Home >History > Front page updates October 2021
I'm Back! Sort of. (2/10/2021)
Now that I'm not working every day to help count Australia's population I'm gradually easing back into a more normal life. I hope to be back to top speed with this site next week (when yet another car rally has been cancelled because od COVID travel restrictions) but today there's just a bit of nostalgia. While I wait for the results of my latest COVID test to come back (a Typhoid Mary visited a couple of places in my town shortly before I was there) I'll be checking for broken and changed links.
Really back soon.
But The Bear's back! (2/10/2021)
To increase the nostalgia quotient I've brought back The Bear's Progress, the story of SkeptoBear's 2004 trip to the bottom left corner of the USA and the top left corner of Mexico, with a trip to James Randi's Amaz!ng Meeting as the excuse for being there.
You can follow along with the journey by starting here.
Why you don't "debate" anti-vaccination liars (16/10/2021)
Here is an example from a TV show which demonstrates why rational discussion with anti-vaccination liars is pointless. They say things that are not true and there is never time to explain why they are not true. Professor Booy never seems to learn that the same lies will appear every time so you have to be ready for them.
But the news isn't all bad … (16/10/2021)
Someone once said that the animal which has caused the deaths of the most people in history is the anopheles mosquito, the carrier of malaria. There have been attempts in the past to produce a malaria vaccine, with little success, but it looks like there might finally be a weapon to beat this dreadful disease.
In the long tradition of opposition to any new vaccine from those who feel that the deaths of children are a small price to pay to support their depraved agenda, the 800,000 children in the pilot study and trial will be disregarded and the vaccine will be labelled as "unproven" and "unsafe", or, like Viera Scheibner in the video above, they will claim that as they have never seen a case of malaria (I live in Australia and I can truthfully say that) it has magically disappeared on its own and any new cases can be blamed on the vaccine. The day when I start to care about what these creatures have to say or if I hurt their feelings by calling them liars is a long way off. Possibly just after the heat death of the universe.
You can read the good news at World Health Organization endorses first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, for children in Africa
Photo credit: AP: Jerome Delay
How I feel about a lot of pretentiousness (cheese, wine, coffee, …) (16/10/2021)
See more from Sketchplanations here
An old "friend" is in a bit of trouble (16/10/2021)
I've been reminded lately of Hillsong, a pretend "Christian church" which is actually devoted to worship of money. I don't know if they still pretend to use the Bible, but the "church's" version of the book, if they have one, obviously doesn't contain the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:24 - "Ye cannot serve God and mammon"), but what would Jesus know anyway? He didn't have a stage and a big theatre to preach from. Hillsong doesn't pay tax on its tens of millions of dollars of annual income, so Chapter 22 of Matthew's gospel is probably not there either. That's the one where Jesus tells people to pay taxes ("Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's").
Hillsong was created out of a church called Hills Christian Life Centre which had been established by Frank Houston, father of the current owner of Hillsong. Brian got his father out of the way by revealing that Dad was a paedophile, giving Brian total control of turning what seemed to be a real Christian church into the money making corporation it is today.
Unfortunately, simply declaring your father to be a kiddy fiddler and then taking over his business wasn't enough. You are supposed to report this sort of behaviour to the relevant authorities. As was revealed at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, almost everything Hillsong did was the wrong thing to do. The law has finally caught up with Brian Houston, and he is facing criminal charges over the concealment of sexual offences. This has placed him in an invidious position because he probably has to stand aside from all involvement with Hillsong while the charges are being considered by a court, but he and his lawyers have cleverly constructed the documentation for the many and various commercial entities making up the Hillsong conglomerate to make his involvement permanent and mandatory - the business can't continue to operate without his direct and immediate occupation of some defined positions. It looks like he will have to make his wife into the Global Pastor to keep the income in the family.
You can read the story at Hillsong leader Brian Houston charged over the concealment of alleged child sex offences, and a followup article here.
Global Pastor Brian (Photo credit: AAP: Paul Miller)
Quintessence Nook (16/102021)
September and October start the sequence of months with names ending in "ber", but they also have the distinction of having names that say which month of the year they are. September is the seventh month and October is the eighth. Is that clear?
Here are some memories from those months in 2001.
Lady Morgana Starsinger's Realm
I think I will have to create a Quintessence Book of Shadows. It will contain much magiqual stuff which will guide us as we bring the merry meat to the barbeque, as we mix magiqual potions by pouring spirits over water crystals, and as we allow the gods of hops and barley to take our minds to other places. I will have to be very careful with my spells, however, so that when I describe the procedure for forming a magiqu ellipse it says something like: "Remove all animals and samll children from the area and any furniture that you do not want to be inside your circle. Set up your alter before you cast your circle. Locate magntic North with a compass and holding the wand out from your body, go into alpha and see the wand's aura extending out from it, especially at the tip. Visualize the tipe of the wand creating a circle of light and energy, like a laser, as you walk clockwise three times around the area. The circumference drawn by the wand's tip will be the edge of your circle. Project white light out from the wand to create the circle as gemoetrically perfect and say to yourself that it is". How's that for spelling?
