BaSH PR0MPT

Flicking through the news and amused by the b-tard trolling of that 11 year old shit talking YouTube user I came across an interesting article that claims this is a valid example of why censorship is a good thing. It’s irony is in the fact that all the dramu and trololol could be stopped simply by deleting everything, turning off her friggen computer, and going outside to play. Something that I, at 11, did a lot of. I definitely didn’t sit online talking smack about killing people gangsta style, whilst dressing like a pedobear magnet slut with my bra showing talking shit about how hot I am. Makes you wonder what kind of parents she has. Oh wait, that’s right. Her dad backtraced it.

I came across something very, very disturbing.

Professor Matt Warren, the head of Deakin University’s School of Information Systems, said as long as parents who don’t understand the internet kept giving their children access to it, there needed to be ways to control its use. “You simply can’t have free access to the internet,” he said. “It has to be controlled, censored and people have to be held accountable for their actions on it. “We punish people who drink, we punish people who speed and we have to implement laws to that effect when it comes to the internet.”

Prof Warren said that parents might think allowing children to access the internet in their bedroom was a way of helping them do their schoolwork, but the reality was, a lot of parents simply didn’t understand the medium. “The child isn’t ethically aware of what they’re doing,” he said.

The other night I caught Soylent Green on late night TV. I got to pondering the disposal of humans on mass scales, such as in a future world of great overpopulation, which led me to the most obvious example of mass deaths we have in history, the holocaust. I wondered how the German’s got rid of so many victims, there’s actually not much out there on the subject aside from allusions to mass graves, which is inefficient.

So I contemplated what the makers of Audi, BMW and Mercedes, et al would do to efficiently dispose of corpses and assumed they’d incinerate the vast majority if not all of them. Let’s take Auschwitz as one example to work with, whilst I can only find reference images of mass graves at that location I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they had an inkling of guilt enough to try and cover up their crimes and thus incinerated their victims. This is where it got gross. Whilst the only figures I can find online are from some lass named Lucy Dawidowicz or a bunch of batshit historical revisionists (who usually claim that the Jews weren’t killed and were merely talented at playing hide and seek) we’ll work with Lucy’s figures.

She estimates that 6,000,000 died, but her break down of the deathcamps gives us 8,000,000 plus.

Her figure for Auschwitz is 1.1 million to 1.4 million. We’ll work with the smaller of those figures. Now assuming that the average person produces a density of 30cm cubed of 10kg’s of ashes (this is original research, sadly, I admit, based purely on the several dozen creepy encounters I’ve had with ash remains of dead folk sans urns (no you sick fucks, they were in boxes from the funeral home)) by modern standards, so let’s double that to reflect the haste required of mass murder then assuming that the average mass grave was a good depth, say 3 meter trenches with at least 1 meter topsoil above them, that gives us 1.1m * 60 / 1000 (to give us the result in meters) gives us 66,000 meters of surface area divided by the 2 usable meters depth gives us 33,000 meters.

Or 33 square kilometers.

Now open Google Earth, and go to 50° 2′ 9″ N, 19° 10′ 42″ E, the location of Auchwitz.

Notice that it’s only about 2 kilometers square? Notice what’s around it as far as the eye can see?

… FARMS. D: D: D: D: D: D:

Now this is with the assumption that they burnt all their victims, which they probably didn’t. So this figure is relatively conservative, albeit the scientific aspect of it is hillariously poor given that it’s got more assumptions in it than a first year law class and a lot of my assumptions were based on the stereotype of German’s, but seriously … I went through each and every other prison camp registered as having carried out mass executions (that we KNOW of!) and around each and every one of them were farms. Farms for kilooometers. Nothing but farms.

That being said, these are only figures of the Jewish death toll, not taking into account Russians, Poles, Romani, the disabled, Freemasons, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and just about anyone else who looked at them funny. So whilst flawed, these figures may even be more conservative than expected when taking the grand scale of the executions into account.

I’d end this like I do most hypotheticals with the comment of ‘food for thought?’ but in this case I think I may just take up breatharianism.

As loath as I am to get into political debate or discussion on my blog, we’re in a unique position in Australia where we are currently having the leadership of our government challenged by another person who has backing of super sekkrit factions, factions who seem to make decisions on behalf of the Australian people as to who their elected representative is, highlighting the flaws of party-politics as opposed to direct-elected representatives.

Allegedly angered by a morning newspaper report leaked from the Prime Minister’s office, questioning her loyalty, Julia Gillard called senior powerbroker and fellow Victorian MP Bill Shorten. “It pissed everyone in the caucus off,” said a NSW senior factional leader. “And it pissed her off, too. She has been nothing but loyal. And to have that happen was not only stupid but unwarranted.” Sadly actions speak louder than words as our first female Prime Minister–something much overdue–may very well be in power through skullduggery as opposed to free election. This taints all progress of equal rights for women in Australia and will put the potential of our first female PM into a situation where people will point out that it wasn’t the fill of the people.

Just before Question Time at 2.30pm, the Deputy Prime Minister assembled a select group of Cabinet colleagues and co-conspirators. They had been trying to get her to challenge his leadership ‘for weeks’, giving strong backing to the claims from the Prime Ministerial office questioning her loyalty to the elected leadership and the will of Australian voters.

By late afternoon, Shorten, fellow Victorian Senator David Feeney, NSW MP Tony Burke and South Australian right wing factional leader Don Farrell went to see Ms Gillard in her office.

They had been conspiring for the past week and they wanted her to challenge. Powerful AWU boss Bill Ludwig told the ABC Mr Rudd is “toxic”. “We have a better chance of holding government with Julia Gillard that we would have with Rudd,” Mr Ludwig said. Former Premier Peter Beattie has backed Ms Gillard, telling the ABC “she is a very talented woman”. Transport Union boss Hughie Williams said Ms Gillard will prevail. “It’s quite obvious they have the numbers. We’ll have a new prime minister of Australia,” Mr Williams said.

Queensland Senator Barnaby Joyce said the overnight coup attempt against Mr Rudd has been engineered by factional leaders who have taken over the running of the country. “It is running on auto-pilot in the face of faceless people and faceless men who (were) never elected,” Senator Joyce said.

“We’re basically realising that the whole direction and metaphor of this Government was flawed and we’re off to – gosh only knows.”

It is interesting to note that many conservative biased media outlets are painting this as ‘loyal Gillard reluctantly challenges leadership’, media outlets that tend to follow the normative Liberal bias, however it should be noted that the ‘factions’ behind this coup are ultra-conservative Laborites and traditionalists as opposed to progressives.

Shortly after 7pm, Ms Gillard’s office called the Prime Minister’s Office and told them that Ms Gillard wanted to see the PM. The pair had been due to have dinner later in the evening at the Lodge. Mr Rudd was called back from a function to celebrate the 20th anniversary of parliamentary service for Senator Nick Sherry, around the corner from his office in the Ministerial wing of Parliament House.

With Ms Gillard was Defence Minister and fellow left-wing factional heavyweight John Faulkner, a NSW senator.

She informed the PM that she intended to challenge him for the leadership. She wanted a ballot. The pair remained behind closed doors for almost two hours.

As the two were locked in an intense negotiation, interrupted twice by Rudd loyalists Anthony Albanese and Lindsay Tanner, the factional leader from NSW Mark Arbib hit the phones.

Shorten, dining in the Canberra suburb of Kingston with colleagues including Sports Minister Kate Ellis, was also glued to the phone. But by 9pm the conspirators were confident they had the numbers to swing behind her should she decide to do it.

The answer was revealed at 10.20pm when the PM called a press conference and revealed he had been visited by Ms Gillard, and confirmed that the challenge was on, after media outlets erroneously claimed his press conference was because he was ‘resigning as prime minister’.

This morning, at 9am, she goes into a special caucus meeting with the conspiratorial bulk of the members of the NSW Labor Right, the Victorian Right, the South Australian Right and the Victorian Left behind her.

Queensland right-wing powerbroker, Senator Joe Ludwig, was also on board. The deal was that Treasurer Wayne Swan – the man who voted against Rudd in the spill against Kim Beazley – would be Ms Gillard’s deputy.

The Victorian Right had been courting Gillard for the past two weeks, urging her to challenge. “We can’t win with this bloke,” they told her. Ironically, if Labor enact a change in leadership the chance of them winning at the next election, or next several elections is slim to none given that trechery is not really smiled upon by the average punter.

