The Millenium Project

I know, I know – this update didn't actually appear on the date above, but that's because good reasons. One is that I had to wait for some news and the other is that it's highly unlikely that there will be an update on June 12 or thereabouts because that is a holiday weekend and I'll be spending some time travelling to visit friends and relatives.

Also, I won't be here on the weekend of June 19 because I'll be doing my other hobby at a car rally. Sorry, but that's the way life is.

… this time to chiropractors. I had always assumed that they lacked training, but now I know that they spend more time learning their craft than doctors do.

"Dr" Sherri Tenpenny, winner for Quote of the Year in the 2012 Millenium Awards and all-round disgusting thing has embarrassed herself* at a public hearing about COVID-19 vaccines by declaring that the vaccines make the recipients magnetic, evidence being that people who have received the vaccine can have spoons and keys stick to them afterwards. The spoon sticking thing is caused by sweat and skin oils and has been a staple trick of fathers at kids' birthday parties since Adam played fullback for the Eden rugby team. Keys are almost universally made of brass.

One thing that is common to both stainless steel and brass is that they are nonmagnetic, so it is highly unlikely that either of these metals would stick to a magnetic human, even if such a human existed. The alloy that makes stainless steel (of which all my spoons are made, although silver and gold aren't magnetic either) loses iron's magnetic qualities when it cools, and I don't think too many people have been putting red hot spoons on their noses. Keys are made of brass specifically so that they can't be magnetised because a magnetic key would severely reduce the security of locks. Add metallurgy, physics and skin secretions to the things that "Dr" Tenpenny is ignorant about, such as the safety of vaccines and the value of human life.

* I'm drawing a very long bow in assuming that "Dr" Tenpenny could be embarrassed by this, or by anything really. My experience of professional anti-vaccination liars is that they have no shame even when caught out in the most outrageous lies.

Another old friend popped to the top of the swamp this week. Del Bigtree, champion anti-vaccination liar and wearer of yellow stars, suffered from bleeding hæmorrhoids and needed attention from real doctors. He required a blood transfusion and insisted that any blood put into him had to come from donors certified to be free of any COVID-19 vaccines. As blood collection agencies aren't part of any conspiracy thinking there is no way of making such a guarantee. (When I give blood they only ask about vaccinations in the previous two weeks, not because they are worried about vaccines polluting the blood supply but because that time limit ensures that the donor is past any adverse reactions. No record is kept of any vaccinations I might have had prior to that.)

He initially thought that sudden shortness of breath and tiredness might be because he had contracted the non-existent (according to him) COVID-19, but this didn't stop him travelling around and possibly spreading the infection. He had it treated with a medication for head lice, something which is always a good idea when a viral infection is suspected, but he finally had a test and it turned out negative. When he consulted a real doctor he was told to get to hospital immediately because it was obvious that he was suffering from extreme amemia that had come on suddenly, and this usually means internal bleeding.

Then the fun started. Bigtree refused a blood transfusion and after consultation with a cancer quack from Tijuana he was advised to go to a hospital in Cancun, Mexico, where he could get unpolluted blood because nobody was vaccinated.

I've written a lot of short articles and news items here over the last two decades. Each week a couple of these pieces will be randomly selected and displayed at the bottom of the week's update. They might not always still be relevant, but that's the way history works.

Some random pieces of history

Child abuse (7/1/2012)
How would you feel if you heard someone laughing about how they had physically abused a child? How would you feel if you heard someone laughing about how they had sexually abused a child? Once you have considered those, how would you feel if you heard someone laughing about how they had exposed their child to a disease that still kills children around the world and sentences others to lives of pain and disability?

That was a message posted to the Australian Vaccination Network's Facebook page on November 30, 2011. It was not challenged or criticised by any of the members of the group. You will notice that Ms Elphinstone expresses amusement at the thought of her son getting chicken pox, caught because she "did deliberaltey (sic) expose him". See the "lol"? That means "laughing out loud".

My friend Ken McLeod was so offended by this admission of child abuse that he did what any responsible citizen would do - he contacted the authorities in Western Australia, where Ms Elphinstone runs an online business selling magic potions and nostrums. His first point of contact was the Minister for Child Protection. This would seem to be the logical place. I spoke to a friend of mine who used to do crisis intervention for the NSW Department of Community Services, and she said she would have no hesitation in taking action if someone was deliberately exposing a child to a dangerous disease. It would be treated in exactly the same way as a child in danger of physical or sexual abuse. Apparently things are different in Western Australia, and Ken received a letter saying that this particular form of protection for endangered children was not a concern of the Child Protection Department and the complaint would be flicked to the Health Minister. (You can see the Minister's reply here.)

It seems that deliberately endangering the health of children is no more important to the health authorities in WA than it is to the child protectors. You can see the Health Minister's reply here, but this paragraph bears repeating:

I have been advised by the Western Australian Department of Child Protection that this is not a child protection issue. The WA Department of Health believes that the existing approach of providing the public with accurate information on vaccine preventable diseases is the preferred strategy. Fortunately, people with extreme views on immunisation, such as those attributed to Ms Elphinstone, are in a small minority.

So there you have it. parents can freely abuse their children in Western Australia by putting them at risk of death or permanent injury provided they do the endangering by following an idiotic, anti-vaccination agenda. I assume the authorities aren't so cavalier with parents who refuse to put their children in approved car seats or who give them alcohol or other drugs. I hope that they take things more seriously if Ms Elphinstone decides to treat any serious illness her child acquires by using the useless products she sells off her web site.

How many children have to be put at risk, or be damaged or killed by preventable diseases before the health authorities recognise anti-vaccination campaigners for the dangerous, deluded fools they are and treat them like any other group that defies the rules and conventions of civilised society? I'm not laughing out loud, and neither should anyone else.

See everything that appeared in 2012 here.

The anti-amalgamists find another "chemist" (12/3/2005)
Last year I had an exchange of emails with Professor Boyd Haley, chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky, in which he demonstrated either that he had forgotten a lot of chemistry or the U of K should have a close look at both its recruitment and tenure policies. Put bluntly, the man talks nonsense and appears to be confused about the difference between different chemical compounds and even between compounds and their component elements. He is, of course, loved by both the anti-vaccination liars and the anti-amalgam fools because he says bad things about mercury.

It now seems that Dr Haley has a challenger in the mad scientist field, and a paper written by someone who describes himself as "Independent Chemist, M.Sc., retired 08.06.2003. Speciality: Amalgam and Chronic Diseases" has been thrown into the mix. Apparently this paper was peer-reviewed (it must be true - it says so in the paper) and was presented to Representative Dan Burton's crazy anti-mercury witch hunt hearings. A statement from the paper bears closer analysis: "[amalgam] is highly unstable above the melting point of Hg, 39°C". When it was pointed out to the person quoting the paper that this was obvious nonsense, the response was to quote another anti-amalgam paper which said of mercury: "Physical properties are: melting point 39°C, boiling point 357°C". Now, leaving out the minus sign is a mistake, but when the mistake is identified and the response is to give the same answer then stupidity and obtuseness can be assumed. It might be different if this wasn't a case where it is so easy to demonstrate the truth, but when I said that the temperature inside a human body is about 37°C and this was obviously above the melting point of mercury I was asked what qualifications I had to challenge the opinions of professional chemists. I doubted that my reply, "high school chemistry", would be considered satisfactory, and I was proved correct because the response was to ask the question again and repeat the original nonsense (plus some nonsense from Dr Haley about how dangerous mercury is, as if that was going to convince me that I was wrong about the melting point of mercury).

Yet again the supporters of non-medicine exhibit their lack of faith. Their heroes and authority figures (even anonymous ones) are not allowed to be anything except perfect, and any attempt to correct mistakes threatens the house of cards. What is so hard about saying "Oops! I was wrong"? Scientists do it every day.

I just thought - maybe the ban on thermometers containing mercury was because the mercury in them froze when they were put in people's mouths, making the readings suspect. No, that couldn't be right, could it?

See everything that appeared in 2005 here.

It's Spinal Health Week, when everyone is being encouraged to seek out a chiropractor to have their back fiddled with to make it healthier. The picture above is being used to promote the week, and all I can say is that if I ever considered a chiro it would indicate a slump in my mental health.

I preferred it when the week was called "Subluxation Awareness Week" because it was an opportunity to make people aware of subluxations and how mythical and non-existent they are and that the only reason for them ever being suggested is to move money from your bank account to that of a chiropractor.

And speaking of chiropractors, some of them have been complaining that health insurers are asking for such trivial things as patient notes and justifications for services. It seems that some chiropractors have been billing for many more visits than would seem necessary and are resisting audits to examine records of the treatments provided. I should point out that real doctors are also audited but they are trained to keep the necessary paperwork.

One chiro whinged that the insurer had baulked at paying for one patient who had had only 13 visits in a year. I have an incurable chronic condition (Type 2 diabetes) and I have been to the local medical centre five times this year (collect a prescription and a referral for blood tests (arranged over the phone), attend for the blood collection, meeting with the doctor to discuss my diabetes management plan, first COVID vaccination, flu vaccination). (I actually saw my doctor on another occasion, but it was at the shop when we were both buying something so it doesn't count.) I know someone with both indolent multiple myeloma and Parkinson's and she doesn't see a doctor 13 times a year.

Of course, as one of the principles taught to chiropractors is that they should work to market and sell their services it should be no surprise that one way of "building a practice" is to get customers, sorry, patients to keep coming back. I find it informative that real doctors don't seem to have the need to attend practice building seminars.

When my friends and I get together for a few beers (drunk through plastic tubes passing underneath our face masks, of course, and sitting a separate tables in the pub to maintain social distancing) one regular topic of conversation is the ineffectiveness of the Therapeutic Goods Administration. The TGA might make the rules but it rarely does anything to anyone who breaks them. They seem, however, to have a particular dislike of ex-celebrity chef Pete Evans and like to pay occasional attention to his bank balance with the aim of reducing its size. Here is the latest announcement about Paleo Pete on their Facebook page.

Here it is for the search engines, with the usual yellow marker applied to the inevitable lies

NVIC Suspended from Twitter Yesterday

The 11 year-old Twitter account of the 39-year old educational charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). was suspended without warning on Sunday afte5rnoon, May 23. 2021. NVIC's Twitter handle was @NVlCLoeDown and the account had about 21,000 followers at the time it was suspended. In March. N'v'lC's account with Facebook was terminated and, in April, NVIC's lnstagram account was terminated without explanation, together affecting over 300.000 followers.

No other major non-proﬁt organization that reports on vaccine science. policy. law and ethics has been removed from ail three social media platforms.

NVIC Co-founder and President Barbara Loe Fisher said,

"Those who fear the truth have no option but to censor it. Big Tech and Big Pharma are business partners, just like the federal government and Big Pharma have become business partners over the past four decades. Now political operatives and Silioon Valley profiteers trying to control the public conversation on the world wide web are targeting truth tellers in order to silence them. NVIC has served as a voice for the vaccine injured since 1982 and we will continue to tell the truth about vaccination and health in all forums, no matter who tries to stop us."

Fisher urges everyone to leave social media platforms that engage in censorship and use platforms that do not censor. Follow NVIC on MeWe, Telegram, Gab. Brand New Tube and Bitchute.

What can you say about May 2001? It started the annual sequence of months without an "r" in the name. It had 31 days but it does that every year. It probably wasn't named after my grandfather's sister, Aunty May. It was an extremely ordinary and unexceptional month, but it still had loons to look at.

The Horse Diaper
I have paid some attention before to the hygiene needs of animals. There was the Doggy Diaper which won Loon of the Month back in April 1999 and the toilet trained cats in March 2000, but these just addressed minor irritants. Sure, dogs can make a bit of a mess and it's a pain in something or other when the cat scratches the back door to go out, but for real inconvenience to humans you have to look at the horse. (I know, the elephant offers a bigger disposal problem, but who keeps one of them around the house?) It's good that someone has finally done something about this, but there is a downside. It seems that the horse diaper is causing some mental distress among the female equines, largely induced by what is apparently a massive sense of disappointment. Imagine a mare looking out of her stall at a stallion grazing in the field. The next day she is taken out to meet him, but when she gets there she has another look and says to herself, "Oh, it's only one of those". Sad, really.

Globe in Transit
There has been a long tradition for parents to hate the music enjoyed by their children. Often they describe it not as music, but as noise. For a long time it was thought that the trends in music represented rebellion against traditions and the creation of a new identity for each generation. Now we know that all of this was guided. It was not just an evolution of musical styles, as, for example, rock growing out of the blues and then begetting funk and disco. We now know that these changes, particularly in rock music, have been teleological - directed towards a goal. There now seems to be incontrovertible proof that music has been hijacked by aliens and is being used as a means of establishing control. Leo Fender and Les Paul didn't know what they were unleashing when they invented the electric guitar. Or did they? Is it a coincidence that a guitar plectrum is shaped like an alien's head? I think not!

The Resurgence of Natural Law theory and the Human Rights Act 1998
MMy neurologicalsluice makes me incapable of writing better words than the original: "Ultimately,the technology including x-rays of wrists at birth and facts statistically shown by neurologists and psychiatrists in the USA, would point to the fact that individuals who are usually imprisoned usually have a neurologicalsluice which allows a large volume of Mind with a large 'M' to flow into their minds with a small 'm', a neurotheological condition which is rare in women,and given the neurological explanation that the brain transmits consciousness these individuals are the engines of society (rather like electricity turning on light bulbs which transmit light) and in turn our Natural Law theory of consciousness involved in the science of legislation".

Even the Wayback Machine was thwarted by the death of Geocities. Sorry.

Earth Link Mission
Every business seems to have a mission statement, so it is not surprising that an enterprise called "Earth Link Mission" should also have a mission statement. It says: &"To globally link Earthworkers to a common cause which will enable coordinated efforts of group consciousness to unilaterally and simultaneously perform energetic realignments of the Etheric Earth on the physical earth, thereby accelerating the Ascension Plan in its perfection". In fact, it is so important that it says it twice. I'm glad that the people here take this mission doubly seriously, because I see unenergetic misalignments around me every day and I can't fix them all myself. It was an enormous relief to me to read that Chandra is "a polarity therapist and Energist who is sensitive to both the Earth, Human and Cosmic energy fields". Up until then I had not met anyone who could manage both of the three./p>

International Academy of Vibrational Therapy
I like my vibrations to be in order. I hate just lying around, vibrating randomly with an occasional twitch of my root chakra and a shiver up my meridians. I have been wondering for a long time how to fix this, and conventional methods just weren't working. No matter how many weasels I smoked or how much astrology I rubbed on my head, things just stayed discombobulated. This site finally gave me the answer. Funnily enough, I had tried a combination of pyramids and crystals before but I guess joining a multi-level marketing plan and sprinkling a lot of salt on my food wasn't the right way to go about it. Now I have the fancy box with the pyramid sticks and crystals in it, I can go anywhere and as soon as I set it up, people leave me alone to relax.

Human Understood Reincarnation or Resurrecting the Dead
This site says: &"God is the Gravitational and electromagnetci field in which the Universe is situated. Prophets or seerers look into the future and fortell Events as fortold by God by resonating to the time tunnel or vibration in the Earth's Electromagnetic field, as modulated by the planets and the Sun. The Human body is made up of C, N, H, NH4 groups, sugar, carbohydrates, DNA, RNA, CHromosomes, Glonoids, Glands, etc which ACT AS Transistors, IC, (Integrated circuits, Resistors, capacitors, which renders the body to act and respond as a Transponder, Broadcasting Human Radar and Computer. The brain broadcast out 'life force ' or human bio life cycle waves which is reflected by the Van Allen's Belt as (it in turn) is induced and / or modulated by the planets". Sadly for a site dedicated to bringing back the dead, the founder of the movement died and has not as yet come back. Immediately after this announcement on the site, it says: "loading, please wait...". We are waiting.

And speaking of resurrecting the dead, look what happens when you go to the site

World Record Gum Wrapper Chain
Think of humanity's achievements. We have taken men from Earth, landed them on the Moon, and brought them back. We have taken hearts from people and transplanted them into other people so that the recipients may continue to live. We have wiped out smallpox. Some of us have written Macbeth, painted Guernica or composed a 9th Symphony. We have invented machines that can fly, and machines that can swim under the sea, machines that let us communicate over vast distances, and machines that can destroy cities in an instant. We have instruments that can observe and measure the farthest galaxies or the internals of the atom. We have discovered fire, agriculture, religion, and love. But something was always missing. Out there, on the edge of visibility, was something more, something not yet attained. Until now ...

This site triggered Loon of the Month in May 2001. The citation said:

Loon of the Month

It was no contest this month for Loon of the Month. We are all used to things being measured in football fields, that universal unit of measurement that is exactly the same everywhere and transcends imperial measurement, metrics, soccer, rugby (both union and league), American football, Gaelic football, Australian Rules, and the Eton Wall Game. The gum wrapper chain is 122 football fields long, but what guaranteed the prize was the introduction of a new unit of measurement - the 747 cruising altitude.

In the intervening 20 years the length has grown to 356 football fields, although it now makes a distinction for soccer fields and is only 323 of them.

I'm back! If you want to see where I was and what I do in the rest of my spare time you can go here.

One of the great disappointments of 2020 was the cancellation of the semiannual MindBody$pirit Festivals. The organisers tried to hold them in virtual space but everything became dominated by Reiki Masters doing healing at a distance. (I am making this up of course. As a fully qualified Reiki Master myself (I did a three day online course) I wouldn't want to denigrate the profession as a group of money grabbing charlatans.)

The shows are back this year, although numbers of visitors are limited. I was very pleased to see that there were no obvious stands offering a cure for COVID-19 or alternatives to vaccination, but I've discovered in the past that these things are usually under the counter and have to be asked for. (At a show directed at parents and children I was told by a representative of the peak homeopaths' association that they couldn't legally offer homeopathic vaccines but if I rang the office on Monday someone would tell me where to get them.)