[Note: This site has a section showing the current phase of the moon. When I looked at it on 7 September 2001 it said the next full moon was on 2 September. They must be using a very old calendar.]
Please note that the site is best viewed using 800x600 resolution on your monitor. If you don't the spells might not work, so get that old CRT monitor out of the garage and plug it in.
The Full Moon Approach to the Hierarchy
It is a full moon in the next couple of days, so it is appropriate to think about what this means for humanity. After all, it is not every day that you see a full moon and it is a rare November when you get two of them. Once in a blue moon, really. We have all heard the stories about how crime increases at the full moon and how people in mental asylums go off the rails. That's off the rails even further than usual, of course. In fact, we know why they are called "lunatics". That is all very well, but curmudgeonly skeptics are always saying that this is all coincidence or that crime just goes up because burglars can see better when the moon is out. This site, however, gives us some more information about what really goes on when the moon is fat. Just read the first part, where it says "The time of the full moon is a period when spiritual energies are uniquely available, and facilitate a closer rapport between humanity and the Hierarchy. Each month the inflowing energies carry the specific qualities of the constellation influencing the particular month; these energies, playing sequentially upon humanity, establish the 'divine attributes" within human consciousness. As aspirants and disciples we seek to channel the spiritual inflow into the minds and hearts of men and women everywhere, and thus strengthen the link between the human kingdom and the Kingdom of God". If that doesn't convince you, then I don't know what would.
The Philadelphia Experiment and Montauk Survivor Accounts
The experiments carried out in Philadelphia in 1943, in which the USS Eldridge was made invisible, are an undoubted fact. Let's look at the evidence. First, there is a web site which says that it happened. This web site mentions Einstein, Tesla and John Von Neumann, all men of great talent and credibility. There is a time line, showing that some things happen after other things. There is the incontrovertible evidence that the Cameron brothers were transported through time (how else could they have got the hyperspace friction burns?). The clincher is, however, that the US Navy denies that the USS Eldridge was ever in Philadelphia in 1943... Why would they deny it if it were not true? Ask yourself that!
Archaeoastronomy, Astrology & Ancient Egypt
There are some amazing facts about the great Pyramid of Khufu. For example, the top of it points to a place in the sky immediately above Egypt, and if you drop a perpendicular line from the top downwards it not only passes through the point of the intersection of the two diagonals of the pyramid's base but, if extended, it would pass approximately almost exactly somewhere near the centre of the earth. If you measure the diagonal between two corners on the base and divide by the length of one of the base sides, you get a number almost exactly equal to the square root of two. The south-eastern corner is in an exact straight line alignment with the south-eastern corner of the neighbouring Khafre's Pyramid. If you divide the four lines between the corners of the base and the top using the ratio 2/pi and mark points there, at least two of these points will be in direct sunlight during all daylight hours, and all four points will be touched by the sun each day. Amazing!
Alison thinks that I do not understand her site, and wrote to me about it. You can read her words here.
modelmodel.com
You would think that the government would be eternally grateful to the person who invented the inflatable space station. You would not expect a continuous program of mind control, even extending to people who look at this web site (there are instructions there on how to reset your browser), and, worse still, spreading out into a campaign to kill or experiment on everyone. At least, that's what I think is going on. It could be worse, because this site says "People are being exterminated. You have to read all of the site to truly grasp that it is true. The site IS a nationwide investigation. The author himself is under life threatening attack as well. If you dare to step out of the box and rise to the occassion so be it. Men,Women and Children are being experimented on and tortured in PUBLIC, its obvious from viewing history in hindsight that we are being attacked in public on purpose because they are about to do something big to the public at large (that means you and everybody else too). Hold on its going to get intense; with some surprise it appears that the next step is to be nationwide/worldwide sterilization of women using spraying, such a test was apparently covertly done on Kentucky throughbred horses with extrodinary effacy just a few days ago from May 15 2001". But wait until you come to the really scary part – at the bottom of the long page there is a link to, wait for it, a second page!
For lovers of Internet history, this site is a wonderful example of what web sites used to look like
You'll never think the same way again. . . The Revelation
TThere are 11 members in a soccer team. 2 to the 11th power is 2048, the real "2K" in geekspeak, and therefore the year in which the Y2K prophecies will all come true. 1 to the 11th power is still 1, something which cannot be a coincidence. Nostradamus died in 1566. Add the first two numbers and you get 666, which has all the same digits in it, just like 11. A 767 aircraft has one engine each side, just like 11 has 1 each side. I was born on the 22nd day of the month, which is not only a multiple of 11 but also 11 days after the 11th. The first job I had in the computer industry was on the 11th floor of a building next to the tallest building in the city. If you order a dozen donuts and only get 11 you will be annoyed. There are 11 months in a year which are not September. I could go on, but someone has just pointed out that there are 11 letters in "It's bullshit".
Strange Halloween customs. (31/10/2021)
In 1974 the Australian rock band Skyhooks released a record named "Horror Movie", about the dreadful things appearing on the nightly TV news. All these years later the song is still a staple of classic rock FM radio stations and rather bizarrely seems to have become a part of Halloween celebrations in the United States and Canada.