Arbib, the NSW numbers man who put Rudd into the leadership in 2006, had been sounding out support among select MPs for a change.

The internal polling provided by the party’s national secretary Karl Bitar was worse than the public polling, which had already put the Government in a losing position. But some outlets Gillard’s loyalty prevented her from doing the unthinkable.

As most of my international readers (and let’s face it, that’s like 800,000 per week of you, Australia only has two modems, and we have to share) are aware, our government here have been pushing an agenda to ‘censor’ the internet with a mandatory ‘clean feed’ for some time. There were protests many years ago to try and stop them but the overall response of the average punter back when they could have made a difference was “It’ll never happen.” so as much as it pains me to say it, we kind of do deserve what we get with that. But recent pure asshattery to come from our parliamentarians–who are so detached from reality they can’t even operate VCR’s, which is ironic as you can’t even buy them anymore–is something that explains why anti-virus companies were very pro-filter.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communication (They don’t represent us, just batshit vocal minorities, I assure you) have stated that all Australian’s should be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the internet under a ‘new plan’ to ‘fight cyber crime’. And if their computer did get infected, internet service providers could cut off their connection until the problem was resolved.

Those are two of the recommendations to come from a year-long multi-million inquiry into cyber crime. They spent all the money on K-Rudd’s crack and then did an all nighter the night the findings were due. Results of the inquiry, titled Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime, were released last night in a 260-page report, there is no mention whether it met copyspace clearance however and may have been plagerised from first year ethics students at UWA.

In her foreword, committee chair Belinda Neal said cyber crime had turned into a “sophisticated underground economy”, before taking a rasping breath from the pipe under the table. “In the past decade, cyber crime has grown from the nuisance of the cyber smart hacker into an organised transnational crime committed for vast profit and often with devastating consequences for its victims,” Ms Neal said. I postulate whether she is referring to the ‘russian mobsters’ who ‘hacked’ a dentists website and ‘uploaded child pornography’ to ‘make money’ as Senator Conman Conroy stated when asked why a dentists office was on the super secret government black list.

During its inquiry the committee heard a growing number of Australians were being targeted by cyber criminals and that increasing internet speeds were likely to make the situation worse. Something we don’t inherently need to worry about in Australia given that we still pay several hundred dollars per month for speeds not exceeding ADSL1 technology branded as ADSL2+ with a lot of fine print that anything over 56k dialup ‘in their terms’ is ADSL2+ (forget international standards here folks).

It also heard the problem was costing Australian businesses as much as $649 million a year. Including dentists with large kiddy porn collections replacing their virtual store front. The committee looked at several different examples of cyber crime, including hacking, phishing, malware and botnets. They intently carried out this research by leeching torrents, using Back Orifice on inter-office computers, and asking each other for their banking details from fraudulent hotmail accounts, such as imnotsenatorconroy@hotmail.com.

Among its final 34 recommendations were:

• The creation of an around-the-clock cyber crime helpline. This, I agree with. I don’t pay for phone calls so I will ring them and chant “Cocks, cocks, cocks.” until the end of time.
• Changes to the law to make unauthorised installation of software illegal. What the fuck, seriously.
• Companies who release IT products with security vulnerabilities should be open to claims for compensation by consumers. This I agree with. Microsoft, give me moneys.
• Another of its recommendations was to create a new “e-security code of practice” that would define the responsibilities of internet service providers and their customers. Cocks, cocks, cocks.
• The code of practice would see companies like Telstra give their customers security advice when they signed up and inform them if their computer ever appeared to be compromised. More fine print we won’t read and will click yes to.

For their part, customers would have to install anti-virus and firewall software before their connection was activated and endeavour to keep the software up-to-date. It pisses me off enough as it is when they ask what kind of computer I’m using to access the net, when half the time I’m not even using a computer at all, nor any OS they’d have heard of. Find me anti-virus software for my xbox, or my iPhone hard-booted to run Lunix (yes, Lunix, no, it’s not a typo)  please K-Rudd.

If a customer’s computer was infected by malware, the service provider could introduce gradual restrictions and eventually cut off their internet connection entirely until the machine was “remediated”. This implies that the Government will not only be ‘filtering’ us, but also packet sniffing our shit in a clandestine way.

This entire thing just makes me want to pre-emptively ring that hotline, or maybe Senator Conroy’s office. In fact, brb, cocks, cocks, cocks time.

This morning Australian news sensationalised (gasp, shock) a new Auditor-General’s report reveals more than 13,000 soldiers are not considered battle ready. About 7300 had either failed the basic fitness test – the most arduous element of which is a 2.4km run – or hadn’t done the test in the last six months. About 5800 Diggers failed weapons proficiency tests or were overdue for refreshers.

The Auditor-General found only 18,900 soldiers, about 53 per cent of troops, were ready to go at short notice.

Now let’s draw things into perspective. The Australian Bureau of Statistics cites that the average weekly income of an Australian is $1,268.50 with the average public sector employee being exactly a hundred more at $1,368.50. There are several methods of entry to employment with the Australian Defence Force (ADF), but I’m writing this primarily as a post-grad qualified guy who dabbled with the idea of off-setting university costs with enrolment for some time before realising it just had no financial worth at all. If you’re a professional with even reasonable qualifications you can easily make four to five times in private sector as you would with the ADF. But let’s assume you’re not.

Let’s assume you’re a regular person who signs up at age 18, for the first two years you’ll be getting 2/5ths of the average weekly wage Australian’s would get elsewhere. On completion of training, you’ll get a base wage of $25-$30k based on the salary scale on the ADF website. At the HIGHEST non-commission rank you can reach (and let’s face it, a lot of ADF personel can spend twenty years in and not get a commission) CPO/WO2/FSGT you will be on $1,138.53 so you’re still falling $100 short of the national, or $200 of pub. sec.

The biggest insult of it all is, part time ADF employees don’t pay income tax on their ADF salary, whereas full timers pay the same income tax as civillians. So drop several more hundred off that reach for full-timers as Australia is one of the worlds highest taxed nations (not to mention surprise tax, as I like to call it, on almost everything you purchase, from GST, to stamp duty, to other mythical unicorn taxes, speeding fines, bus lane fines, parking fines that hedge just short of $300 a piece, you name it).

So it’s safe to say we’re a reasonably expensive nation to live in, the ADF are paying fuck all, and then people rage at them for having people who can’t be arsed. Would you do your job for their wage? Would you do THEIR job for their wage? Fuck no.

Food for thought.

Evidence of life has been discovered on Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.  Analysis of data sent back by NASA’s Cassini probe suggests primitive aliens are breathing in Titan’s atmosphere and feeding on fuel at the surface. The startling discoveries, made using an orbiting spacecraft, are revealed in two separate reports. Organic chemicals had already been detected on Titan but the liquid is methane, not water, and scientists expect life there to be methane-based.

The first paper said hydrogen gas flowing down through Titan’s atmosphere disappears at the surface, suggesting it could be being breathed by alien bugs. The other paper reports there is a lack of a certain chemical on the surface, leading scientists to believe it may be being consumed by life. Scientists had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce a coating of acetylene on Titan’s surface but Cassini detected no acetylene there.

Experts warn there could be other explanations for the results. But taken together, they fulfil two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist. NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay said: “If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”

Scientists believe that when the Sun swells up, swallowing Earth, conditions could be ideal on Titan. Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, said: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process. “In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.”

Another thing that flew under the radar that is about 8 months old is the findings on those microbes in the Martian meteorite that caused such a HUGE fuss in the mid 90s (from a meteor found in the 80s!) amongst scientists (and theists / creationists for sure!) has been found to be exactly what it looked like, (paranthetical abuse!) microbes from Mars!

NASA scientists have produced the most compelling evidence yet that bacterial life exists on Mars.  It shows that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 years ago are almost certainly fossilised bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting they were present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of contamination by earthly bacteria. “This is very strong evidence of life on Mars,” said David Mackay, a senior scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston, who was part of the team of scientists that originally investigated the meteorite when it was discovered in 1984.

In a 1996 study of the sample, Dr Mackay and others argued the microfossils were evidence of life, but sceptics dismissed the claims, saying similar-shaped structures may not be biological. The new analyses, the product of high-resolution electron microscopy, make a strong case for the Allan Hills 84001 Meteorite having carried Martian life to Earth. The microscopes were focused on tiny magnetite crystals present in the surface layers of the meteorite, which have the form of simple bacteria.

