Our Wacky World—5/26/2012

Note: ScienceBlogs have been overhauled with WordPress and some old articles are now gone. Sorry for the dead links in past posts but it's beyond my control. Also, most of the pictures in this installment don't link to anything. Sorry.

It's been one year since the Harold Camping letdown. Where are his followers now?

'Another engineer I came to know had spent most of his retirement savings, well over a half-million dollars, taking out full-page newspaper ads and buying an RV that he had custom-painted with doomsday warnings. Even when I pressed, he wasn’t willing to admit any doubts about whether October 21 would really, finally, be it. “How can you say that when you see that all this beautiful information is in the Bible?” he asked me, his voice rising. “How can everything we’ve learned be a lie?”'

Religion Dispatches

"Some church members, who declined to give their names, defended their pastor... Another church member, who declined to give his name..."

CNN

Here's the damn video. Meanwhile...

"Orly Taitz has released her first campaign ad, which is four minutes long and apparently narrated by that chain-smoking woman you might expect to run into at a VFW hall."

Crazier than Pam Geller? You tell me.

The commander of Fort Bliss is an uniformed, uniformed dickhead:

"I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act. Soldiers who commit suicide leave their families, their buddies and their units to literally clean up their mess. There is nothing noble about suicide." 

"I am personally fed up with Soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess. Be an adult, act like an adult, and deal with your real-life problems like the rest of us."

That's what I call supporting the troops. (CNN)

Moving along to our next dickhead...

"Rush Limbaugh was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians yesterday, but the whole affair seemed strangely cloaked in secrecy. The AM talker was ushered into an invite-only ceremony that took place behind closed doors inside the State Capitol's House chambers, "which were locked and guarded by armed members of the Missouri Highway Patrol while the ceremony took place," according to the Kansas City Star.  Democratic lawmakers were banned from the induction."

Media Matters

Guess what happened next?

"Crumbliss said the special security camera is serving a dual purpose. He said the House has been considering installing cameras in the chamber so that it can have live broadcasts of its session. The camera pointed at the Limbaugh statue outside the chamber can serve as a pilot project to test the resolution and quality of its picture, he said."

Bullshit. (Atlanta Journal)

'Listen to his laugh.  It resembles the flat “Ha! Ha! Ha!” that appears in comic-strip dialogue balloons. But worse – far worse – it is mirthless. Mr. Romney expects us to be amused, although he himself is not amused. Freeze the frame, cover the bottom of his face with your hand, and study his eyes. There’s no pleasure there, no amusement. Genuine laughter is triggered only by, and is completely dependent on, shared perception. That’s why we say we “get” a joke. 

'But Mr. Romney is too busy working to share anything – like the vaudevillian tapping so desperately that he’s covered with what performers call “flop sweat.” In rehearsal, I once heard a director say to an overeager actor, “Relax, you’ve got the job.” Now that Mr. Romney seems to have wrapped up the nomination, that counsel may apply here.'

NYmag

"Her distraught parents even called her GP more than 50 times about their daughter's ailing condition over a four-and-a-half month period before her death on January 6 last year. An inquest heard that her GP, Dr Sharad Shripadrao Pandit, accused her parents of "mollycoddling" her. Shockingly, he even claimed her symptoms were brought on because she was 'lovesick'."

Telegraph

"Six roasted fetuses covered with gold for black magic rituals were found in a Bangkok hotel room"

CNN

"We've never really understood the point of preparing to live through the Apocalypse. Isn't the whole point of being a believer during the Rapture is you'll get sucked up to Heaven while the heathens are left behind? Why would you want to stick around surviving anyway? Nonethless [sic], if you're of the inclincation [sic] to expect the world to end in the foreseeable future, we urge you to shop for your survivalist gear anywhere else but [pastor Jim] Bakker's site. Consider the following some tips to surviving the end of the world on a budget."

The Atlantic


There's a movement afoot in the US to make everyone nine months older:

"Clever lawyers might argue, if a person is charged with drinking, or for driving a car while a year under the legal age for such, that the defendant is actually nine months older than their stated age as mandated by the new amendment to their state’s constitution... How many lecherous dirty old men can escape justice by arguing in court that the girl was actually not seventeen but eighteen, after the days of gestation that preceded her live birth are added to her pre-constitutional amendment birth date to produce her true age?"

