I don't know how I missed this one, given that it's over two weeks old, but I did. Since yesterday was a holiday in the US and I had done a long post the day before because something that happened on Friday had really irritated me, I figured I might as well take a stab at this because it represents one of my "favorite" quack apologists at his most over-the-top quackiest. More importantly, it won't take too much brain power to deconstruct, but could be entertaining nonetheless. I'm referring, of course, to Mike Adams, the "Health Ranger," of NaturalNews.com. Of course, nothing by Mike Adams is usually that difficult to deconstruct. Normally his screeds usually only come to my attention when he delves into pure despicable rhetoric, as when he tried to blame the Sandy Hook shootings on psychiatric medications last year, or when they are just so downright hilarious.
This is one of those hilarious times.
What I'm referring to is Mike Adam's breathless announcement that he had found fibers—yes, fibers!—when he examined McDonald's Chicken McNuggets under a microscope. If you want to get a whiff of the true hilarity of his article, just look at the title of the two articles he wrote about it, McDonald's Chicken McNuggets found to contain mysterious fibers, hair-like structures; Natural News Forensic Food Lab posts research photos, video and More Chicken McNugget 'strange fiber' photos released by Natural News Forensic Food Labs. Besides the sheer facepalm-level silliness of Adams referring to anything he does at NaturalNew.com as being a "forensic food lab," the articles are a treasure trove of unintentional humor for anyone who is the least bit knowledgeable about science or microscopy, although unfortunately the science-challenged think it's slam-dunk evidence of how evil McDonalds is. In the interests of full disclosure, I've been known to eat at McDonalds every so often, although probably less than once every month or two. When I do go there, Chicken McNuggets just aren't my thing. I tried them once and didn't particularly like them. So I don't really have a dog in this hunt, as they say, other than the amusement I derive sometimes from watching Mike Adams make a fool of himself. If someone somewhere had done credible science showing horrific things in Chicken McNuggets, I'd probably be inclined to accept it.
Mike Adams does no such thing.
What drew my attention back to these articles, though, was a hilariously inept attempt at "humor" from Mike Adams (pretty much all his attempts at humor are spectacularly inept) entitled Actual female zombie attacks McDonald's drive-thru window, unleashes living dead rampage for Chicken McNuggets. What is Adams' damning evidence? Well, just take a look at this video:
Adams is alarmed, saying that "microscopic photos reveal an alien-like landscape with weird shapes and fibers." He sounds like someone who's never looked at common every day objects under a microscope before. Pretty much every object, if you magnify it enough, will reveal an "alien-like landscape with weird shapes" and, possibly, depending on what you're looking at, fibers. Yet, to Adams, this is horrific and alarming. Particularly hilarious is how he narrates the video as though it were an episode of a science show examining the microscopic world, complete with a soundtrack of atmospheric moody electronic music common to such films, and writes things like:
As the following photos show, the Chicken McNuggets were found to contain strange fibers that some people might say even resemble so-called "Morgellon's."
We found dark black hair-like structures sticking out of the nugget mass, as well as light blue egg-shaped structures with attached tail-like hairs or fibers.
These are shown in extreme detail in the photos below, taken on August 15, 2013 at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab. The actual Chicken McNugget samples used in these photos have been frozen for storage of forensic evidence.
We also found odd red coloring splotches in several locations, as well as a spherical green object that resembles algae.
But apparently even the Health Danger is slightly cautious. Notice how he doesn't out and out say that these fibers are dangerous and actually goes so far as to qualify his alarmism while adding a touch of JAQing off to the mix:
We are not claiming or implying that these objects in any way make McDonald's Chicken McNuggets unsafe to consume. We do, however, believe that this visual evidence may warrant an FDA investigation into the ingredient composition of Chicken McNuggets.
In particular, where are the hair-like structures coming from? This is especially important to answer, given that chickens do not have hair. Is there cross-species contamination in the processing of Chicken McNuggets? This question needs to be answered.
Sadly, an Australian news site took Adams' ridiculously inept attempt at food "science" and ran it as a straight news story. I expect such levels of burning stupid from Mike Adams, but I like to think that news organizations have a little more skepticism. Apparently I thought wrong.