Some argued these could be the result of a carbonate breaking down in the heat of the impact. The new analyses show this is unlikely to have resulted in the structures seen in the rock. Close examination suggested that about 25 per cent of the crystal structures were chemically consistent with being formed from bacteria. “We feel vindicated. We’ve shown the alternate explanation is absolutely incorrect, leading us back to our original position that these structures are formed by bacteria on Mars,” Dr Mackay said.

Scientists say the meteorite was broken off the surface of Mars by the impact of an asteroid, and reached Earth after floating through space for about 16 million years. It landed in Allan Hills in Antarctica. Scientists were able to trace the meteorite back to Mars, as its chemical composition matched the relative proportions of various gases measured in observations of the atmosphere of Mars made by the Viking spacecraft in the 1970s. The meteorite also preserves evidence of liquid water on Mars.

Europa’s unlit interior is still considered to be the most likely location for extant life in the Solar System. Life could exist in its under-ice ocean, perhaps subsisting in an environment similar to Earth’s deep-ocean hydrothermal vents or the Antarctic Lake Vostok. Life in such an ocean could possibly be similar to microbial life on Earth in the deep ocean. So far, there is no evidence that life exists on Europa, but the likely presence of liquid water has spurred calls to send a probe there.

Let’s not forget water on the moon people. We live in some pretty exciting times! It’ll definitely challenge the status quo between the baby boomers and their strong theological views (and those zombie like masses of American teenagers brainwashed by them) and the more cold clinical evil villainous scientist types like .. well, like us!

Warning: The following blog post may be unsafe to view at work or in front of small children, it contains some mild profanity, and hideously disgusting artwork. :D~

Having been an established professional artist, and made a metric fucktonne of dosh out of it (seriously, I weighed it!) I tend to cruise artists on the social networks and say g’day. That being said, I’ve often heard about absolute batshit psychotic people on Twitter who flip into crazy hostile mode for absolutely no reason. Today I discovered both in a talentless twat from Florida named Katelyn-Elizabeth Day (Also goes by the monikers Katelyn-Elizabeth, Katelyn Day, and @xArtzy on Twitter).  She variously claims she lives in New York, Los Angeles, and ‘Canada’ (because Canada is a city, you see) but is located in Florida, in the US.

I came upon this reasonably ungifted toad whilst flicking through Tweets and viewed her page at the ‘Brooklyn Art Project’ website, I was pretty unimpressed but bored so I said g’day and asked her what medium she used. To this she replied ‘Uh!!’ and then nearly an hour later she said ‘what the HELL are you talking about – i think you got the wrong p[erson' [sic] I commented that I was surprised at her response, I don’t remember what exactly, but I suggested she google what a medium is if she’s going to try and make a career as an artist, what I got in response was hillarious!

I won’t spoil it, scroll to the bottom and read the screen caps off my phone, it’s in reverse order so start at the bottom and read up. :P In the interim, I had suggested to a few friends that perhaps the bitch needs to be called out on her psychopathy as it seems to be a common element when I did a bit of cyber-sluething. The following was suggested, names are obscured to protect the innocent:

☠ // NOT ME says:
I just had some psycho bitch flip her shit at me on Twitter.
Really not me says:
The arty one?
☠ // BaSH PR0MPT says:
Going to collate what she said and repost it as an image file and blog it.
Yeah!
Really not me says:
Lolol yeah saw it
☠ // BaSH PR0MPT says:
She didn’t know what a medium was, so she flipped her shit when I called her out for it.
Really not me says:
She’s like WTF ARE U TLKN BOUT I DONT NO U WTF SHUT UP LEAVE ME ALONE LALALALALALALA CAN’T HEAR U FUCK OFF
☠ // BaSH PR0MPT says:
I NO WUT A MEDIUM IZ I JUST CONFOOZED COSZ I SO BUSY LOLOL [Ironically the these two lines were typed at the same time by both parties - Ed.]
That’s what I typed and deleted.
Because I decided that should be the title of my blog post. [I reconsidered, clearly. - Ed.]
Really not me says:
>_>
☠ // BaSH PR0MPT says:
Katelyn Elizabeth Day from Florida. And I have direct access to all her friends and family on facebook. Muahaha, this shall be sweet.

Aside from the above conversation between two anonymous people, (YES, I intentionally didn’t censor my name out, three people were already like “DUDE DID U MEEN 2 DO DAT?” ffs.) our intrepid ‘artiste’ freely admits she’s a talentless twat spamming airbrushed photos of disney starlets on various profiles hoping someone might think she’s not some fat talentless slob and indirectly will help her career, her fake little ‘artist’ page on Facebook amusingly cites: -

Unofficial Artist but soon (very soon) to be Official.
Art is in my heart, it is who i am! so do not judge me!
I want to be seen as who I am and not who I seem to be on the outside. Inside is what counts.

Maybe someone forgot to tell her that whilst some artists are insane, they’re not psychotic and aggressive to people just saying hi? Wonder how she treats her ‘clients’, who are ‘celebrities’ after all. Inside does count, and this girl is full of the crazybeans mixed with liberal dashings of fail!

She also lists as some of her inspirations, various interesting quotes, one of which is:

“I think girls feel like they’re not cool unless they have a boyfriend or they don’t feel comfortable or happy with themselves–that’s not true! You gotta be independent! You gotta show the power!” Hilary Duff

The above Katelyn holds very dear to her heart, because she is saving her virginity for Johnny Depp.

I figured that I ought to share with you some of her artworks; whilst undoubtedly they’re copyrighted under Berne Convention I am using this specifically for non-profit commentary purposes and will critique and review them so as not to breach copyright!

Fish in the sky, by Katelyn Elizabeth Day.

Here we see a wonderfully colourful visage of colouring in pencil on paper, with a vivid depiction of an unearthly world where sea creatures survive in the air and prosper in the skies above rich green grass. Depicted is a gold fish, some kind of cake shitting what looks to be grass, a sweet potato, and a green kite. Also making a guest appearance is an alien-head crab creature from the critically acclaimed video game Half-Life.

My tree of happiness, by Katelyn Elizabeth  Day.

Our artist originally was trying her hand at designing tribal tattoo’s with lovehearts all over them, when that failed she thought perhaps she could draw a tree over it, along with a cute little fence covered by hearts growing on vines, with what appears to be a juxtaposition of plant-cell membranes on the floor, and a bird tweeting merrily. This vivid piece again comes to us through the medium of pencil on paper. (See, medium, that’s what it means, get it now Katelyn? :))

My Love, Johnny Depp, by Katelyn Elizabeth Day.

The first celebrity to own one of her works, and yes it counts even though she mailed it to his agent along with a love letter. This glorious vision is of texta on very saturated and wet soggy text book paper. This picture perfect effigy of Johnny Depp (instant alarm bell that datbishbecray-zee) was lovingly crafted and repeatedly fapped over by Katelyn. The texturisation diffusion of the arm of his sunglasses is intentional, as is the hideously malformed look of his head, and hand. But everything else within the piece is striking and gorgeous! Oh wait, that .. is all the piece is. Oh. Uh. She has neat handwriting?

Now, without further ado, the Twitter screen caps of win; below is the psychopathy and lullz, enjoy!

Update: My first Twitter psycho ragequit the internets, deleting all public pages she owned or operated and has gone underground, literally! Rumour has it she was sighted in the fine city of Canada living in the sewer system, living off fried rats! She did however leave some lullzy comments on my blog before vanishing; including one pretending to be her own friend. :P

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him…”
Friedrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science (1882), s126.

Long have we theorised the above line by a madman bearing a labtern not to be talking about the literal God believed in by so many theists. Instead, we interpret, he is talking about what this god represented for European culture, the shared cultural belief in God which had once been its defining and uniting characteristic.

So to has man thrown off the yolk of theism, every element of the divine has been replicated at large through science, trickery, art, illusionism except one final element; the creation of life.

Until yesterday when flamboyant geneticist Craig Venter held true to the pledge he made nearly 15 years ago, unveiling his magnum opus. This landmark of scientific progress, published in the Journal of Science, stands on the shoulders of his race to decode the human genome in his own laboratory, egotistically his own DNA I might add.