Blasphemous Blogging


Get ready for "no-kill" farming:

'“We are what we eat” rings even truer now that Chinese researchers discovered that molecules of rice survive the digestion process, enter the blood stream of animals and regulate the expression of mammalian genes. Violence against plants backfires, as it leads to violence against humans and against the environment as a whole, for instance when plants are genetically modified and made resistant to insects, pests or diseases. 

'Positively understood, the project of plant liberation would allow plants to be what they are and to realize their potentialities, often in the context of cross-kingdoms co-evolution. Inasmuch as humans and animals share the vegetal soul with plants, the potentialities of the latter are also ours, though often it is virtually impossible to recognize them as such.'

Dispatches From The Culture Wars


It sounds like there's a reason the cops said they only take cash:

'It took four months for Beverly Greer to get her family's money back, and then only after attorney Andy Williams agreed to take their case. "The family produced the ATM receipts proving that had recently withdrawn the money," Williams says. "Beverly Greer had documentation for her disability check and her tax return. Even then, the police tried to keep their money."'

Huffington Post

'According to a 2010 piece in Fast Company, the trade journal of the breathless bullshit industry, the people behind TED are “creating a new Harvard — the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years.” Well! That’s certainly saying… something. (What it’s mostly saying is “This is a Fast Company story about some overhyped Internet thing.”) 

'To even attend a TED conference requires not just a donation of between $7,500 and $125,000, but also a complicated admissions process in which the TED people determine whether you’re TED material; so, as Maura Johnston says, maybe it’s got more in common with Harvard than is initially apparent.

'Strip away the hype and you’re left with a reasonably good video podcast with delusions of grandeur. For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it’s a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it’s changing the world, like if “This American Life” suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders.'

Salon

You know, I've been wondering about TED. They've had some good talks—even Randi has turned up, doing his usual spiel—but I doubt we're going to see Henry Rollins. Or did he already do one? Damned if I know.

"He discovered my post, and things looked like a mildly interesting flame war was going to roast for a while. But then Yomin bizarrely leveled up, and began slinking around the web, making edits to my Wikipedia entry as well as posting on such venues as the RD.net’s old forum, saying things about me that crossed the line from the usual flaming and trolling into actual, legal defamation. I think the child molestation accusation was where I decided enough was enough, and I actually had my attorney file a libel and defamation suit. I later withdrew it on his advice once it was clear just how beyond the pale a personality Yomin was."

The Atheist Experience


Everyone's favorite ex-military chaplin on the gays:

“It is entirely possible — we know from the Bible, for example, when Jesus cast the devil out of Legion, he went into a herd of pigs,” Klingenschmitt said. “So, it is possible for demons or the devil to inhabit or invade animals just the same way they invade humans, and that causes the sin of lust.” 

“So, what you’re saying is, in humans it’s marketing that makes people gay; in animals, it’s the souls of gay humans who have invaded the animals,” Pacman [sic] replied. “That makes them gay?”

Raw Story

"Recently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing."

CNN

Somewhere, a bantha is weeping

Our Wacky World—5/14/2012

"Don’t go gay, it’s not healthy. Anus licking causes sepsis. If not given antibiotics within a half hour they perish. Have no gays in education. A high percent of gay men in school grounds molest boys, partly because they don’t have AIDS yet. Be on the side of the innocent boy who gets Fs and Ds a year after being molested."

Combat Pixie (video here)

"Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar."

The Daily Beast

Click to enlarge

'Photos of the item, which was titled “10 Pack Trayvon Martin Targets,” showed crosshairs over a hoodie similar to the one Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February. The figure has a bag of Skittle [sic] in his pocket and is holding what appears to be a can of iced tea, similar to what Martin had purchased before being gunned down. The pack of 10 targets was being sold for $8.'

Raw Story

Is your genome unhealthy?

"The method works in part by going back to the time before the illness started, to the first event which caused one to deviate from the Creator's norm. From that point in time a different path is chosen, the path that leads one back to the state of health that is the Creator's norm. This is similar to some Hawaiian huna practices. In huna if you injure yourself you replay the scenario in your mind in a way that avoids the injury altogether. The body can then be tricked into behaving as if the injury never happened."

Respectful Insolence


Get ready for June 30th, 2012:

'Doris Rosado watches her teenage daughters, Ninette and Kiara Mongrut, get the numbers “666” tattooed on their wrists, beaming with pride. The number typically conjures up biblical symbolism tied to the Antichrist, but this St. Catharines, Ont., family belongs to a obscure Christian sect for which “666” is a positive symbol of their group’s messianic leader. “They wanted to do it,” Ms. Rosado, 45, said at the St. Catharines tattoo parlour where her daughters were inked. “But now it’s more important because we’re counting down… I’m so proud.”'

