Now you can find out what name Sarah Palin would have given you!
(Disclaimer: the one and only thing I like at all about Palin is that she gave her kids unusual names.)
Ben Goldacre, of the Bad Science weblog, has had a lawsuit hanging over his head for the past year. Ben regularly excoriates alt-medicine quacks, and one of his targets was a pill-peddler named Matthias Rath who got rich off pointless vitamin supplements with exaggerated claims of effectiveness, and most despicably, had been denouncing effective AIDS treatments in order to sell more of his useless patent medicines.
Goldacre publicly called him on his unethical behavior, and Rath in reply sued him for libel. The case has now been settled in Goldacre’s favor.
It’s great personal news for Ben, but it’s also an important victory for medical journalism, and for the people who might be getting legitimate medical advice in the future, instead of the Rath-promoted quackery.
I’m always tickled and disturbed when I hear news about JZ Knight. Knight, as some of you may already know, is a New Age charlatan who claims to “channel” a 35,000 year old Atlantean warrior, and dispenses ludicrous advice in a growly voice and gets paid big bucks by the gullible. However, now one of her former students dared to turn around and use moldy wisdom she learned from a hokey old invisible friend, and fleece some rubes of her own. So what does Knight do? Sue, of course.
The only thing that could make the trial sillier is if the court put Ramtha on the witness stand.
Ooops, it’s vanished from the Seattle Times site. Here it is:
Yelm channeler JZ Knight testified Tuesday she was so “disturbed” at reports that spiritual teacher Whitewind Weaver had “taken my school’s teachings, changed them around a little and then started teaching them” that she authorized a lawsuit.
“It wasn’t anything I wanted to do,” Knight, founder of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, said during a civil jury trial in Thurston County Superior Court. “We usually tend to assume people are impeccable.”
But Weaver’s attorney, Robert Kilborne, of San Diego, grilled Knight about why the channeler would sue when Weaver had been so supportive of her school.
Weaver, founder of Lacey-based Art of Life Coaching Inc., sent a letter to her students in Oregon telling them she was moving to Washington to study at the Ramtha school, urged the students to do the same and enrolled in more than $8,000 worth of classes, Kilborne said.
Knight, self-proclaimed channel of a 35,000-year-old male spirit warrior entity Ramtha, was the second witness in her case accusing Weaver of breach of contract in connection with a seminar Weaver taught in August 2006. Knight claims the seminar violated terms of a registration Weaver signed that says teachings at the Ramtha school are for the students’ personal use only and cannot be disseminated for commercial gain.
Weaver’s attorneys deny the allegations.
Seattle attorney David Spellman, representing Weaver, pummeled school administrator Mike Wright.
Knight’s attorneys claim Weaver copied seven school processes, including Fieldwork, an exercise designed to improve ability to focus attention and intuition by finding a symbolic card on a fence while blindfolded.
“Is Pin the Tail on the Donkey focused attention?” Spellman asked Wright.
“It could be,” Wright replied.
“So, then is it Fieldwork?” Spellman said.
“No, it’s Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” Wright said.
Knight, under direct examination by Tacoma attorney Rick Creatura, told the jury how Ramtha first appeared to her in 1977. In visits during the ensuing years, she said Ramtha used her body to speak at seminars, in books and on tapes around the world.
Kilborne, on cross-examination, was not impressed.
“Isn’t it the flat truth that there is no Ramtha?” he asked.
“That is incorrect,” said Knight, who hosted a conference of scientists at her school to investigate the Ramtha phenomenon. “And science proved in 1997 that Ramtha was not me.”
Once again, the Daily Show punctures the pointless vapidities uttered by politicians — in this case, the phrase “small town values” that was flung about with fervent abandon at the Republican convention, by lots of people who seem to have never been anywhere near a small town.
I live in a small town, I like living here, and there are definite advantages to it — it’s easy to get to know other members of the community, the life style is a bit more laid back, and a lot of the hassles of just moving around are absent. But small town values? The ones the Republicans are worshipping seem to be the narrow insularity verging on xenophobia, the judgmental meddling in other people’s affairs, the backward-looking reverence for the good old days (which actually weren’t that good), the worship of ignorance, the easy way authority can personally intrude on people’s lives without oversight, except by a coterie of good old boys. They seem to overlook the schools in neglect, the churches sprouting everywhere like poisonous mushrooms, the alcoholism, the spousal abuse, the kids who just want to get through high school and flee to a city where something is happening, the elderly piling up and outnumbering the young and being shuffled off to cheap complexes, the despair of people caught in dead-end menial jobs with few prospects for going beyond. That’s also small town America, and when I hear a Republican singing the praises of small towns, I have visions of a walmartized wasteland where everyone goes to church. It’s not good.
But I still like it here — I’m just not blind to the flaws, and I’m not some beltway lobbyist who thinks the country is a place from a Currier & Ives postcard.
I’ve also been to New York, and I like big city values, too. Everytime I’ve been there, I’ve felt the people were just as friendly and open as the ones in Morris, if not more so, and that they were also more diverse and far less afflicted with small town myopia. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are also part of America…except to the Republican party, apparently.
I hope the Daily Show also did something on the empty buzzwords of the Democratic convention. If I ever hear “god bless” or “godspeed” again, I’m going to ralph on someone’s shoes.
Ay yi yi
Minnesota’s very own Michele Bachmann starts praising science, but I don’t think that word means what she thinks it means, since she concludes with “science ultimately conforms to god’s truth”.
Pity us. This raving fruitbat is our 6th district congresscreature.
Last time I was here in Denver, I cruelly taunted the people who came to the pharyngufest with the fact that they all bailed before 10. Honor was at stake this time, so they kept me going way past my bedtime. I concede: Coloradans are doughty and indomitable.
We had a grand time, but I have to apologize for one problem: Wynkoop’s was stricter than last time, and our underage but still wise members, such as Splendid Elles, were excluded. No fair! Next time we’ll have to pick a more open venue.
Oh…and the party who were sitting with Derek? You neglected to pay your bill and stuck him with it!
We are meeting at Wynkoop’s at 6pm!
People are asking what I plan to do this evening, now that I’m in lovely downtown Denver, and I don’t know yet! I’m giving a talk in the early afternoon, then early this evening, I’m going to dinner with the students, so … sometime mid-evening I’ll be free. What I’ll do today is talk to a few of the people at the talk and see if we can work something out, and I’ll put a notice here when I know, if I can.
Sorry to be so vague, but the organizers get first priority.
I wonder if we could find a bar where these guys are playing…
That last panel cracks me up.