The madman carrying this lantern has indeed created the first instance of purely synthetic life, opening the doors nanoscience falter at with the potential to create designer microbes for special jobs such as production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, through to filtering contaminents from air and water.

“This is the first synthetic life that has been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromasome, made with four bottles of chemcals on a synthesizer from information on a computer,” Dr Venter said.

Lauded as a tour de force by Prof. Mattick from the Australian Research Council, Dr. Venters work is as ground breaking as science gets these days, the applications for man made life are phenominal and limited only by our imagination. That being said, mans imagination can often be self destructive, so think of all the fantastic synthesized zombie viruses the US military will make with this!

The bacterium used decoded DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides imprinting the synthetic DNA and inserting it into living bacterium, in this case Mycoplasma capricolum, allowing the bacterium to flourish with both it’s own and the synthetic DNA within, then finally using an antibiotic designed to kill all but the synthetic DNA allowing only the synthesized organism to proliferate and produce protein strands from the original Mycoplasma mycoides creating, simply, artificial life.

Klatu barada neck-tie?

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Where do I begin? I recently saw an advert for her upcoming show, that was filmed by the Lifetime channel. She opens with her common pitch line, “Do you want to know everything?” What you won’t hear her telling you is that she is merely a charlatan who exploits the pain and suffering of people grieving using cold reading. Let’s set one thing straight, psychics and mediums do not exist. Conmen and women do. There has not been, in thousands of years of scientific documentation, one SINGLE example of the supernatural or paranormal existing under ANY scrutiny by learned and educated persons. It’s not because academics are closed minded, or have it in for the little guy, or have ANY other motivation other than pushing forward common sense, critical thought, and legitimate honesty of fact. Many deluded people out there honestly think it goes as far as there being complex conspiracies to conceal the ‘truth’ about ‘human psychic potential’, et cetera. In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject that concluded there is “no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena.”^[1]

Let’s examine this critically: Not a scrap of evidence ever put forwards that can stand up to scrutiny, or giant illuminati plot to enslave and opress humanity. You tell me which one comes up in that fight.

Cold reading, combined with warm or hot reading, is the method by which all ‘psychics’ operate. Many people do this for a living as mentalists, or magicians; these people when asked will usually be outright honest about their art and it’s complete lack of supernatural or paranormal involvement. In 2004, Williams gave a reading to a senior staff member of TV host Merv Griffin. As a result, Griffin worked with her to host a show of her own. The proverbial path to ruin is laid with good intent.  Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead aired for two seasons on the Lifetime network 2006-2007 and is set to air in Australia shortly. Her show Lisa Williams: Voices From the Other Side ran for five consecutive nights on the network in October 2008. The shows followed Williams on a typical day, as she claims to have ‘communicated with the dead,’ ‘investigates haunted houses,’ and conducts other ‘spirit-seeking activities.’ She claims she has spoken to Bob Hope, Princess Diana, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe and Ray Charles after they died.

Let’s examine a well known psychic critically: A 2001 Time article reported that psychic John Edward allegedly utilized hot reading on his television show, Crossing Over, where an audience member who received a reading was suspicious of prior behavior from Edward’s aides, who had struck up conversations with audience members and asked them to fill out cards detailing their family trees.^[2] In December 2001, Edward was alleged to have used foreknowledge to hot read in an interview on the television show Dateline, where a reading for a cameraman was based on knowledge gained in conversation some hours previously, yet presented as if he was unaware of the cameraman’s background.^[3] In his 2001 book, John Edward denied ever using foreknowledge, cold or hot reading.^[4]

I am VERY familiar with these methods and have used them out of the blue on random people in the streets of Sydney to illustrate the power of commonality to friends, and I know a close friend of mine, mentalist and stage magician Ryle Hilton, is exceptional at his art and absolutely blows peoples minds. I am not detracting from the SKILL involved in these acts, merely that using it to con and exploit people into believing only YOU can give them closure with their dead loved ones is abhorrent.

The following is sourced under fair use from Same Same, a publication for the Australian Gay and Lesbian Community that addresses some of the core elements of fail that is applied when handling ‘psychics’ in the press, with my comments in brackets.

Over the years Lisa has been challenged by many skeptics, including her own father. “He’s one of the biggest skeptics around!” she laughs. “But Dad has also seen first hand what I can do, and he’s seen how I give people a feeling of closure, and he says ‘you know what Lisa, I can’t take that away from you’.” [The closure given is fair enough, but the financial exploitation is unforgivable.]

One of the most public challenges Lisa has faced was with a skeptic named Laura on an episode of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’. Lisa said that during the reading she kept offering Laura details that should have resonated – like her father’s name, or that he was a ballroom dancer – but Laura remained unconvinced, and was intent on getting cold, hard facts. [Note the use of negative terms such as 'skeptic' just because someone was unconvinced.]

“I gave her the name John, but she wanted his full name, that kind of thing. I told her ‘I am only telling you what he is giving me, I can’t make it change’. I almost got up and walked away. I said, ‘if you’re not open to this then there’s no point in me being here’.” [Ie: Dummy spit.]

Lisa says that she often reads comments about her in online forums, where people dispute her authenticity. “People say ‘oh Lisa Williams gets all the ticket data and uses that to do background checks on people who come to her show’. Well hello, it’s just me. I don’t have a team of researchers. I certainly don’t put microphones in the bathrooms or under the seats. I laugh at it. Of course, when it comes to TV, the producers get given a certain story. The talent tells them ‘I want to communicate with my mum because of…’ but often there’s another story that comes out or that I bring out. [Lol.]

The last paragraph was the best, she admits that–like John Edwards–she has access to the core information, the ‘other story’ that ‘comes out’ is where the cold/warm/hot reading elements come into this.

I figured I would take these channels publishing her crap to bat and sent an email, given that the Lifestyle Channel and W are sponsors of my online life and commonly compensate me for critical evaluation (public or otherwise) of their programs or services, and considering I have a larger demographic reach than Lisa it will be interesting to see if they make a stoic legitimate call or just kowtow to a fast easy buck like a heroin dealer down a dark alley.

Here is a copy of one of my emails in it’s entirety: -

I am writing as a blogger who [details of financial arragements excised]. I write specifically to request that–in an effort to maintain fairness, legitimacy, honesty and integrity–that you cease publication of Lisa Williams, the ‘medium’ and other such charlatans.

Sure, you get viewers, sure you make a quick buck; but these people are exploiting the ignorance and idiocy of the masses, much like a drug dealer who peddles his wares amongst the foolish. These lecherous conmen and women exploit the pain and suffering of people by lying through their teeth, and there are avenues to be pursued for large financial and fame rewards if any individual can prove ANY element of the supernatural or paranormal exists through JREF, however most of these scum refuse to claiming they don’t want ‘wealth’ (even though they charge extortionate fees to fundamentally give people a pat on the back and tell them their dead family still love them), and none of these people pursue this proof of their talents for obvious reasons.

I am posting this letter on my blog, which will be replicated throughout my social networks and blogs demographic reach meaning over half a million people will view this within 24 hours. I would like a reply to this, and I advise you now it will be published as will your choice to continue to air these exploitative shows or otherwise. I hope you make the right decision.

So for now, I advise all of you to pass this on to your wanky airy fairy friends who believe in the supernatural and like a suppository of testicular fortitude it should thwart their idiocy, and stay tuned for the results of my correspondence to these networks, if they even dare reply. Oh, and Lisa, and I know your PR agent has shown you this because with my reach they wouldn’t be worth a pinch of shit if they haven’t, this isn’t a PR nightmare for you honey; it’s just a wake up call that you should get a day job that DOESN’T involve exploitation. In 50 years people like you will be locked up in prison for these crimes you perpetrate on innocent and vulnerable people.

And people like me, who’re probably only in for a night stay due to drunk and disorderly in public, will make sure you drop the soap. ;)

References:

1. ^ Druckman, D. and Swets, J. A. eds. (1988). Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories and Techniques. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.. p. 22. ISBN 0-309-07465-7.
2. ^ Leon Jaroff (2001-02-25). “Talking to the Dead”. Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,100555,00.html. Retrieved 2006-06-14.
3. ^ Joe Nickell. “John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved”. CSICOP. http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-11/i-files.html. Retrieved 2006-06-14.
4. ^ Edward, John (2001). Crossing Over. Jodere Group. ISBN 1-58872-002-0.