National Post

"He has gorgeous stuff, but they QVCed it to death," said Lou Kahn, head of the Bakerstown Collectibles appraisal service, to The Street. "They sell beautiful Kinkade prints in galleries and on cruise ships, but the frames are worth more than the prints."

Washington Post

For those without cable TV, QVC is a shopping channel. Funny thing about the Indy 500 picture, I don't seem to recall a race with the sun that low on the horizon, right in the drivers' eyes at turn one. I guess it's a case of artistic license. What a fucking genius. I guess he never drove a car.

'There, he discovered an 1845 patent filed by Honest Abe for a sort of personalized newspaper in which "every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors." In short: Lincoln envisioned a paper version of Facebook, 160 years before Mark Zuckerberg.'

CNN

"Two of Romania's top fortune tellers have been exposed as fraudsters who used Google instead of a crystal ball to gather information on their clients and trick them into parting with tens of thousands of pounds."

Austrian Times

"Customs officials refused to say where the dead babies came from or who made the capsules, citing possible diplomatic friction with Beijing. Chinese officials ordered an investigation into the production of drugs made from dead fetuses or newborns last year."

Statesman

"The latest science suggests we are intelligently designed – not by some sentient humanistic being from on high – moreover a higher, energetic, source intelligence. Einstein’s Unified Field theory equation was completed in 2007. The breakthrough proves everything: matter (which derives from energy, which is what we’re made from) all natural laws and processes link to one underlying, unifying consciousness – aka, God, Source, Allah, Yaweh – pick your favourite."

Wow, where have I been the last five years? How did I miss this? (Pharyngula)

"When in the course of human healthcare it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Science entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of educated parents requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all children are created equal, that they are endowed by virtue of their birth certain unalienable Rights, that among these are the right to a healthy life free from the tyranny of untested preventative medicine and a life free from chronic inflammatory illness caused by an unaffected and apathetic pharmaceutical oligarchy that receives government endorsement and protection. To secure these rights, Governments and Institutions are created deriving their just powers from THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying it's foundation on such principles and organizing it's power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to preserve the Safety and Health of their children."

Respectful Insolence

'A US judge has labelled an attempt to sue internet subscribers whose accounts were used to download four pornographic films “abusive litigation” and also criticised legal arguments that an IP address is a valid way to identify an individual online. 

'One [defendant] has stated under oath that he closed the account allegedly used to download K-Beech's films before the time of the downloads. Another is “... an octogenarian with neither the wherewithal nor the interest in using BitTorrent” while a third stated that “... her wireless router was not secured and she lives near a municipal parking lot, thus providing access to countless neighbors and passersby.”'

The Register

Our Wacky World—5/5/2012

I haven't mentioned Bryan "douche" Fischer lately, mainly because once you get used to him the shit all sounds the same. But this week he outdid himself in pure stupid:

'I talked with a law enforcement officer this week, a well-respected man, I've got a lot of respect for this guy and he says "look, I'm in law enforcement; we have to get ammo for our officers [and] we're having a tough time getting ammo. And I've been hearing from other people that Homeland Security, DHS is buying up virtually all of the ammunition that's being produced by munitions manufacturers. They're buying it up; million [sic], and million [sic], and million [sic] of rounds."'

Right Wing Watch

Are you transgendered? If so, eBay can help you transition—with magick.

Or perhaps you need some positronium? As always, it's useful to know how it will make you will feel before you take it so that you'll be sure to feel that way after you do. Now that you're prepared, buy some homeopathic positronium here.

Herman Cain, former candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, could definitely use something at this point:

'Signing up for Herman Cain's "Revolution on the Hill" was easy. There were ads at the top of plenty of conservative news sites. The registration for three events -- a Sunday reception, Monday morning seminar, and Monday afternoon rally -- was free, and included a boxed lunch. Cainiacs had a full hour to get between the Virginia hotel where the seminar would be held and the Capitol lawn where they'd listen to speeches and music. Six free buses were available to move them.'

Slate

Like Sarah Palin, Cain is trying to parlay his 15 debates of fame into a second career. Judging by the crowd photo he isn't the next Sarah Palin.

Read the last paragraph...

Late-breaking news...may be disturbing to some:

"In 2002, 18 year-old Andre McCollins was strapped down and shocked for hours at the JRC. He begged for the shocks to stop and when they did, he was left in a catatonic state for days which resulted in permanent damage. Video of Andre’s shock treatment was sealed until recently..."