In any case, looking at the pictures, I'll take a stab at identifying the mysterious objects that so baffle Adams. Those "hair-like" objects look like dust to me. I mean, seriously. Has Mike Adams ever looked at dust under the microscope at 200X magnification? It's easy to find images on the web, for example, here, here, and here. Lots of everyday things look really scary under the microscope. I did that when I was a little kid.(Actually, I noticed dust on the microscope slides and was fascinated by it.) As for the black dots, they sure could be bits of black pepper or other seasoning. Ditto the red and green dots, which could easily be seasoning. Also, some forms of dust look a lot like those fibers. Of course, given that the fibers have not been analyzed, we don't know what they are. All Adams knows is that they look scary to him. So do the bits of what are probably pepper and other seasonings.
Particularly amusing is what Adams leaves out. For example, in the introduction to his video, Adams doesn't just purchase some Chicken McNuggets, but he buys a Big Mac, too. Yet he doesn't show any images of the Big Mac. One wonders if he couldn't find anything sufficiently terrifying in the Big Mac. You know that if Adams had found anything he would have put it in the video. At least, I know it. Indeed, at the very beginning of the video, he says, "We're going to order Chicken McNuggets and a Big Mac and put it under a high-powered microscope." In the next scene, Adams is shown ordering the McNuggets and Big Mac. So where are the microscopic images of the Big Mac? I didn't learn that until I subjected myself to more brain-melting stupidity from Adams (see below).
Also left out are comparative microscopic images of other foods or similar foods. Adams is really blatant about this, too. Near the end he shows an image of some chicken that he claims to have purchased from a Mexican restaurant that uses real, organic chicken. Yet, tellingly, he doesn't show any microscopic images of the chicken. What about supplements, vegetables, and organic foods? I bet they'd look really scary under the microscope. Certainly, they also resemble alien landscapes just as much as any McNugget. Heck, sage leaves even have lots of fibers attached to them!
So where does Adams decide to go with his "first research project"? Where else? He gets on Alex Jones' show:
Comedy gold!
What's really depressing is that such a high end microscope is being used for such a pointless purpose, especially since Adams openly states that he has no idea what these things are. Adams says the microscope costs more than $100,000, which makes me wonder if it's a confocal scope. If it is, then the use to which Adams puts it is a senseless waste, given how many real scientists would love to have such a piece of equipment to do real science. In any case, you know what a real scientist does, Mike? If he doesn't know what something is, he finds someone who does or, if there is no one who knows what that something is (i.e., it's a real unknown), he tries to figure out what it is before spouting off. Adams is also amazed that he didn't find anything that looked to him like chicken. That's entirely possible, given that it's well known that McNuggets are basically chicken meat and other products ground finely and then shaped and breaded before being fried. However, Adams just admitted that he didn't know what chicken looks like under the microscope. He had some chicken. Why didn't he look at it under the microscope? See what I mean by comedy gold? An ignorant twit who doesn't know what things look like under the microscope is amazed to find things under the microscope that he can't identify! He then goes on to link them with Morgellons disease:
There has been a wave of public speculation (see comments, below) about whether these fibers are related to a mysterious condition known as "Morgellon's," which also appears to involve the presence of strange, unexplained fibers in humans. You can see examples of Morgellon's morphology at: http://www.morgellons-research.org/morgellons/morgellons-morphology.htm
As I've pointed out before, Morgellon's disease is nothing more then delusional parasitosis, and the "fibers" that Morgellons advocates cite as evidence of the disease are also nothing more than normal fibers that we all have on us from wearing clothes and being in contact with dust and other fibers.
Or maybe it's nanowires from chemtrails!
Lest anyone think that I'm in the pocket of McDonalds or some sort of shill for the fast food industry, I'll just say that I am under no illusions that McDonalds provides healthy food, at least not its fried items like Chicken McNuggets. However, what Adams is doing is deceptive in that it couples ignorance of what everyday objects look like under the microscope with fear mongering and some very blatant JAQing off, implying that McNuggets cause Morgellons while not really claiming it explicitly.
