The Millenium Project

September 14, 2019

Those lovable anti-vaccination liars (14/9/2019)

You know how people opposed to vaccination are just misguided folk who need to be shown some science? You know how nice they are and how you should be polite to them? You know how that never resort to insults, unlike we pro-vaccine people?

Well, you are wrong, and these creatures need to be exposed, insulted and ridiculed at every opportunity.

On Monday, September 9, a mob of these wastes of oxygen protested at a session of the California State Senate. The protest took the form of throwing menstrual blood over the sitting legislators. And they have the hide to call sane people who support vaccination "extremists". You can read the story here.

There will be a rally organised by anti-vaccination liars outside Parliament House in Canberra on Monday, September 16. I had thought of doing the 500 kilometre round trip to be in the audience but my sock drawer needs reorganising and my landlord has already lent me a ladder to clear the leaves out of the guttering. Even so, I'm thinking of postponing those exciting activities and going to the rally. I wonder how long it would be after I threw red food die at one of the speakers before the cops turned up and the vermin were posting photos to Facebook loudly screeching about me being a terrorist and how all all those in favour of vaccines are evil.

Oh, and the anti-vaxxers are now claiming that it was an agent provocateur who did it just to make them look bad, and even if she was an anti-vaxxer (as her Facebook profile and photographed associations with them would suggest) she isn't a real one and nothing at all like them. (Out in the real world we call this the No True Scotsman fallacy.) Of course they are saying that - lying is what they do and every argument that ever came from them is fallacious.

Found in the wild. I'll acknowledge the creator* if someone tells me who it is.
(* Not THAT "creator". Dementia hasn't set in yet.)

Australian Skeptics National Convention
Melbourne in December

When the hertz hurts (14/9/2019)

This piece of idiocy has been popping up all over the place over the last week or two.

My mind could be crumbling with age, but I'm sure Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Prince and John Lennon all did their musical things after 1953. Maybe the fact that they went against the ruling paradigm is a reason that they are all dead, but let's not get too conspiratorial here.

I see a couple of other problems here. First, if the Nazis used 440Hz to affect the thinking of others why did they need fluoride in the concentration camps? And surely they had finished Naziing well before 1953, by which time Joseph Goebbels, the supposed inventor of the idea, had been dead for eight years. Another problem is that the decision to tune to A₄=440Hz was actually made in 1939, both to standardise orchestra tuning and because the BBC wanted something that was compatible with electronic clocks. Not only had the four musicians mentioned done their composing after the date, they had done all their being born, living and dying as well. Oh, and the ISO standardisation didn't become official until 1955, not 1953, but who's quibbling about that.

If you want to sample the healing qualities of 432Hz as God and Nature intended, here is a minute of it. (You can get eight hours at YouTube, but who's got (or needs) that much time to get in touch with the Earth Spirits?)

And another thing - not only did the ISO rule that A₄ music should be 440Hz, forcing all orchestras to sound the same, but it also standardised A4 stationery to be 210mm x 297mm (8.27 inches x 11.7 inches for people living in the past), forcing all authors (and music composers) to use the same sized three-ring binders to file stuff. A₄ and A4? A coincidence? I think not. Big Government - it never goes away and it hates individuality.

At a meeting of the Illuminati's Population Control Committee (14/9/2019)

I spend time in the psych(ic) ward (14/9/2019)

Everyone needs a bit of danger in their lives, something to raise the pulse rate and cause them to ask "What am I doing here?". So I went to see mediums Ezio and Michelle De Angelis at Penrith RSL to see how close these famous psychics (Ezio has been on television!!) could get to telling me the story of my life and contacting my departed relatives.

While eating dinner before the show I noticed a screen showing the latest Keno results and commented to my dining companion that running the interconnected keno operation across the state was the last remaining activity of a company called AWA. Amalgamated Wireless Australia used to make radios and televisions back when Australia had an electronics manufacturing industry, moved into computers for a while (when I worked with them) and finally just became a gambling system operator. The significance of my observation about AWA became apparent later in the evening.

The way these psychics work is to be contacted by the spirits of people who have passed over to the other side, spirits attracted by the members of the audience. I must have been a very good soul magnet on the night because the following people turned up.