Change.org

No, not all *local* Fox affiliates are inherently evil. But these "schools" are. On a related note:

"A third TSO arrived to the scene, and showed no more respect than the first two had given. All three were barking orders at my [four year old] daughter, telling her to stand still and cease crying. When she did not stop crying on command, they demanded we leave the airport. They claimed they could not safely check my daughter for dangerous items if she was in tears."

Examiner

BTW, the US has by far more children in prison than any other country:

"Everything I have in there, EVERYTHING, goes out–including the inside of the mattress and a body search–once a day. It happens anytime. Random. I was arrested for assault against a 13-year-old girl. It’s sort of all right, but it also really sucks. I’m here for Violation of Probation. I was at home with an ankle bracelet. I got mad at my mother and started throwing chairs and cut my ankle bracelet. My Mother works for Rody One industries; my Father lives in Juarez. I just finished starting 8th grade. It’s boring but I like to write poems, and listen to music. One day I might want to work as a Corrections Officer in a prison."

Stockholm syndrome? (Wired)

'But Chong did not go home that night. Instead, he was placed in a cell for five days without any human contact and was not given food or drink. In his desperation, he said he was forced to drink his own urine. “I had to do what I had to do to survive….I hallucinated by the third day,” Chong said. “I was completely insane.”'

NBC

He spent three days in intensive care in almost complete renal shutdown. Now he's suing.

Keep the candle burning

'A Texas mom who put up a billboard as part of publicity campaign to get her daughter elected high school prom queen said the 18-year-old did not win the coveted crown. The pink, rotating billboard, which read “Vote Brandy Day for Prom Queen!” went up on April 14...and immediately raised eyebrows around town, with many calling it completely over-the-top.'

ABC

Click on this

Ten years after Randi's challenge, followers are still dying:

"Why am I so heartless? You should know that to date, three of her followers have starved to death by following her instructions. If she has the wisdom to command them to die, she should have the smarts to know when she's going down that slope, as well. Jasmuheen said of one of those dupes who died, that she was "not coming from a place of integrity and did not have the right motivation." I believe that Jasmuheen should be allowed -- even encouraged -- to demonstrate that she herself has both the required integrity and the correct motivation."

Respectful Insolence

'“Scotland, if you pursue this policy of these monstrous [wind] turbines, Scotland will go broke. They are ugly, they are noisy and they are dangerous. If Scotland does this, Scotland will be in serious trouble and will lose tourism to places like Ireland, and they are laughing at us.”

'When challenged to produce hard evidence about his claims on the negative impact of turbines, [Donald] Trump said: “I am the evidence, I am a world class expert in tourism.” 

'The public gallery burst into laughter.'

Washington Post

"A sleepy Air Canada pilot first mistook the planet Venus for an aircraft, and then sent his airliner diving toward the Atlantic to prevent an imaginary collision with another plane"

Reuters

We have a spelling checker—click

'It is the Mayan belief that is so striking for me. I can understand the fear of nuclear war and global warming as threats to our existence. However this poll could have been entitled “Ten Percent of Earth’s Population Found To Be Morons.”'

Turley's Blog

"Just because someone has an internally consistent world view does not make it accurate. Fans of slavery, alchemy, the Inquisition, trial by combat, and Ptolemaic astronomy all had logical looking arguments supporting their now discredited views. Conard at first seems to yet another evangelist of a hopelessly flawed and dangerous orthodoxy, and the more he speaks, the more he seems to be deeply imbalanced, so intensely invested in his distorted personal mythology that he is driven to make the world at large reflect it back. It would be far better for Davidson and the New York Times to treat people like Conard as epitomes of deep-seated cultural pathologies, rather than promote them."

Naked Capitalism

The latest teen craze...

Our Wacky World—4/12/2012

It's that time of the year again—bring out the hammer and the nails (includes graphic video):

"Christians were nailed to crosses in the Philippines today in a grim Good Friday reenactment of Jesus's suffering. Thousands of people watched as 17 devoted Catholics were 'crucified' in the gruesome annual ritual. Church leaders have condemned the practice which they believe are a distortion of the true Easter message."

Mail Online

Check out this oldie but goodie—The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus

Thomas Kinkade, quite possibly the best alcoholic Christian artist of the 20th Century, died:

"Kinkade’s star was on the decline commercially in 2007, but that didn’t keep filmmakers from securing an obscenely overqualified cast that included eight-time Oscar nominee Peter O’Toole, Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden, comic genius Chris Elliott, and TV icon Edward Asner. Oh, and also The Facts Of Life’s Charlotte Rae, whose performance here serves as a powerful reminder that she’s apparently still alive.