At least I finally learned what Adams did with the Big Mac. He just hasn't looked at it yet. He does, however, announce that he wants to look at all sorts of other fast foods under the microscope and report back "forensically and scientifically" what is in them. Hmmm. "Forensically." "Scientifically." You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean. In this case, what it means is that we can expect to be treated to more scientifically ignorant hilarity from Mike Adams on this front for some time to come. I wonder if he'll compare the Big Mac to an organic hamburger made from grass-fed, free range cattle. No, actually I don't.
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Who would have expected Mike Adams to be such a fan of CSI Cos-play?
You missed the best part about the "actual female zombie" video!
After Mike introduced the video by explaining that the clip proves his prophesy that zombies will soon be roaming the U.S., many of his readers pointed out that the video is almost four years old and was a hoax with the "zombie" dialogue dubbed in by actors. It was reassuring to read comments from some of his readers saiying Adams' story discredited the entire site, they will now doubt everything they read at Natural News, what an idiot Mike was for believing it, etc.
Despite the fact that the hoax was unveiled two days ago, Adams has not altered or corrected the original post to reflect that.
Heh. I don't actually read the comments after Mike Adams posts. (The last time I did, I felt afterward as though my IQ had declined by 5 points at least.) So I went back and read them this time. Hilarious, particularly the commenters trying to justify Adams' screw up. Of course, Adams presents this as "parody" or "humor"; so no doubt he'd say he knows it's a hoax.
In tissue, red stuff is usually blood. Could blood survive the processing and cooking? I don't know, but that may be evidence of under cooking than of anything else.
Also, all tissue is transparent if you cut it thin enough. That's why we stain the tissue on our microscopic slides. If we didn't, we would not be able to see anything. It's not surprising to note that the edges of the meat are transparent. Those areas are just thin enough.
Dust is a reasonable explanation for those "fibers." Could some of them be capillaries? Could they have survived the processing? I suppose it's possible. It would also be interesting to see how dirty the "forensic lab" is.
Do you think it would help if I gave this guy a lesson about normal histology? Somehow I think not.
The red stuff could also be bits of red pepper or paprika or something like that. The black bits could easily be pepper.
God forbid Mike ever turn the microscope on human skins....do you know how many "creepy-crawlies" we have on us?
Next up: Mike Adams looks at GM foods under the microscope and discovers alien body parts!
Let's just hope his "forensic lab" doesn't do a similar investigation of vaccines.
Mike Adams' pronouncements are akin to Chicken Little. Eventually people will (hopefully) ignore him altogether.
This is comedy gold! :D
Now, I know some people have done good science on various fast food "things" and found dubious things. But heavens, I know nothing on chemic and I could do it better...
Confocal microscopy is strictly a fluorescence technique and these aren't fluorescence images.
Looks like he used a stereomicroscope with reflected illumination, which could be a couple thousand dollars with objectives. It also looks like he may have some fancy automated sample holder. You could conceivably spend 5 figures on a CCD, but that would be serious overkill for a stereoscope.
I just don't see any way the microscope used to acquire these images cost more than $100,000.
I've been following Mikey's** escapades for more than 5 years and I notice a few changes recently- so here goes:
Mikey: Under the Microscope
For the past several years, like the other alt media auteur, he has increasingly focused on political and economic issues. Taking a libertarian stance, he trumpets "Health Freedom" whilst taking stabs at any and all establishment informational sources. He preaches the end-of-civilisation-as-we-know-it, proclaiming our g-d given right to own fire arms and use them to protect our property.
Like the other loon, he tries too hard to attract both left--leaning back-to-nature types and self-reliant Randian propertarians: a mean feat. Often, he excoriated Mr Obama, who may be well-liked by a large part of his audience perhaps.
In recent weeks, he announced that he's placing the political rhetoric behind him and set his sights on science.
Thus we have science.naturalnews.com- his altie pub med and other reference sites( see central column @ NN)- he also set up blogs.naturalnews.com as a gathering place for his followers.
** I do believe that I am the first to have ever called him "Mikey".
Natural News Forensic Food Labs?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!
Oh, that's the best laugh I've had all day.
"I expect such levels of burning stupid from Mike Adams, but I like to think that news organizations have a little more skepticism."
Given that major news outlets continue to run Onion stories as if they are real, I am not remotely surprised.
Like Gary Null, he's creating an alt media empire of sorts which revolves around natural health and charges ahead boldly into new and exciting areas of in-expertise. Mike had a spiritual site as well as a music site ( for works by Mike and his doppelganger, some new agey 'nym I forget- Amethrios?)
The internet "radio" area includes
shows by various cronies like Robert Scott Bell ( mirroring Null's PRN). Remember these guys tell their audience to shun the bias of mainstream media - so here's their alternative reality. Al Jazeera need not fear.
The forensic food lab is Mike's latest foray into cargo cultism: earlier he had attempted to introduce his students ...er , audience into the exciting worlds of quantum physics and cognitive psychology, tossing key words about like confetti, vainly trying to impress the marks and everyone else.
Cults usually try to restrict their followers' access to information from "outsiders" - I do believe that we're seeing a mild attempt in persuasion in that direction subverting listeners' trust in standard sources. Null, like other cultmeisters, also tries that 'restriction of protein' thing by advocating veganism and extremely low protein intake.
Both woo-meisters claim massive followings worldwide ( the UNICEF study I cited yesterday included Natural News amongst the top anti-vaccine influencers- in Eastern Europe yet).- PRN is the world's most propular internet radio site according to its founder and chief infomercialist.
Mike's facebook numbers are in the hundreds of thousands.
@ Denise Walter - "Purple Mikey" might be more suitable - he seems to be a charter member of the "one-hit-too-many" club.
@ Curious:
Well, he HAS advocated hemp and c@nnabis freedom but claims he doesn't smoke.
On a more serious note which Orac discusses:
Mike opposes psychiatric meds for basically all problems and has a writer/ broadcaster, Mike Bundrant "exposing" mental health on Natural News.
Uh oh. He found the nanowires. How is the NSA going to monitor his thoughts if they can't get the nanowires into his brain? Oh, wait. He takes supplements. All the big supplement companies cooperate with the NSA. His brain must already be full of nanowires. Maybe that's why he can be irrational sometimes. You can only have so many nanowires before your brain can't hold any more, and they start coming out through your skin.
When I worked at the local university they were putting all sorts of insane stuff under the electron microscope. One day I went in there and they were trying to stick some sort of dead reptile under there to look at it. Seems to me everything looks strange when you look close enough.
Mikey et all too easily overlook all the patients who have been helped by psychiatric meds (myself included) and focuses instead on the people who have experienced detrimental effects. He would throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. And mental health patients are often their own worst enemy as they will stop taking meds without consulting their doctors, which can be extremely dangerous.
Orac...even if you invented the microscope you're still proving yourself a dumb human being for even eating mcdonalds once a month. There are real studies showing how bad the food is and if Mike Adams is trying to stop people from eating that bullshit i'd rather follow his follies and see where he ends up then listen to a big mac like you.
The news outlet in question is part of the Murdoch Press, so what can you expect. But the most hilarious thing I've seen on Youtube are videos telling people we don't need Murdoch to tell us who to vote for, by people who voted for Rudd in 2007, when he was the candidate backed by the Murdoch press...
That is fabulously funny! Thanks Orac, it's a nice palate cleanser after yesterday's disgusting biomed soup.
As I started reading I thought "Oh wow, he sounds like a Morgie!" You cannot imagine my delight when he actually went there. Maybe some of them will come here after their Google alerts ping, and tell us about the nanobots and the metal Wi-Fi mesh growing in their bodies.
Also, couldn't the fibres just be muscle fibres from the chicken?
"Also, couldn’t the fibres just be muscle fibres from the chicken?"
This can only be resolved by having NN's intrepid forensic investigators sneak into chicken-raising operations and food processing plants to see when and where the fibers appear in the chicken (do the chickens already have Morgellons when they leave the hatchery? