There are some things I never contemplated before, but in case you need a list to be really sure, here are
Eight Reasons You Should Keep Coke Away From Your Vagina. Heed them!
Glastonbury is the legendary burial place of King Arthur, so as you might imagine, if you’re a fey English wackaloon with a fondness for magic crystals and pagan rituals, it’s a magnetic attraction. How bad can it be? Well, the wicked government of Great Britain, always trying to suppress the Old Ways and encourage this horrible practice of “modernization”, has flipped the switch and turned on free wireless networking for the whole town. Evil!
“I don’t want my son exposed to risk 24 hours a day, including at his primary school, which is within the Wi-Fi zone,” yoga teacher Natalie Fee tells London’s Telegraph. “I would be failing in my duty as a parent if I did.”
Hey, Natalie, what about those darned dangerous radio waves that you’re soaking in right now? AM, FM, there are all these fluctuating vibrations permeating everything, everywhere you go. Let’s shut them all down! And are you going to tell your son that he isn’t allowed to own a cell phone, ever?
One man has even begun making orgone generators, which use crystals, semi-precious stones and gold to purportedly put out positive energy to combat the negative vibes flooding the town from the Wi-Fi base stations.
“I have given a number of generators to shops in the High Street and hidden others in bushes in the immediate vicinity of the antennae. That way you can bring back the balance,” Matt Todd told the Telegraph. “The science hasn’t really got into the mainstream because the government won’t make decisions which will affect big business, even if it concerns everyone’s health.”
I’d like to see the evidence that 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies are “negative”, and that a bunch of cheap gee-gaws some space cowboy slaps together with a hot glue gun emit any energies, let alone “positive” ones.
And hang on, orgone generators? Devices that pump out magical sex energies? Isn’t that going to be even more confusing to Natalie’s little boy?
They do have a special problem out there in the UK that we don’t here in America — ley lines haven’t been a big deal in this country.
Todd says the Wi-Fi network is weakening the ley lines, supposed invisible webs of energy running through the landscape that the Druids and other ancient Britons are said to have been well aware of.
We also get fake biology. This is nonsense: melatonin really doesn’t do everything, the pineal is not going to be particularly responsive to random radio frequencies, and these kooks don’t even have a way to assess melatonin levels.
Others Glastonburians say their levels of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep and is seen as a wonder drug by natural-health types, have been all out of whack since the Wi-Fi network went on.
“The pulsed microwaves feed the pineal gland with false information,” local Jacqui Roberts tells the Western Daily Press. “Melatonin fights the free radicals and cancer-producing cells.”
Let’s be fair to Glastonbury, though. I get the impression that whoever put this article together made a special effort to dig up a few New Age nuts who are having hysterics over a non-problem, and probably ignored the sensible majority that are quite pleased to have freely accessible wireless networking everywhere they go.
A certain astronomer was impressed with this video:
Cool animation for sure (and even better in hd), but Bad Evolution. Once again, we get the portrayal of evolution as a progressive process, driven by lots of bloody (oily?) battles between individuals. This is the kind of thing that perpetuates common myths about biology.
Also, cyborg women are not the end result of evolution. They’re more like a delightfully exotic weird side-effect, way out on the fringe of diversity.
People keep trying to tempt me into Tarvuism, and I do admit that they have some lovely reverential imagery.
However, I am a hardcore atheist, and I deny Tarvu. I even deny Oobu.
So I’m sorry, I won’t be joining, even if it is so easy to join. I do encourage and endorse their right to display a cyclopean cephalopodian nativity scene in the Washington state capitol, however.
(via Canadian Cynic)
Andrew Sullivan is taking votes for his Moore Award — and I’m on it. This is his prize for “divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric”, named after Michael Moore.
He clearly intends it to be disparaging, but I find it to be a curiously misapplied award. First, it’s named for Michael Moore, who really isn’t that awful — he’s usually right, for one thing. For another, his counterpoint on the right is the Malkin Award, and I’m afraid that if he thinks a deranged harpy on the right is equivalent to a controversial but clearly progressive film maker on the left, his scales are a bit unbalanced.
Second, I’m in competition with Gore Vidal? I am not worthy.
Third, and perhaps similarly, the list of nominees is a real hodge-podge, and hard to take seriously. The only qualifications seem to be that they said something that pissed off conservative Andrew Sullivan, and that they’re nominally lumped together in the fuzzy blur of “The Left”.
Rolling Stone has one weird story: The Legend of Master Legend. It’s about people who think they are superheroes, right down to donning costumes and calling their run-down suburban ranch house a secret lair. These people are deluded, all right, but they seem mostly harmless, and the story is written in a tone that doesn’t mock them.
One surprising piece of information is that there are enough of these people around that there are actually hero supply houses for them. One is called Hero Gear, which will make your costume for you (no mass-produced items here, since every super-hero is unique), and ProfessorWidget, who will make all your special gadgets for you.
A reader sent me this caricature. I do make a rather grim looking cleric, don’t I?
Still, it’s an interesting proposal. I think we need a pope who would blow raspberries at the rituals and laugh at the beliefs, and I can see myself thwapping Bill Donohue with that stick a few times. Is there an application form for me to fill out? How many members of the college of cardinals are among my readership?
This cute, innocent little 3-year-old just wants his name in frosting on his birthday cake, and the bakery refused to do it. Harsh, man. Poor little guy. And he’s probably going to have to deal with this blatant discrimination for the rest of his life.
He’s also stuck with a pair of dingleberries for parents. They named him…Adolf Hitler.
(via Techskeptic)
Man, it’s getting to the point where a fellow can’t even build a death ray or an island fortress shaped like a skull without someone getting pissy about it. Take this account, for instance, of a few people just playing around with skeletons and lab coats:
A group of students had their ‘Mad Scientist’ party brought to an abrupt end when police mistook them for terrorists.
The private party, held in Hackney, north London, was organised by a group of friends dressed in white laboratory coats and wigs, who put on a display of theatrical ‘experiments’ to entertain guests.
But when police entered the building for a routine check in the early hours of Sunday morning, they discovered scientific debris and plastic skeletons and mistook it for terrorist paraphernalia or drug-making equipment.
Caretaker of the property, Richard Watson, 29, was arrested under The Anti-Terrorism Act and questioned while the entire area was evacuated and roads cordoned off with police tape.
He said: ‘I was handcuffed and put in the back of the police van for over an hour while the bomb squad and drugs team came down.
‘There was a ridiculous amount of police there. Every time I looked out of the van I could see a new group of them swarming around.’
Three fire engines and three ambulances were also called to the scene as Mr Watson was searched and interrogated.
Note to self: clean up debris in basement soon.
(via Umlud’s place)