Click to enlarge—you know you want to...
(This is the original. Idea by Bogart) 

In a world where Fireproof, a low-budget independent movie about how Kirk Cameron should stop masturbating to pornography and be less of a dick to his wife, can gross more than $30 million, the theatrical prospects for this similarly Jesus-happy film must have looked fairly solid, especially given its huge built-in fan base and the talent involved. Instead, it received a discreet direct-to-DVD burial in 2008, for reasons that should soon become apparent."

A.V. Club

It's been said that Kinkade wasn't a hack or a huckster, that he was simply a talented artist who worked out a perfect scheme for making millions off of Christian suckers. If so, this is definitely his slickest move yet, right up there with Andy Kaufman. His oversold crap is now almost worth the sticker price. Perhaps some of the people he bankrupted will piss on his grave—I can't think of a more fitting gesture.

Meanwhile, business-as-usual in Arizona inches another notch towards utter idiocy as the former DA of Maricopa County is disbarred and calls a press conference:

"Other men, far greater than I, have gone to jail in defense of principles they believed in and so they would not kowtow to a corrupt ruler," Thomas said at one point. "People like Gandhi, people like Dr. King, people like Solzhenitsyn, people like Thomas More, people who stood for something....and I'm going to stand firm." 

"Gandhi?" wondered one onlooker in amazement.

Crooks & Liars

My heart bleeds. At least he didn't use the Galileo gambit.

"Sometime in the late 20th century a naked man bent over, spread his ass and took a picture. Eventually that picture, known as Goatse, became one of the most venerable memes in internet history. Who is this man, and how did his ass take over the internet?"

Gawker

"Dr. Bruce Copen developed Ruth Drown’s concept further to produce his “Electronic Vibro Potentiser” (EVP). With the EVP, you can test a homoeopathic remedy either on the basis of a test substance or a corresponding rate. Essentially, the procedure is the same as for radionic analysis, except that instead of the rates for organs and symptoms, you refer to the rates for the homoeopathic remedy, nosode, flower essences, Schussler salts, etc. 

"The great advantage of radionics by comparison with other test methods is that you do not require any test sets. All of the information which you require can be generated from rates. This gives rise to entirely new possibilities for remedies for which there had previously been no remedy providing (e.g. the period system of elements, radioactive materials, allopathic medicaments). This gives rise to fresh possibilities, particularly for diagnostic therapies."

Copen Labs


Brown/yellow/red/non-"white" people don't mind being killed. They can take it. Experts have been pointing this out for years:

"The natives of these tribes love fighting for fighting's sake," Chief of Air Staff Hugh Trenchard assured Parliament. "They have no objection to being killed." The military's argument was that, though the often indiscriminate air attacks might perturb some civilized folks back in London, such acts were viewed differently by the Arabs. As one British commander observed, "'[Shiekhs]...do not seem to resent...that women and children are accidentally killed by bombs."

Tiny Revolution

“What got me to Jesus was very simple. With the education levels and knowledge of the societies back 2,000 years ago, Jesus had to be the son of God, because the people there would not have the imagination to make up stories like walking on water, rising from the dead, and changing water into wine.”

Simple is right. (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)

'In the day's most startling testimony, a detective read internal church memos about a priest who allegedly "joked about how hard it was to have sex with three boys in one week." His accuser also stated that the priest had a "rotation process" of boys spending time sleeping with him.'

AP

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, together forever:

"I asked the LDS Church to confirm my hunch. And in a rare move, the Church obliged: Sally Hemings and Tom Jefferson, I was told, have been posthumously sealed as husband and wife in an LDS Temple."

Slate

"I was in church on Sunday," Carlsbad Police Chief Daniel Fierro said, "and I heard three different people talking about rabies and skunks."

The Register

"The ancient herb has been touted around the world for thousands of years for everything from gout to childbirth, but scientists now know it carries serious risks of causing kidney disease and urinary cancers."

AFP

Our Wacky World—4/4/2012

"The paper says the one confirmed case concerned a boy - Henk Heithuis - who reported being sexually abused by priests to the police in 1956. After giving evidence, he was placed in a Catholic-run psychiatric institution where he was then castrated because of his 'homosexual behaviour'."