Much of it was very familiar, but there were a couple of surprises. I was attracted to this one by a woman and her daughter who were almost in hysterics*.

Yes it was a stand selling ceramic dildos, in many shapes, sizes and colours. Something for every woman. (Women were well catered for at the festival. Two stands away from this one there was one offering a means to increase menstrual flow. The fact that they also sold very fancy and very expensive pads and tampons might have suggested a conflict of self-interest.)

* The word "hysteria" goes back to the idea of women being too stimulated in the sexual organs, but I'm using it here to mean laughing. It did seem appropriate, though.

Crystal dildos! Probably even more powerful than ceramic ones. This stand also offered what they called Yoni Balls (and the sex shops call Ben Wa balls) designed to strengthen the pelvic floor and was taking bookings for nude yoga sessions. I tried to think of how I could open a conversation with the woman personing the stand but the words wouldn't come. (I know, I worded that badly. Sorry.)

Foodless food! If they took anything else out you probably wouldn't have been able to see the donuts without a microscope. (I bought a sausage roll for lunch and didn't realise until I bit into it that it had some sort of vegan filling that had never been near any kind of animal. I wonder where the shortening in the flaky pastry came from. I ate it and haven't died since but I hope my local bakery stays with real meat in their products.)

Real doctors looked a bit out of place, but if they managed to raise a few dollars towards the work of this excellent organisation then the embarrassment of being surrounded by medical quackery would have been worth it. I had a similar feeling about a a stand for the cancer charity Canteen.

I was attracted to this stand because they sell ways of handling the dreaded 5G radiation, but as I've only had one of the two COVID vaccine shots so far my blood concentration of 5G antennas might not yet be high enough to worry about. They also had things that you plug into a power point to counteract the radiation from your WiFi router, but I'm not sure they would be as effective as the wire cages sold a little while ago.

As someone with T2 diabetes I'm not sure I need any more ketones in my body. I'm also not sure that drinking acetone and related compounds really helps with health (your body makes them, just as it does cholesterol, and doesn't get them from your diet). Also, as ketones are made in the body from fat and as that's human fat and as humans are animals, maybe they are not as vegan as might be desired.

And would I got to the MindBodySpirit Festival in the future? Of course I would. As I said to the man on the Canteen stand, I need to reinforce my prejudices occasionally.

This is a fact often ignored by those who seem to think that they can do whatever they like and there will be no retribution or punishment. In September 2019 I reported on a loon who threw menstrual blood over legislators in the California Senate Chamber.

It took some time, but eventually the moron was charged with one felony count of assault on a public official and one felony count of vandalism. You can read about the court appearance in the Los Angeles Times (and lots of other places if you do a search). I can't find any later report so I assume she was dealt with in a suitable fashion.

And just for reference, here is what the moron Rebecca Dalelio looks like. The mug shot really captured the vacuum behind her eyes.

In an article in Australasian Science magazine in 2015 I mentioned a liar named Belle Gibson who had made a lot of money by claiming to have found a cure for cancer. She even deceived companies like Apple into supporting her lie until it was revealed that she had never had the cancer she was supposed to have cured herself of. In 2017 she was prosecuted for what amounted to fraud and dealt a heavy fine as a penalty.

Two years later in 2019 she still hadn't bothered to pay the fine and was summonsed to appear in court to explain why. At the time I assigned the probability of 0.000000 to the prediction "Belle Gibson will pay the outstanding fines before the heat death of the sun". Fast forward yet another two years and the headline reads:

Was I right? The absolute contempt that Gibson showed towards the people and companies she deceived is reflected in the contempt she has shown towards the courts. The one bright spot is that contempt of court is an imprisonable offence without a time limit and regardless of the original charge or any verdict, so maybe now something can be done about her. I hope I don't have to come back to talk about her in another two years time unless it's to comment on how she is liking her cell.

And while I'm in the mood to show photos of criminals, here's Belle Gibson on one of the times she deigned to appear in a courtroom.

Things have been a bit quiet on the climate change denying front recently, possibly because even the looniest of loons haven't tried to connect the COVID-19 "hoax" to the climate change "hoax", but the attacks on Greta Thunberg have started up again. I saw one thing comparing her age and academic qualifications with those of a prominent denier, the classic Argument from Authority logical fallacy, but the latest is such an obvious fabrication that one has to consider that they aren't even trying these days. Anyone knowing even the smallest smidgen of how such things work can detect the Photoshop influence on this picture. (The original I was given has no camera data in it, showing that it was created from scratch in an image processing program and is not an original photo. If you click here you can see the camera metadata for the "Donuts" photo above. The only manipulation was resizing from the original 6000x4000 pixels.)