One of the first spirits to talk to the medium was Roy, who liked gardening and horses. This was obviously my maternal grandfather Roy who had an excellent vegetable garden in his back yard. His interest in horses led to him travelling all over the state to attend race meetings. Chickens were mentioned, and Roy had a coop full of hens just behind the cabbage and tomato plants.
Someone called Eve or Evie then butted in, obviously Roy's sister-in-law Eva.
Moving on to the paternal side of my family, Alice came through. My aunty Alice spent her entire working life at the AWA plant in Five Dock. AWA! That I'd been talking about an hour before!!
Alice then brought along James (Alice's father and my paternal grandfather), John, usually called Jack, who liked cars (Alice's brother-in-law who had a full time job organising car races) and William or Bill, who was Alice's brother (and my father). A connection was suggested between Bill and a woman whose name started with "J", and this couldn't be anyone except Joan, Bill's wife and my mother.
About this time someone came through who was very close to a birthday. As it was two days before Joan's birthday this could only be called a hit.
The next person to come through was Ben, deadbeat father of my grandson. While he was talking to the medium, the focus changed to someone with a name starting with "S". That would have to be Sean, Ben's son and my grandson. There was talk of education and the question "Did anyone work in a coal mine?". I used to work for a company that had coal mines, but the significance here had to be that Sean is thinking of doing an apprenticeship at a local colliery.

Sean working at a coal mine might happen in the future (despite the mediums saying they couldn't predict the future) but what worried me was that I'm sure someone would have told me if either Ben or Sean had "passed over". Must have been another Ben and Sean.

The next person to come through from the other side had a name starting with "I". Nobody in my family, and nobody in anyone else's either, which is why the psychic finally settled on a woman of obvious Indian appearance. India starts with "I", so close enough. (I'm reminded of a case where some famous psychic (it might have been John Edward) was looking for someone in the audience connected to a spirit with the initial "D". It was finally decided that it must be Dad. Most people have someone called that in their past.) At this point I assumed that other audience members' families had forced their way to the front of the queue to talk to the medium so I could sit back and reminisce about the days of old.

But here's the thing. None of the spirits who came through from the other side appeared for me - they were all detected while reading other audience members. Ms Psychic explained this at the end by saying that if someone else's contacts seemed familiar it was because our relatives had been watching from the other side and just observing. They would probably come forward at a future event. The statisticians among us observed that with a big enough audience (there were about a hundred people there) some hits on common names were almost inevitable. But Roy, Eva and Alice? When people report on the success and accuracy of psychic readings it is useful to remember the words of Sir Francis Bacon: "The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits but not when it misses".

There wasn't much to object to in the show. Even in the tarot reading session at the end nobody was told anything except platitudes ("Will I get the job I applied for?" "Maybe, but even if you don't there will be more opportunities in the future." "Will I get pregnant in the next twelve months?" "Babies decide their time of birth, but keep trying."). It was entertainment, and I've spent more money on less entertaining shows in the past.

One thing though - all spirits are very proud of the living and still love them. Just for once I'd like a medium to say "Your uncle Harry is coming through and he says he hated you all his life, still hates you and the best part of dying was never having to see your face again". I'd pay extra to see that.

The science underpinning reflexology (14/9/2019)

September 7, 2019

A week of nostalgia

Home birth fanatics are still with us (7/9/2019)

I recently spent time with four family members who were involved one way or another with hospital births. Luckily for all concerned nobody chose to have a home birth with crystals, candles and doulas. Here are their stories.

The mother went into severe pre-eclampsia very suddenly, so an emergency c-section was done immediately without spending too much time explaining why. Luckily she was already in a hospital when her blood pressure went berserk. If she'd been at home without monitoring the outcome for all concerned would almost certainly have been much worse. But what a choice to have to make - a scar, the disappointment of not having a "natural" birth and a live baby or a dead baby and "Well, I tried".
The now 16 year old version of the baby in that story.
This mother had two difficult births. Both were breech. The first involved a longish labour and an episiotomy (that "unnecessary assault" so hated by "natural birth" proponents) but eventually everything turned out fine. The second required two interventions to save the life of the baby and one to save the life of the mother. In none of these incidents was there time to get to a hospital or a doctor when the problem was discovered.
The now 30 year old version of the second baby in that story.