Dutch News

Keynote room

'Associate Professor Stephen M. Kajiura was reviewing with his evolution class in GS 120 for a midterm when FAU student Jonatha Carr interrupted him: “How does evolution kill black people?” she asked. Kajiura attempted to explain that evolution doesn’t kill anyone. And then, Carr became violent.' 

Or rather, unhinged:

"…fuckin’ evolution, I hate this shit.…You better shut the fuck up, before I fuckin’ kill you!"

Watch the uncut video: University Press

'A southeastern Pennsylvania church subjected members of a youth group to a mock kidnapping and interrogations without telling them it was staged, and the outraged mother of one 14-year-old girl has filed a complaint with police... "It was a youth event, to illustrate what others have encountered on a regular basis," he said, adding that the focus of the lesson was "the persecuted church" in other countries.'

Pittsburgh Live

"This darkly comic anecdote demonstrates a number of important points. First, W. is thick as two blocks of wood. Second, he knew about the torture programs and about the farming out of torture to US allies, which is a punishable offense in US law. Third, the practice of torture, being illegal in Europe, impels intelligence agencies to go rogue and establish black cells inside themselves that can hide operations from the president and other civilian political leaders. (Allegedly PM Miller did know about the operation). This procedure, adopted under US pressure, profoundly undermined democracy and human rights in Poland."

Juan Cole

'Parenting observers cite the cancellation as a prime example of "helicopter parents" — those who hover over their children and are involved in every aspect of their children's lives — sports, school, and increasingly work — to ensure that they don't fail, even at an Easter egg hunt.'

NPR

"... he later made another photo, Autofellatio6.jpg, that now graces the page and actually looks good enough to be included in a high school science textbook, if, you know, high school science textbooks featured images of men with their penises in their mouths. Other exhibitionist autofellators have challenged Jiffman’s place on the page, including one guy who tried to argue that there also needs to be a photo of a circumcised man on the page, in case people thought autofellation is impossible to do without a foreskin." [SFW]

Buzz Feed

GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Wrote Book on Soliciting Prostitutes, Buying Narcotics:

'"Be aware that drugs in some countries are purer than those in the United States. In many countries, especially in Asia, narcotics are not cut as much as they are in the U.S. Thus, doses are much stronger."'

Sounds like good advice. He should know. (Crooks & Liars)

"For more than two years, Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded every roll call at the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn and captured his superiors urging police officers to do two things in order to manipulate the "stats" that the department is under pressure to produce: Officers were told to arrest people who were doing little more than standing on the street, but they were also encouraged to disregard actual victims of serious crimes who wanted to file reports. 

"In October 2009, Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for three hours and detailed more than a dozen cases of crime reports being manipulated in the district. Three weeks after that meeting—which was supposed to have been kept secret from Schoolcraft's superiors—his precinct commander and a deputy chief ordered Schoolcraft to be dragged from his apartment and forced into the Jamaica Hospital psychiatric ward for six days."

Village Voice

'"The first time I went to see a doctor when my (autistic) son Gael was three and we thought there was a problem, the psychiatrist asked me if I had wanted him - if it had been a wanted pregnancy!" says Candy Lepenuizic, a British woman married to a Frenchman. "Then she asked what sort of dreams I had had while I was pregnant with him. And suggested the whole family have a course of psychotherapy. At that point I got up and walked out. It was only because I had been warned this might happen that I did not burst into tears." Such horror stories are typical in French families of autistic children.'

I guess next they'll try treating them with N-rays. (BBC)

Those Aryan blue eyes

Our Wacky World—3/18/2012

Jailbait

"The show tells the story of six “ponies” and their various adventures. Anybody who has spent time working with livestock will confirm that these are unrealistic depictions of horses and ponies. Were the lack of realism the only problem we would have no objections to allowing this show on TV, however we found a great many more issues:"

It's called anthropomorphism. It's a routine human activity, especially with higher animals. Far more shocking are the things these "ponies" are up to. Here's a sample (you really need to read the whole thing for a full gut-blowout):

"The show presents a biblically incorrect cosmology. Starting with the very first episode it claims that the sun and the moon’s motion is caused by a pair of winged unicorns. This is wrong as the Bible states that the motion of the planets is due to God’s will alone."

I assume they mean the part about the sun going around the Earth not the part about how inertia and gravitation work all by themselves:

"The show is socialist: Various ponies appear to practice trades (for example Pinkie-Pie is a baker, Rarity is a seamstress and Twilight Sparkle is an occultist), and yet they do not appear to charge for their services (even the satanic Ms Sparkle), this is a model of a communist society envisaged by Marx. There’s no money or entrepreneurship. Is this an acceptable role model for young girls?"

Probably, given the fact that none of them will be working for a living. Why fill their pretty little heads with irrelevant data, like the fact that barter is common when there's not enough hard specie around? It's my, er, "god's" way or the highway (to hell). Judging from the comments (which are priceless), I'd say that God's Bullies™ want to live in the past and the present at the same time.

Shelley The Republican

"A Nebraska woman has sold a three-year-old McDonald's Chicken McNugget that resembles President George Washington for $8,100 on eBay."

Telegraph

"Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid. 

"Tide has become a form of currency on the streets. The retail price is steadily high — roughly $10 to $20 a bottle — and it’s a staple in households across socioeconomic classes. Tide can go for $5 to $10 a bottle on the black market, authorities say. Enterprising laundry soap peddlers even resell bottles to stores."

The Daily

"USA had planned to launch a spaceship to the Saturn to reach & study the planet in 2004. He, through his transcendental visit to Saturn visualized that the Saturn is a ball of three types of revolving heavy gases, having purple, yellow and black shades. The famous ring of Saturn is made of some material like slurry or mud along with floating rocks. There are no land marks on the Saturn because there is no formation of land. In the third edition (2003) of his autobiography 'Brahmarashichi Samaranayatra', he has published his observations about the planet Saturn."

Dr. P.V. Vartak

"A pastor of the Seventh Day Revival Judaism of Yahweh church at Techiman in the Brong Ahafo region was Thursday given a hot chase by residents after he failed to fulfill a promise of turning a walking stick into a snake."

Ghana Web

"During the ceremony, the rabbi or mohel removes blood from the wound with his mouth. The latest tragedy occurred with the death of a two-week-old boy in Brooklyn who contracted herpes from the Rabbi. In 2005 another infant died from the same alleged transmission from a rabbi."

Turley's Blog

"This journey started in July 2005 when our 19-year-old son became very ill with an intestinal parasite. Six months after the initial infection he was very seriously ill, despite the best efforts of a team medical experts. By happenstance we saw an article in an Israeli newspaper about work that an Israeli veterinary doctor was doing with camel's milk to help children suffering from a variety of severe food allergies. Through dogged determination, luck and mostly importantly, help from a host of strangers we were able to obtain the only thing that was able to help our son recover--camel's milk"

Camel Milk For Health

"Yet another irony: creationists mock paleontologists  for the rare instances where they were fooled by a hoax—but this museum features a hoaxed specimen in its first exhibit, with a creationist interpretation, yet the creationists are not competent enough in paleontology to spot a hoax when they bought one!"

Skeptic Blog


No TV show could possibly be creepier than "To Catch A Predator," right? Well...

"The glamorous Ms Ding conducts face-to-face interviews with the prisoners, who have often committed especially gruesome crimes. Her subjects sit in handcuffs and leg chains, guarded by warders. She warms up with anodyne questions about favourite films or music, but then hectors the prisoners about the violent details of their crimes and eventually wrings apologies out of them. She promises to relay final messages to family members, who are usually not allowed to visit them on death row. The cameras keep rolling as the condemned say a farewell message and are led away to be killed by firing squad or lethal injection."

Mail Online

"Scientists at the University of Texas Medical School used magnetic resonance imaging scans to look at the eyeballs and optic nerves of astronauts who'd spent an average of 108 days in orbit. In a third of cases, the optic nerve showed signs of compression from the vitreous fluid that surrounds it, decreasing blood supply and possibly causing permanent damage over time."

The Register

He's still around and making more money than ever 

"THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.

"...The bottom line was: “Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.” This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

"One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used."

The Healers Journal

Stop holding back, man. Tell us how you really feel.

Our Wacky World—3/6/2012

"A man is dead today after he accidentally drank gasoline and set his clothes on fire."

WNCT


The fraud known as Facilitated Communication not only separates the desperate from their money but also puts the innocent in jail à la "repressed memory" therapy:

"Cases against others, including the school district, are ongoing. The mother, father, and girl's brother were accused of years of abuse – and the case went on despite there being no physical evidence, extensive testimony about the scientific vacuousness of FC, bizarre and telling inconsistencies in the FC transcripts pointing to the facilitator as author (e.g., the girl couldn't seem to spell her brother's name, but could spell the facilitator's; the religious metaphors were Christian while the family is Jewish), and two in-court tests of FC on two different days in which not single correct answer was produced. The dad spent 80 days in jail, and the 13-year-old brother was subjected to a 1 hour, 40 minute interrogation in which he was lied to and led to believe the police had video of him participating in the rape of his own sister."

