a little boring and he would look better in Sindi's miniskirt? What if Jesus gets left in the garden and chewed on by the dog? Does the company selling these make you sign an indemnity form against divine retribution for abuse of Jesus?

It's all fun and games until you walk into your son's room to find David and Goliath have been left on the desk in a naked embrace, their enmity forgotten in a whirl of passion. Now there's learning while you play.