My grandmother had four babies who grew to adulthood. She was a practising Catholic with all that means for birth control back in the early 20th century, and the family never mentioned the babies that didn't make it through the birth process. Another member of my family spent 40 hours in labour in a "birthing centre" until her father called an ambulance to take her somewhere where she could get proper treatment. Should I mention that she was a fully trained midwife?

Also, the two mothers mentioned above had great and distressing difficulty with breast feeding and had to resort to formula within a few weeks of giving birth, but I'll leave the lactavists to another rant.

And what reminded me of all this? This supposedly funny joke by someone who values the birth "experience" over the lives of the mother and child.

Ignorant atheists are still with us (7/9/2019)

Back in May I commented on how some atheists criticise the Bible without having read or understood it, although they are quick to accuse Christians of Bible ignorance. One of the hoary old straw men reappeared this week, so I had something to say. Then this happened (and yes, I know it's Numbers 14, not 13, but as nobody was going to check it didn't really matter).

"I do not believe the story but the story says that they wandered for 40 years". How can anyone argue against logic like that?

Ignorant quack fans are still with us (7/9/2019)

It might be almost ten years since egregious cancer quack Hulda Clark did the world a favour by dying but in the true spirit of alternative "medicine" where nothing ever goes away or is superseded, fans of Dead Hulda are still an extant species. One of them didn't like what I had to say about the dead charlatan.

Not-a-medical-Dr Clark From: Jesus Christ Let Go Let God
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2019 06:39:08 -0400
Subject: You are an ASSHOLE you know, right?

You would be a proctologist - stick your own finger up your aaa buddy.

Dr. Hulda Clarke was not a quack. She would’ve destroyed the 600 billion dollar bullshit drug industry. Actually heal people and you know it’s TRUE

You do realise that Hulda Clark (for that is how she spelled it) died of cancer, don't you? She couldn't even cure herself, let alone threaten the incomes of real doctors who might know something about cancer.

Why is it that nobody will answer my question about the disposal of her carcass? She was cremated and her ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Did her family get EPA approval for dumping toxic waste before they fed the crumbling remains of the charlatan to the fishes?

But wait, there's more!

From: Jesus Christ Let Go Let God
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2019 09:37:07 -0400
Subject: Re: You are an ASSHOLE you know, right?

Ratbag shows your mentality - soooo gives you away of the kind of spirit you have anyway

And

From: Jesus Christ Let Go Let God
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2019 09:28:12 -0400
Subject: Re: You are an ASSHOLE you know, right?

Dick head it’s parasitic. You are a dumb ass though, because you believe all you’ve been TRAINED to believe asshole instead of following your own inner wisdom and holistic medicine. You’re stupid not to get education from countries where the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t tampered with using money and incentives to coax money hungry assholes into prescriptions that just don’t work. Wake up asshole

I don't think that anything would be achieved by continuing this conversation (although I was sorely tempted to reply that it's spelled "arsehole" in my part of the world - I didn't want to confuse the correspondent).

This has to be a joke, right? (7/9/2019)

Well, it might be someone's idea of a joke or satire, but I've been dealing with woonatics long enough to know that anything can be believed by someone.

And speaking of teeth and dentists ... (7/9/2019)

See more from Dan Piraro here

August 31, 2019

I'm MIA this week because I have a project going on to completely reorganise and move three web sites, including archiving about 150 Wordpress pages into pages at a real web site. All of this has to be done before the next bills for hosting at the current locations have to be paid (which in one case is next week).

In the meantime, here's something that I totally agree with.