JREF


Day 4 of the 2012 International UFO Congress:

'One woman described to me her experience with A&S: they took her into the little tent at right, and "scanned" her several times with different electronic instruments. They found three implants. They also told her that she was an alien hybrid, but also had 'angelic" DNA as well. I am truly amazed at what science can learn these days. I invited her to post her experience on this Blog.'

Really good comment thread on this one. (Bad UFOs)

Click to enlarge

"The team's findings suggest that privilege promotes dishonesty. For example, upper-class subjects were more likely to cheat. After five apparently random rolls of a computerized die for a chance to win an online gift certificate, three times as many upper-class players reported totals higher than 12—even though, unbeknownst to them, the game was rigged so that 12 was the highest possible score."

Science

"The goal of most djinn is to retake this world, which they feel rightfully belongs to them. In order to succeed, they must make humanity give up stewardship of this reality. They are accomplishing this by stealth and disguise. They have great powers and plenty of time, for they live for centuries. Shape-shifting djinn may be responsible for many forms of paranormal phenomena and experience, such as UFOs, shadow people, ghosts, poltergeists, and demonic possession. In such ways, they gain access to us that enables them to steal our life force and information about us, and to manipulate and use us without revealing their true form and purpose. These negative experiences are on the rise."

Djinn Universe

"What does cable TV have to do with health? The answer may surprise you.... After his retirement, Mr. Ober began to consider how his experience with cable TV might apply to the human body. He realized that most people wear synthetic-soled shoes that insulate their bodies from the Earth's energy field that stabilizes not only cable TV but all electrical equipment– industrial or residential– throughout the world. This seemingly simple realization inspired a scientific adventure that has resulted in what is perhaps the greatest health discovery of our time."

Earthing Institute

I used to go barefoot all the time. No difference. But then that's just an anecdote, isn't it?

The power of online prayer:

"You fill out an online form, give a single click, and “thousands” of prayer warriors spring into action, clenching their fists as they fire potent prayers skyward. God leaps off his throne in an electric frenzy, peers intently down and shouts the magic word “Alla-Shazam!” and healing, money, and better parenting skills shower down on the needy."

What would this site be without testimonials? For example:

"I went grocery shopping and I used most of my money to buy groceries. Prior to me leaving I saw and had the urge to buy a $7.00 lotto ticket and I won $100. I left with more money then I came with and has groceries."

Blue Collar Atheist

Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1990:

'According to [Ernst] Bloch, the heliocentric system – just like the geocentric – is based upon presuppositions that can’t be empirically demonstrated. Among these, an important role is played by the affirmation of the existence of an absolute space; that’s an opinion that, in any event, has been cancelled by the Theory of Relativity. Bloch writes, in his own words: ‘From the moment that, with the abolition of the presupposition of an empty and immobile space, movement is no longer produced towards something, but there’s only a relative movement of bodies among themselves, and therefore the measurement of that [movement] depends to a great extent on the choice of a body to serve as a point of reference, in this case is it not merely the complexity of calculations that renders the [geocentric] hypothesis impractical? Then as now, one can suppose the earth to be fixed and the sun as mobile.”'

National Catholic Reporter

'Cook also testified that in 2007, while doing work at the Scientology International Base in Southern California, she was taken to a pair of double-wide trailers she called "the hole." She testified that she was held in the "hole" for seven weeks, that there were bars on the windows and security guards posted at the door, and that the food was "was like leftovers, slop, bits of meat, soupy kind of leftovers thrown into a pot and cooked and barely edible."'

ABC

'Once, when approaching screening for a flight on official FBI business, I showed my badge as I had done for decades in order to bypass screening. I was asked for my form which showed that I was armed. I was unarmed on this flight because my ultimate destination was a foreign country. I was told, "Then you have to be screened." This logic startled me, so I asked, "If I tell you I have a high-powered weapon, you will let me bypass screening, but if I tell you I'm unarmed, then I have to be screened?" The answer? "Yes. Exactly." Another time, I was bypassing screening (again on official FBI business) with my .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and a TSA officer noticed the clip of my pocket knife. "You can't bring a knife on board," he said. I looked at him incredulously and asked, "The semi-automatic pistol is okay, but you don't trust me with a knife?" His response was equal parts predictable and frightening, "But knives are not allowed on the planes."'

G-man Casefile