And what in the name of all that is holy is Candy Corn?
Speaking of Holy, one thing I love about this time of year is pseudoChristians ranting about Halloween without knowing that it's a Christian religious date – All Hallows (or Saints) Eve, the day before All Saints Day.
And here's the song. (For just this once, it's coming from the official Skyhooks channel at YouTube so I can't be accused of copyright violation.)
Sometimes I celebrate Halloween by giving a speech (31/10/2021)
In 2018 I chose Halloween to give a talk mentioning Frankenstein to the smart students at the Science Teachers Association of NSW Young Scientist Awards. You can read the talk here.
Filth never sleeps (31/10/2021)
Some people (and I use the word loosely) celebrate Halloween by wanting to kill children, but as the raison d'être for opposition to vaccines is an increased death toll of children this is probably not surprising. Here are a couple of example from previous years.
When you reach the nadir, keep digging (1/11/2014)
In September I mentioned how the National Vaccine Information Center had made a leap to the bottom by buying advertising space in buses. They rose towards the top of the swamp again in the last couple of weeks. The first was when they asked people to review their Facebook page. After a short period they noticed that the reviews were not as fawning as they would like so they sent out a mass appeal for people to rate the page highly and submit glowing reviews. I was only too pleased to oblige:
Unfortunately it's not possible to vote zero stars for a Facebook page of an organisation devoted to increasing the number of dead and disabled children. People often ask me how anti-vaccination liars like Barbara Loe Fisher can sleep at night when they think of the consequences of their actions and my usual reply is that people without either morals or consciences don't care. The only thing that would stop them sleeping well is too much excitement at the thought of more dead children.
Shortly afterwards the link to add page reviews was disabled. I directed a couple of Twitter messages to Barbara Loe Fisher asking her for clarification but I got no answer. (From her, at least – an anonymous anti-vaccination liar went into "screech incoherently" mode, but who cares what anonymous people think or say?)
My work there was done.
Fresh from that retreat, the following picture was posted to the NVIC page.
It was received with much appreciation by the denizens of the page, with people offering suggestions about the correct size labels to use and others offering to create MS Word templates for printing them. The idea was to stick the labels on sweets to be handed out to children on Halloween. Now Halloween is about pretending to be scared of goblins and witches, but imagine how really alarmed you would be if you found out that there was someone in your street who was insane enough to give things like this to your children. (I suggested to Barbara Loe Fisher that razor blades with the same message on them could be placed in fruit and sweets but she didn't reply to my suggestion for a marketing campaign.)
I wasn't the only person enraged by a proposal to vandalise sweets in order to spread lies, so several people contacted the manufacturers and distributors of the sweets in the picture to inform them of what was happening. Here is the nice email I received from Nestlé:
Hi Peter,
Thank you for taking the time to contact us about Nestlé KIT KAT.
We appreciate you bringing this to our attention.
Thank you again for your email and if you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us
After running away from Facebook page reviews and energising and antagonising the legal department of one of the world's largest food manufacturing corporations, most people would retreat into their burrows and keep quiet about losing. but apparently all this was a victory for NVIC. Because Tim Bolen said so!
Concentrated, triple-distilled essence of filth (2/11/2019)
It was Halloween near my place a couple of days ago (it was probably Halloween near your place at around the same time, but this is my site and I'm entitled to be a bit parochial). Because of the diabetes I don't usually have any sweets around the house and because of having a cold I didn't get to the shops to buy any, so I suppose that because of the location of my flat I was a bit lucky that no goblins turned up at my door to be disappointed.
Other people, however, were getting very well prepared for when the neighbourhood kids turned up.
Sorry, did I say "people"? As anyone who would think of this does not deserve membership in the human race, please read "turds" instead.
This woman claims to be a registered nurse, but as the health authorities have no record of her we can assume that she is lying about either her name or her job. She might still be a nurse, but obviously she is aware of the consequences of suggesting an act of bioterrorism and the possible, make that probable, effect on her continued employment. I'm not sure what is the more frightening – that she might be a neighbour preparing to endanger your children or that she might be the nurse who attends you in hospital.
She has been posting anti-vaccine lies on her Facebook profile for some time, but the profile has now been deleted. Not only does she lie either about her name or about being a nurse (or possibly both), but faced with a bit of criticism of her disgusting activities she has run away. Cowards do that.
And of course the anti-vaccination liars who "liked" her previous posts and even this one are now declaring that she is really an agent provocateur planted by the pro-vaccine crowd in order to make them look bad. The funny thing is there is no reason for sane people to do that, because they reveal their evil nature to the world in almost anything they say or do.
Oh, and in case you think that this really is an isolated case of a single rogue anti-vaccination liar acting alone and suggesting something that would offend the rest of the world, remember that in 2014 the National Vaccine Information Center wasn't the least bit concerned about Halloween vandalism. See the story above.
And three of my favourite cartoonists (31/10/2021)
See more from Scott Hilburn here
See more from Mark Parisi here
Back to The Millenium Project Email the Copyright © 1999- |