Creepy and annoying

Jean Stevens was a lonely old lady with an unpleasant obsession. She dug up her dead twin sister and husband and kept the corpses in her house, dressing them up and offering them tea and talking to them. That’s a little disturbing, but mostly harmless — except that you can’t help but think that she’d be a lot happier with living company.

But here’s the annoying part. They just had to interview a psychiatrist about it (that’s actually a good idea), but then they got a singularly cluelless one.

Dr. Helen Lavretsky, a psychiatry professor at UCLA who researches how the elderly view death and dying, said people who aren’t particularly spiritual or religious often have a difficult time with death because they fear that death is truly the end.

For them, “death doesn’t exist,” she said. “They deny death.”

Say what? That makes no sense. Everyone has a difficult time with death, no matter what they think of religion. And good grief, atheists don’t deny death. This is a woman who seems to have never spoken to one.

And what makes it even more annoying, is that this opinion is completely irrelevant. From the rest of the story, Jean Stevens is not an atheist. She talks about a creator god and worries about what happens after death.

A little survey

We have such a reputation for destroying polls that this survey may not survive contact with us, but give it a shot anyway. It’s asking what people know about other people’s religious beliefs.

1) Which of the following best classifies your beliefs?
Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hundu, Jainist, Buddhist, Scientologist, Polytheist, Deist, Atheist, Other

2) How many atheists do you know?
None, 1-5, 6-10, 11-20, More than 20

3) Please indicate which of the following concepts you think atheists believe:
Choices for each are: Believe, Don’t believe, Irrelevant, I don’t know
– God
– Demons
– Spiritualism
– Voodoo
– Ghosts
– Afterlife
– Heaven/Hell
– Reincarnation
– Destiny
– Science

4) Do atheists believe there is no god? (Yes/No)
5) Do you think atheists are spiritual? (Yes/No)
6) Do you think atheists value morality? (Yes/No)

It repeats with similar questions about Muslims and Christians. Try it…although I think atheists are about to be heavily overrepresented in the data set.

Gillian McKeith does not have a Ph.D.

So don’t call her Dr McKeith. She hasn’t earned it. Also, it irks her something fierce when you question her title.

If you’re an American, you have something you can take real pride in: you’ve probably never heard of Gillian McKeith. I hadn’t. Apparently, she’s a prominent woo-peddler in the UK, with her face and various encomiums plastered on magic chlorophyll pills and dong-distenders and ingredients for superfoods that will make your hair grow and your liver do backflips. She also writes popular books that make outrageously silly claims about medicine and science. She also claims to have a Ph.D., a bit of fraud that she was told to stop making because it is a lie — she seems to have bought some pieces of paper from quacky diploma mills.

If you contact the Australasian College of Health Sciences (Portland, US) where McKeith has a “pending diploma in herbal medicine”, they say they can’t tell you anything about their students. When you contact Clayton College of Natural Health to ask where you can read her PhD, they say you can’t. What kind of organisations are these? If I said I had a PhD from Cambridge, US or UK (I have neither), it would only take you a day to find it.

She’s one of the citizens of the evil empire we bravely and patriotically broke free of 221 years ago (good thing, too — I hear their queen is a baby-eating reptoid). We don’t have to worry too much about her here in the ex-colonies. Note, though, where she got her fake degrees: here in the USA. That contributes to a recent twist.

Rachel Moody made a casual comment about McKeith not having a Ph.D. on Twitter, which really annoyed the quack. She fired back, and what’s weird is she is now arguing that questioning her degree is a sign of anti-Americanism. Say what? I didn’t know all the foreigners were also expected to be patriotic pro-Americans! This will make Glenn Beck so happy.

So you believe if you tell a lie enough times it becomes fact. It doesn’t honey! Your anti-American bigotry is too glaring. gx
6:43 PM Jul 8th via web in reply to rachelemoody

Miss Anti-American: How sad a life to enjoy reading lies about another by an ass who makes money from pharmaceutical giants
6:22 PM Jul 8th via web in reply to rachelemoody

Sad thing Rachel that your excitement comes from negativity. Think about it. U can shift yourself when you decide
5:57 PM Jul 8th via web in reply to rachelemoody

Is it that you don’t like my Doctorate (PhD) because it’s from America and you’re discriminatory? USA knows how to educate too
5:56 PM Jul 8th via web in reply to rachelemoody

I’m a little creeped out. It’s annoying enough when our pundits wrap themselves in the American flag and announce their loyalty, but really…a citizen of the UK groveling over a colonial affiliation? Don’t they take people like that out and have them keelhauled or put in stocks or flogged around the fleet anymore?

I would agree with McKeith that the US does have very good universities where you can get a good doctorate-level education. McKeith did not attend any of them. Also, for every Stanford and Harvard we have our share of diploma mills and fake, unaccredited pseudo-universities. Case in point: Kent Hovind, creationist jailbird, has a “Ph.D.” from Patriot “University”, a ranch-style house and fundamentalist church in Colorado. If McKeith would like to add to her woo credentials, she could also pick up a degree in astrology from Kepler College.

We are a nation rich in crackpots. Just saying your degree was bought in America is not a guarantee of quality.

£20,000,000! For what?

That’s some houseguest. The Pope invited himself to visit England, and asked the British government to pay for it — that takes some gall right there — and is now revealing that the bill for his visit will be at least £20 million. They’re dropping all that cash to fête a ringleader for child rapists…it makes no sense. What are people doing over there?

There ought to be a flat declaration that if he wants to visit England, he’s doing so as a private citizen — all costs to be paid by the Catholic church — and that there will also be no protection against being served any legal papers. He’s head of a criminal organization, and that shouldn’t warrant any special privileges.