See more Twisted Doodles here

August 24, 2019

It's alternative medicine, so why not alternative research? (24/8/2019)

I was given another reminder recently of what passes for research out there in Quackland. In the past I've had something to say about acupuncture research suggesting that twiddling needles in a mouse's knee to hide pain in the animal's foot might have some relevance in humans (or even in the real world) and how adjusting the qi in the kidneys and the heat in the stomach (true - I am not making this up) can effect a cure for Type 2 diabetes. In the area of homeopathy I found research into the treatment of postcoital cystitis which was still being cited decades later despite having more methodological faults than a creationist's school science project, and a congruence of homeopathy and the periodic table which would have Dimitri Mendeleev wondering what he had started,

What reminded me of all this fumbled research was an article in the local paper about some "scientific" research done by chiropractors a few years ago into the use of high-velocity low amplitude (HVLA) adjustment of the neck to reduce the severity of hamstring injuries in professional footballers. What brought this story back into the news after several years was that it has now been revealed that there was no ethical approval of the study by the university. Of course, the old joke "He thinks that ethics is a county in England" applies across the chiropractic profession. The main thrust of the newspaper story is about the ethical breach, but I encourage you to look at the picture which shows where the hamstrings are in a human and imagine how anyone could think that damage to these structures could be alleviated in any way by moving the top few bones in the spine. The four papers that were published out of the project have since been retracted by the journals (because of the ethics issue, not because they were bad science), and while this means that they can't be cited it doesn't mean that they won't be cited. I could be criticised by pointing out that this study (and the ones I mentioned above) were all done years ago and things have moved on since then, but as we all know nothing ever gets thrown away or superseded in Quackworld, and no amount of research can ever overthrow something that is "known".

One interesting comment was that as the risk of any damage from HVLA neck twisting is only 1 in a million (the big risk is stroke from damage to the carotid arteries) why is anyone worrying about it? I should remind you that the 1:1,000,000 chance of a bad reaction to a vaccine supposedly indicates that vaccines are inherently dangerous and should be avoided, but since when have people opposed to science behaved consistently? The fact is that any risk, no matter how improbable, produces an infinite risk/benefit ratio when there is no benefit, because division by zero does that sort of thing.

You can read the newspaper article here.

Speaking of the impossible ... (24/8/2019)

There are things that happened, things that might have happened, and things that didn't happen. This didn't happen even more than all the other things that didn't happen. I have no idea what goes on in the minds of people who tell such transparent lies as this or what they hope to achieve. Except in fictional TV dramas where a villain wants to kill someone, nobody gets to add anything to an IV drip unless it's medically indicated and administered by a properly authorised professional.

You might ask what harm there is in saying something so obviously false, but remember that there are gullible people out there who don't know what science is, let alone how it works. Someone seeing that nonsense in a place where it isn't challenged (such as a Facebook cancer support group) might forego real treatment in favour of a magic spell and die much sooner and much more painfully than if they followed the advice of doctors who know what they are talking about.

There is one essential oil, however, where the word "essential" has its everyday meaning, You can get it from your nearest brick in the doTERRA pyramid. Just a few drops on the carpet near your front door will keep all other essential oil salespeople away.

Chakra alignment, more betterer than a wheel alignment (24/8/2019)

You have to feel sorry for the man in the picture because his Crown Chakra (Number 7) is outside his head, meaning that he probably can't take full advantage of the Cosmic Energy. At least his Third-Eye Chakra (Number 6) is on his forehead where all good third eyes go. Australians always find the Root Chakra (Number 1) to be amusingly named, and some say it deals with pleasure even more than the Sacral Chakra (Number 2) does. (I have been banned from the MindBodySpirit Festival ever since I asked a young lady at the Mystic Mysteries booth to massage my root chakra. Her boyfriend didn't help the serenity of the occasion by loudly suggesting what I could do with that huge quartz crystal over there at Clara's Crystal Consciousness.)

See more from Kris Straub here.

When real medicine happens (24/8/2019)

Someone has been nagging me over the last few weeks with a succession of emails asking me for comment about a particular web page. The page heavily promotes a ketogenic diet, and suggests that ketoacidosis is rare but not really a problem - feeling faint with bad breath, really. It also says that Type 2 diabetes can be cured by eating lots of fat. The polite version of my comment is "Go away". Fad diets come and go, but this one can cause real harm if people with diabetes follow the instructions.

See more from Judy Horacek here.

You can click here to see everything that has appeared on the front page over the last 20 years.