Many of you remember my encounter with TPG and the drama that ensued because Telstra reconnected 40 year old infrastructure instead of replacing it with a new connection as contracted to do. That led to me (four months and 120+ phone calls later) calling Telstra’s complaints department and talking to a lovely girl in the Gold Coast named Janice, she didn’t quite understand my complaint (re: infrastructure) and put me through to bloke named John, her supervisor. He didn’t understand my problem and told me that the ‘network boundary’ is the line-in of my property; which I later found out is incorrect, as I stated to him, and the network boundary is the first point inside the house, which meant the fault on the line was on their equipment which made sense as I sure as fuck had nothing connected to it.

He seemed frustrated and asked why I don’t just use Bigpond so Telstra can immediately fix the line problem, I pointed out that they’re easily 50-60 times the price of their competitors, he disagreed and said he can offer me 200gb @ 20mbps for $89, I said hell yeah sign me up. He bumped me back through to Janice, and ten minutes in my phone died. After calling back, repeatedly, no one at Telstra would match the price offered to me. The closest offer I got was $110 for 100GB @ 20mbps inclusive of line rental (at $9 pm) and a promise that if I filed a complaint someone will get back to me as to the original pricing and fix it up.

My first bill came in for the phone line, $348. What .. the fuck? I called them, turns out they ballsed up and had an installation fee attached to the account creation, even though the line was in place and had been in place for six months, I called up to complain, the guy asked ‘how much of your bill are you contesting?’ and I asked him whether that’s how they price things, they just charge you random large amounts then ask how much you’re willing to pay. They said they’d fix it.

Then I get my first internet bill, $756.20. What the fuck? I’m glad I made sure on my contract that they MUST provide the service at 20 MBPS or I’m not paying a cent, because I’m definitely not paying $756.20 for what three major service providers would charge $39.95 for.

So, this is me venting again about another useless as tits on a bull ISP, and I bloody well hope they read this, and realise, that my 340,000 viewer demographic all know they’re stupid.

Telstra, contact me about this immediately, and if you don’t have this problem fixed by the time you call me, and if you aren’t offering to HALF the cost of my ‘ADSL2+’ because it’s only running at HALF the speed you GUARANTEED, then save me the effort and just remind me to file a TIO complaint and take you through the local consumer tribunal.

Dear K-rudd,

You know, that almost makes you sound like a rapper. I am writing this merely to mock you, knowing the people reading it will appreciate the tongue in cheek as I illustrate the ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle’ you’re dishing out to smokers. I’m aware you’re about as detached from reality as a politician can get, but I do know the 12 year old korean sweat shop workers you have in your off shore PR department will read this and hopefully also get a chuckle at your expense.

Smoking, filthy habit, right? Some say it’s as hard as heroin to kick. In Australia, the land of the ‘surprise tax’ as I like to call it (we’re already one of the most taxed nations yet we have ‘stamp duty’ tax on … everything, which is usually 10% (see: bankrupting on your first home or car purchase by surprise tax) as well as road tax, breathing tax, you fucking name it tax) but now we have taxes on taxes. Cigarettes were always taxed at a premium, where a pack of fags would set you back $7 in the 80′s and early 90′s as opposed to $1-2 outside Australia.

Smokers clog up the healthcare system, right? What with their dying all the time and stuff, why not tax them? Fine. Smokers pay a lot more tax than any other Australian, with almost 90% of the price of them being ‘tax’ all going to the medical system. But fuck giving them organs, they’re smokers. Hell, let’s tax them more. Now we’re nearing $1 per cigarette, and what happens? The price of ‘quit smoking aids’ which always work out to cost more than cigarettes go up too.

As much as governments pretend to want us to not smoke they realise that the tax they can milk out of us by keeping us alive an average 10 years more is far less than what they can by taxing our addiction. I say this as an intermittant lifelong smoker, who quits as often as he restarts, but fairs fair this new tax has gone way too far.

Heroin addicts get shooting galleries, social support, free housing, $380 a fortnight and FREE methadone to inject instead. Smokers get mortgages, bills, two point seven five children, two cars, and a fuckload of surprise tax on top of their taxed taxes of cigartaxes and placebo ‘quit’ substitutes that freely state in their instructions that they won’t give you the ‘fix’ or ‘buzz’ of cigarettes (and thus never last more than a week in a smokers addiction).

So, I propose this K-rudd, rather than making heroin far more appealing to Australian’s, how about you cut back on the smoking tax, or even it out across the three big killers, obesity (being the biggest killer in this nation) and alcohol (and see how long it takes until parliament house is burnt down and you’r nailed to the flag pole given how crazed Aussies seem to be about drinking (coming from a non drinker here)), which I might add are two elements I do not participate in. Maybe we should have photos of the mega-litres of fat sucked out of womens arses and thighs and the horrible chaffed cellulite gone necrotic fat people get attached to every edible product? Why stop there, why don’t we up the gore level and throw up some awesome pics from ogrish of splatter deaths from drunken road kills of people?

Or better yet, maybe repeal the tax and stop being a cunt, eh?

Much love,

BaSH (Your #1 Fan) PR0MPT

Ps: Why the fuck did I vote for him? I guess he was Obama before Obama, he looked good because the competition was horrendous, and promised the right things, then backflipped on all of them.

The SciFiTv channel in Australia has been airing a lot of crappy infomercial-disguised-as-edgy-hipster-shows of late, the most recent shows the advertising heavyweight of the ‘zombie’ genre mixed with allusions to viral marketing. First, here’s what wiki has to say:

“Woke Up Dead is an American horror/comedy web series starring Jon Heder (best known for Napoleon Dynamite) as a young man who awakes in a full bathtub after ‘drowning’ and has no heartbeat, prompting his friends to believe him to be a zombie.

The show premiered on Sony Pictures Entertainment owned Crackle on October 5, 2009. Woke Up Dead is a production of Electric Farm Entertainment, a company that produced Afterworld, which currently runs on Crackle, along with Gemini Division and Valemont.

The show is executive produced by Brent V. Friedman, Stan Rogow, and Jeff Sagansky. Heder’s co-stars are Krysten Ritter, Josh Gad, and Wayne Knight. New episodes streamed weekdays through the end of October 2009.

The first episode was included on the Zombieland DVD. A season one DVD is in production. It is currently unknown if there will be a second season.”

Those familiar with Afterworld will remember it was a good concept wrecked by bad production and so intermittant you’d never follow the plot, not to mention unless you were in the US you couldn’t view episodes online.

Gemini Devision went one step further into the bowels of Internet fail by portraying it’s narrative as the vlog of some silly bitch on some urgent super mission being leaked. It was PACKED with promotional advertising which left you boggling at how they squeezed ten seconds of trashy hack narrative into four minutes of epilepsy inducing sub and paraliminal marketing gaffes.

So to does this next ‘feature’ from Electronic Farm disappoint. With blatent advertising segues in dialogue disengaging the viewer it forcibly pimps Kodal, Jeep, Ford, Doritos and Motorola. Many items are changed to have their logo physically in view, where logos aren’t found on the items in the real world.

Electric Farm breeds a lot of cows, because they sure as fuck shovel out more bullshit than any other ‘production company’ at present. Maybe film makers will take note of it’s limited success even with horrible advertising, or that of Dead Set (a zombie serial aired on BBC) and bring us a REAL zombie series?

“Absolute political cowardice… an absolute failure of leadership.”1 That’s what Kevin Rudd said just months ago about those who wanted to delay action on climate change. He was right.

Yesterday Kevin Rudd betrayed his promise to act on climate change, deferring action until 2013: six years after he called climate change the moral challenge of our age.

So what can we do about it? To start, we have to ensure this doesn’t go unnoticed – doesn’t go unanswered. Every Australian who took the Prime Minister at his word should see this video of his climate backflip.

The Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was a mess of a policy: a paltry 5% target, and what the Govenrment’s own advisor, Prof. Ross Garnaut, called “one of the worst examples of policy making we have seen on major issues in Australia.”2 But this is about far more than another policy delay.

Time and again, Kevin Rudd has betrayed the support Australians gave him last election. And yesterday, he broke faith with us on “the great challenge of our time.”3 It is time to say enough. It is time to take a stand and declare a vote of no confidence in Kevin Rudd’s leadership on climate change.

We could say a lot about this latest backflip, but Kevin Rudd himself perhaps said it best. Here’s what he said just months ago about delaying climate action:

“….When you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices – action or inaction.”

“…The resolve of the Australian Government is clear: we choose action, and we do so because Australia’s fundamental economic and environmental interests lie in action. Action now. Not action delayed.”

“…the eighth excuse cannot be far away – which will be to wait until the next year or the year after until all the rest of the world has acted at which time Australia will act.

“…What absolute political cowardice. What an absolute failure of leadership. What an absolute failure of logic.”4

The Prime Minister said it right, what absolute cowardice. And as he said in that same speech:

“It’s time to remove any polite veneer from this debate. The stakes are that high.”

Right again: it’s time to remove the veneer and speak truth to power. Please share this post with friends, and click below to join the vote of no confidence in Kevin Rudd’s climate decision, just a warning though do NOT donate to GetUp!, their donations are spent how they see fit and it is VERY rare they will put much of the funds to use on the topic at hand. One example was the anti-censorship issue, they raised $300,000 and donated $1,000 to the cause and spent the rest on self promotion under cause-oriented guise.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/climateinaction

PS – On refugees, on human rights and now on climate change, Kevin Rudd has broken faith with all Australians.

–Sources–

1The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Distinguished Speaker Series, the Lowy Institue, 06/11/ 2009.
2Prof. Ross Garnaut, The 7.30 Report, ABC, broadcast: 12/10/2009, reporter: Kerry O’Brien.
3The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Opening Remarks to the National Climate Change Summit, Parliament House, Canberra, 31/03/07
4The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Distinguished Speaker Series, the Lowy Institue, 06/11/ 2009.

7,000 screaming pubescent teenage females rushed the barricades like estrogen fuelled psycho hose beasts for the party frank of a 16 year old boy who resembles a 9 year old (polar opposite of a manchild) who sounds like a 12 year old girl.

What’s wrong with this picture? What the fuck is right with it? (If you answered nothing, read on, else beat yourself across the head, re-read, and repeat until enlightenment)

It’s 2010, when our prime minister lied about stopping Japanese illegal whaling, withdrawing our troops from America’s war against adjectives, and getting rid of the vile fuck-the-workers “work choices” scheme … we saw no one swamp the streets to protest.

In 2008 during the mandatory censorship protests we saw only 5,000 mob Town Hall to protest the decay of Internet freedom in our nation not to mention free speech at the draconian hands of Senator-can’t-program-a-VCR Conroy.

What is wrong with a society which has crazed teen girls acting like sleazy 40 year old men with their hand in their pocket over some kid? In what jilted fucked up take of reality do we see people mobbing barricades and police lines over some b-grade net celebrity? When did Australia turn into the US?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that teenage females are the least intellectually gifted let alone autonomous minority in our society and I’m also aware that they’re brain washed to be the future of mindless consumption technicians that will keep our male workforce subjugated; but there’s something seriously wrong with parents who don’t discourage clearly unhealthy behaviour.

I don’t have children, well none that Centrelink can prove are mine, and I’m personally a fan of ‘late term’ abortions up to the age of 35, but seriously, seeing this in the news disgusted me.

These silly little trollops need to watch less OC/hills/jersey shore and get the fuck back into a classroom or better yet an adidas sweat shop. We boggle our logic to no end trying to figure out why women are paid less than men and have more dick-in-butt ratio in the socio-economic front yet allow borderline psychotic behaviour and encourage hive mentality and worship of TV-told-me-to tin gods. No male would get away with that over any female without their mates outright telling them they’re bent in the head and probably slap them around when they won’t talk about anything but their obsession. Not to mention the extremes many young girls go to (see: changing their online surnames everywhere to reflect obsessed marital fantasies) are just bizarre and unhealthy.

How young females can’t see that there’s no such tangible thing as a ‘fanboy’ but ‘fangirl’ is an ever present term and not appreciate that they’re jipping themselves out of individualistic thought or gender rights progression is beyond me.

Pre-pube girls, grow the fuck up. Pre-pube girl parents, put them in therapy you disillusioned cunts.

As most of you are aware I’ve been examining online ‘money making’ drivel and usually exposing the bullshit behind it and the con artists who’re reaping the rewards. From ‘get paid to tweet’ to MLM I’ve pointed out quite a few organisations and people who are dodgy. This time I’ve been proven wrong. WHAT? ME? WRONG? Only marginally though. $5 in a month is NOT an income.

Credit where credit is due, if you really want to be a knob and try and make a buck on the internet, try Sponsored Tweets, they’re run by IZEA a ‘Social Media Marketing’ business with decent sponsors. Lifestyle Channel have taken an interest in my blog adventures and whilst I am being derisive by saying $5 in a month that’s because it took a month for them to send me an offer, it works out to be $5 per tweet they feed into my stream, which could be a money winner if you talk about crap that will attract the right sponsors I guess? Their banners aren’t all that crappy too if you’re into the whole affiliate marketing crap, but I for one don’t see any value for time in that stuff. Example below.

Anyway, that’s as much as an update you’re going to get, so you CAN make money online but not enough to buy a beer down the pub. :)

Once in a while you come across a piece of hack documentary type puff that blows irresponsibility out the water. One child claims she was first blessed with her ‘talent’ when she was two years old, simply because she wandered away from her house and blamed it on a ‘little girl’ which the parents fabricated an anecdotal story around. “There’s no reason to think these people are lying, why would they?” says the mother. Shot in the dark here love, but I’d guess for the epic fucking attention they get for lying through their teeth.

Sounds whack? That’s the bottom line of ‘Psychic Kids’ a Biography channel d(/m)ocumentary using various fallacies and props as outlined in my last post regarding quakcery and touchy feely rubbish, if you watched Here Be Dragons, the video on YouTube about critical thinking, you’ll watch this and facepalm double handed just like I am.

Stuff like this really makes me worried. Children are impresionable, it’s far more dangerous putting something so under the radar as encouraging psychological illness replication, as far as behaviour goes, than it would be violence, given the predisposition for ‘psychics’ to be depicted as loved and special, treasured almost–albeit by those who fail to think critically and believe in unicorns too–and thus is something more children would wish to attain as far as recognition goes. That being said, whilst I disagree, and whilst I can see the damage humouring assinine material such as this and appreciate it is a large amount of socio-economic damage,

The father of one of the children labels himself a skeptic, and illustrates freely that she was a bit of a nutjob kid with mental problems and used this as an out. Although in the very next scene we have a camp old man ‘psychic’ reaffirming her delusions claiming he has had psychic powers forever and starts asking how many ‘spirit beings’ she detects in the area, naturally she spits out epic dramu, but such is life.

In fact ALL of the children on the show suffered bullying and ostricization, this they will clearly blame on people ‘not understanding’ their abilities as opposed to rational people disliking attention whoring irrational twats brainwashed by their crystal fiddling dope smoking parents.

I think the worst part is a scene where one of the children is seen being coaxed to go to the basement in the middle of the night to ‘communicate’ with the spirit child that dwells there, where we see gaudy night vision (sadly no Paris Hilton in sight) and a poor arse replication of Most Haunted crossed with Blair Witch Project and a ball that is moving in a lazy circle due to a weighted patch on the side of it which is reacted to in a manner that this invisible child is pushing the ball back.

Overall, it’s another case of this memetic cancer in our society that needs some rapid chemo.

I was recently suggested a read by a friend, Dr. John L. Turner (add him on twitter, @DrJohnLTurner), of a document entitled Bioelectromagnetic Healing, A Rationale for Its Use by Thomas F. Valone, Ph.D. published in 2003. This work was vanity published by his own sock puppet ‘charity’ organisation called the ‘Integrity Research Institute,’ which he is, surprise surprise, the President of. A brief review of his curriculum vitae reveals that he has no published works in any respectable scientific journal, nor any peer reviewed scientific journal or publication out of all his publications; they’re all primarily through his ‘Integrity Research Institute.’

REMEMBER: PSEUDOSCIENCE KILLS.
Click here to review individual instances of pseudoscience and alternative medicine being at fault in over 368,379 people dying, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages.

I don’t mean to rag on him too much by the way, he seems to be a TAFE teacher (by Australian standards, or primarily a ‘community college’ instructor by US standards) and has clearly worked with some brilliant chaps too; my disdain isn’t against this individual but merely his actions as a proponent of deadly conspiracy and pseudoscience peddling. That being said he can be found on YouTube making an ass of himself talking about UFOs and conspiracies.

Before reading through this review, or maybe even after, watch this video on critical thinking for a general primer on how to approach … well, just about anything utilising the illumination of critical thought and the scientific mind!

I was cynical from the commencement reading this material, as I have read hundreds of papers debunking magetic therapy, the dedication at the begining of the work mentioning a naturopath was not reassuring. The preface is a very stereotypical opening shot of anecdote, as with most ‘alternative medicine‘ someone always knows someone who X, Y and Z, but sadly none of these people manage to deliver even a scrap of scientific proof nor are any of these wonderous revolutionary discoveries ever distributed to peer reviewed journals where the reading (and commenting) audience are medically or scientifically trained. We all know why that is.

The kicker that already got my eyes rolling out of my head was the defecting Russian scientist, who spoke of awesome ‘energy healing‘ methods through magnetic devices which, when pointed at the ear of a subject with an ear infection for a few minutes, would destroy the infection. If ANYONE can reproduce that in a lab under ANY form of scientific scrutiny, I will gladly sell all my possessions, hand them the cash, then promptly jump off a cliff. I shit you not, I WILL stake my entire life on the fact that ALL alternative medicine is a farce. A dangerous farce at that, killing millions the world over who, through ignorance, or irresponsibility of others putting forth puff where one should be proposing medicine and science, die and cause massive financial, emotional, and general harm to people every day. I feel safe in my bet on this one though: -

“I know of no scientist who takes this claim seriously…It’s another fad. They come and go like copper bracelets and crystals and all of these things, and this one will pass too.” –Robert Park of the American Physical Society.

“Iron atoms in a magnet are crammed together in a solid state about one atom apart from one another. In your blood only four iron atoms are allocated to each hemoglobin molecule, and they are separated by distances too great to form a magnet. This is easily tested by pricking your finger and placing a drop of your blood next to a magnet. ” –Michael Shermer*

“The more extreme claims of magnetic therapy, such as curing cancer by hanging supermagnets around your neck, are not only nonsense but also dangerous, since they may divert patients from seeking appropriate treatment from mainstream medicine. Magnetic jewelry and most other magnetic-therapy products probably are harmless beyond a waste of money.” –James D. Livingston*

By page 4 the author is already claiming magnets are ‘the medicine of the future’, an ongoing cliche comment from all alternative medicine and snake oil peddlers in general. This magnet shit was mostly hashed out in the 70′s, with magnetic rooms, or ion charging units in sweat lodges in Europe would charge tens of thousands for ‘therapy,’ or the pleasure of sitting on a seat awkwardly in the middle of a room in your underwear whilst your healers snort the cash you’ve given them like hoovers. The whole ‘electro’ fad was exhausted by the 1930′s and debunked by most educated fellows.

One can’t go very far in the realm of ‘alternative medicine’ without striking on an Edison or Tesla reference, this work doesn’t disappoint, albeit I did find the uber professionalism of the author in one outstanding statement that pretty much sets the feel for the rest of the narrative of pseudoscience: -

Key sections are noted with a :) symbol to indicate importance.

Brilliant, right? In the 1930′s, as the author even states, such ridiculous claims were put forwards such as Tesla’s high frequency currents “are bringing about a highly beneficial result in dealing with cancer, surpassing anything that could be accomplished with ordinary surgery.” Statements like that are what people term as anecdotal; they’re not scientific, nor is any credential other than that of the conman or his associates put on the line. If it were submitted for peer review scientific journals by modern standards they’d be ridiculed openly and debunked, if not outright exposed, as phoneys. We all know electricity won’t cure cancer. If it did, we wouldn’t be spending billions in cancer research, nor spending even more in socialist states like Australia to fund the treatment of cancer patients if mere electro-shock will cure it.

Tim Harlow, general practitioner, Colin Greaves, research fellow, Adrian White, senior research fellow, Liz Brown, research assistant, Anna Hart, statistician, Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine conducted a large scale scientific examination of energy healing, with a focus on magnets, these findings were published in an esteemed and peer reviewed journal, British Medical Journal, Dec. 2004.

Skip to the bottom of this article to see other findings from other scientists that have been submitted to REAL journals and published BY presses that aren’t owned by those conducting the research.

That being said, we still have some whacky psychiatrists (mostly in Western Australia at Graylands (movies have been made about that place and this practice) who believe that electro-shock therapy is effective in dealing with depression and anxiety conditions. The figures probably come from the fact people will behave the way the doctors want because they don’t want a fucking jumper cable put to their temples again; not to mention in extreme cases these practices cause indirect lobotomies, but have as unpredictable a result as inserting a screw driver into your cars ignition, hitting it with a 20 lb sledge hammer, and hoping it starts.

By page 12 the author had lost me with far too much blatent pseudo-science, so I decided to look into him a bit more, examine his writing style. He seems to apply many footnotes, but I noticed that there are none beyond the 90s if not even the 70s that AREN’T published in some wanky new age touchy feely hippy publication, or vanity pressing. All the rest of the footnotes are from things from the late 1870s through to the 1930s, so we’re already dealing with someone who is structuring their research to suit their argument, as opposed to conducting research to present their argument be it right or wrong.

By page 13 the author is citing conspiracy theory books claiming that there is suppression by ‘big pharma’ to prevent the world being this wonderful utopia as peddled by snake oil salesmen. At this point I realised I could not go any further without losing all respect for myself. Cute read, non-scientific, all point of view, all flawed research.

Further reading:

• Colbert, A. P., Wahbeh, H., Harling, N., Connelly, E., Schiffke, H. C., Forsten, C., Gregory, W. L., Markov, M. S., Souder, J. J., Elmer, P., King, V. (2009). Static Magnetic Field Therapy: A Critical Review of Treatment Parameters. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 6: 133-139 [Abstract] [Full text]
• Boutron, I., Moher, D., Altman, D. G., Schulz, K. F., Ravaud, P., for the CONSORT Group, (2008). Extending the CONSORT Statement to Randomized Trials of Nonpharmacologic Treatment: Explanation and Elaboration. ANN INTERN MED 148: 295-309 [Abstract] [Full text]
• Rumbaut, R. E., Mirkovic, D. (2008). Magnetic therapy for edema in inflammation: a physiological assessment. Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 294: H19-H20 [Full text]
• Barron, M. C., Rubin, B. R. (2007). Managing Osteoarthritic Knee Pain. J Am Osteopath Assoc 107: ES21-ES27 [Abstract] [Full text]
• Pittler, M. H. MD PhD, Brown, E. M. BSc, Ernst, E. MD PhD (2007). Static magnets for reducing pain: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. CMAJ 177: 736-742 [Abstract] [Full text]
• Katz, W. A. (2007). Themed Review: Nonpharmacologic Approaches to Osteoarthritis. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LIFESTYLE MEDICINE 1: 249-255 [Abstract]
• Kuipers, N. T., Sauder, C. L., Ray, C. A. (2007). Influence of static magnetic fields on pain perception and sympathetic nerve activity in humans. J. Appl. Physiol. 102: 1410-1415 [Abstract] [Full text]
• Bjordal, J, Conaghan, P G (2006). NSAIDs in osteoarthritis: irreplaceable or troublesome guidelines?. Br. J. Sports. Med. 40: 285-286 [Full text]
• Finegold, L., Flamm, B. L (2006). Magnet therapy. BMJ 332: 4-4 [Full text]
• Rubin, B. R. (2005). Management of Osteoarthritic Knee Pain. J Am Osteopath Assoc 105: S23-S28 [Abstract] [Full text]
• Winemiller, M. H., Billow, R. G., Laskowski, E. R., Harmsen, W. S. (2005). Effect of Magnetic vs Sham-Magnetic Insoles on Nonspecific Foot Pain in the Workplace: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial. Mayo Clin Proc. 80: 1138-1145 [Abstract]
• McDonald, H. L (2005). Patients who wore standard magnetic bracelets reported reduced pain from osteoarthritis of the hip or knee compared with patients wearing placebo bracelets. Evid. Based Nurs. 8: 89-89 [Full text]
• McCrory, P (2005). The power of placebo. Br. J. Sports. Med. 39: 125-125 [Full text]
• (2005). Robin Goodfellow (44-3). Rheumatology (Oxford) 44: 418-418 [Full text]

A game retailer revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of online shoppers, thanks to a clause in their terms and conditions.  FOXNews.com reported the retailer, British firm GameStation, added the “immortal soul clause” to the contract shoppers signed before making any online purchases earlier this month.

It states that customers grant the company the right to claim their soul.

“By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions.”

GameStation’s form also points out that “we reserve the right to serve such notice in 6 (six) foot high letters of fire, however we can accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by such an act. If you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant Us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction.”

The terms of service were updated on April Fool’s Day as a gag, but the retailer did so to make a very real point.

They said no one reads the online terms and conditions of shopping and companies are free to insert whatever language they want into the documents.

The company noted that it would not be enforcing the ownership rights and planned to email customers nullifying any claim on their soul.

Overnight a ‘Young Liberal’ (for non-Australians, a member of a youth aged party of our bipartisan system over here, the more conservative side) labeled Barack Obama a ‘monkey’ and made a series of slurs against him. I quite like Obama, but to be honest I’m shocked that this has roiled the vapid cyber stalkers of the more left of center websites. To clarify, I’m more a centrist, so I think both the left and right are batshit fucking insane.

‎sleemol‎ – Twitter – 4 minutes ago

	Should Nick Sowden have been expelled from the Liberal National Party? Read his defense, and have your say! … – More » Nick Sowden Speaks Out – Menzies House‎ – menzieshouse.com.au

‎Menzies House‎ – Facebook – 4 minutes ago

	RT @BigHarto: Pleased to announce young Nick Sowden joins the Courier-Mail. He’ll be live-blogging all World Cup matches in South Africa.

‎Gluckman‎ – Twitter – 6 minutes ago

	RT @latikambourke: The LNP has expelled Nick Sowden from the party for bring the party into disrepute with this Obama ‘monkey’ tweets.

‎D_Keating‎ – Twitter – 6 minutes ago

Sowden received an email from Joel Harrop, Liberal National Party president, this afternoon. It said a meeting had been convened and a unanimous decision taken to withdraw his membership after he branded US president Barack Obama a “monkey” last night.

Harrop said Sowden had been found to have brought the LNP into disrepute and engaged in “conduct severely harmful to the best interests of the party”. He has been sacked from the LNP and the Young LNP organisation.

What exactly were his tweets?

@nicksowden Im not sure why they paid kerry to fly to America, if they wanted an interview with a monkey surely a Ferry to Taronga would have sufficed.

@nicksowden If i wanted to see a monkey on TV id watch Wildlife Rescue. #justsaying #obama730

@nicksowden Also, why did we pay Kerry to go to US when Obama is coming to Aus in June? #flail

Amidst a lot of other general shit talking, this guy clearly illustrated his ability to offend. Now I don’t for one second apologise for, nor agree with anything this kid has said, but what I truly and honestly feel is that these wannabe cyber-social justice administrators are equally worse, just because their target isn’t someone high profile, their attempt to systematically destroy this kid just for him spouting off like a moron is ridiculous.

“I do not agree with what you say, but I will die for your right to say it.”

Free speech is something which both the lefties and the righties will say is of the utmost importance for a democracy. Free speech comes hand in hand with offense, offense is the cost of democratic thought. Offense is something that those who are offended need to build a bridge and get the fuck over, because I’m 100% positive Obama has copped worse shit from real nasties in his time and his shown time and time again that his skin is thick enough to not need sycophantic sociopath wankers with machine gun keyboards to come to his defense.

It is a bit scary that this guy is going to be a doctor one day. I wouldn’t want him looking after my health.

If he can’t understand that broadcasting his racist and sexist views across the internet isn’t a good idea, even if it is in jest (like he is now trying to claim), then how is he going to have the mental capacity to diagonose and treat paitents correctly?

I think I’m going to start a list of future doctors to refuse treatment from.”

How fucking narrow minded does one have to be to discriminate as to who provides them healthcare? If you read through all these comments flaming this tool you’ll find that each person seems equally batshit mental in their own ‘special’ little way.

Amusingly enough I’m watching a show about early punk bands that would have a hammer and sickle on the stage just to ‘piss people off’ even though they weren’t commies, yet pointed out that communist thought was worse than child molestation, drawing jeers of ‘get off the stage faggot’, offense for the sake of offense is as ancient as the hills, from the philosophers of rome, through to pop artists, or half the music scene; but if you’re trolling but not on a stage apparently that’s the new ‘child molester’ categorization these days.

Click here to watch a live Google stream of the crazy internet hate machine at it’s finest.

One comment the kid mentioned in his defense I entirely agree with, albeit it may be one of the few things I entirely agree with that he’s said:

I know that the work I DO, is much more worthwhile than the veil of political correctness that those hiding behind their blogs will ever achieve to end disadvantage.

If you’re like me, you’re baffled (even in your techno-guru wisdom) as to what the feck this 3DTV obsession is about that has lackluster demands from audiences but is being forcefed down the Hollywood umbilical cord to all corners of the globe as the next ‘it technology’.

It comes as a surprise to many to learn that the idea of stereoscopy actually preceded photography. Binocular drawings were made by Giovanni Battista della Porta (1538-1615), whilst about the same period Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli (1554-1640) produced drawings side by side which clearly indicated his understanding of binocular vision.

In 1613 the Jesuit Francois d’Aguillion (1567-1617), in his treatise, coined the word “stéréoscopique” The first practical steps to demonstrate the theory by constructing equipment for the purpose did not take place until the 1800s. Though most associate Brewster with the invention, it was Sir Charles Wheatstone who, in June 1838, gave an address to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts on the phenomena of binocular vision. Wheatstone’s actual stereoscope is preserved at the Science Museum in London. Eleven years were to elapse before Sir David Brewster described a binocular camera, and the first stereoscopic photographs began to be produced.

Useless trivia aside, 2010 saw a really crap take on Fern Gully with giant blue furries known as Avatar to some, not to be confused with the really crap take on Kung Fu the TV Series animated by sweatshop labour and flogged off as ‘anime’ (and later a spectacularly crap Xbox game which gives 1000 gamer points in under 20 seconds). This seems to have been the fulcrum of an explosive marketing campaign of outdated shit technology under the guise of 3DTV. Wtf is it? Still lost?

There are several technologies that exist to provide three dimensional perception of television. Two are passive, one is active, and one is … well, somewhat theoretical. The two passive ones are dependent on the image being displayed, ie: would cost you nothing to view aside from a $0.50 pair of glasses, one red and cyan, the other a somewhat tinted pair. These technologies are compatible with your current TV.

Those are NOT the technologies that will ever be used by 3DTV.

LC shutter glasses are glasses are a $200 pair of battery powered glasses used in conjunction with a special highly overpriced $4,000 (entry level) display screen to create the illusion of a three dimensional image. Glass containing liquid crystal and a polarizing filter has the property that it becomes dark when voltage is applied, but otherwise is transparent. The glasses are controlled by an infrared, radio frequency, DLP-Link or Bluetooth transmitter in your overpriced TV that sends a timing signal. The glasses alternately darken over one eye, and then the other, in synchronization with the refresh rate of the screen, while the display alternately displays different perspectives for each eye, using a technique called alternate-frame sequencing.

Flicker can be extremely noticeable except at very high refresh rates, as each eye is effectively receiving only half of the monitor’s actual refresh rate. Until recently, the method only worked with CRT monitors; SOME modern flat-panel monitors now support high-enough refresh rates to work with some LC shutter systems, these are being marked up several thousand dollars while you read this with intent to jip you out of your consumeristic compulsive urge to have 3DTV.

Because the LC shutter glasses are shutting out light half of the time, and are slightly dark even when letting light through, less light reaches the viewer’s eyes from the display. This gives an effect similar to watching TV with sunglasses on. Frame rate has to be double that of an ordinary stream to get an equivalent result. All equipment in the chain has to be able to process frames at double rate; in essence this doubles the hardware requirements of the equipment and means you have to throw our all your technology just to get this gimmicky thing.

So in conclusion, throw every piece of entertainment equipment you own and be prepared to pay ten times what you paid for it last time just to sit in a dark room like a cock with cyborg sunglasses on that cost you more than your designer sunnies and have batteries in them. You are now the apex of class, style, and finesse, or so the Hollywood umbilical that compels us all would have you believe.

To the rest of us, you’re still a dickhead buying into a fad. :)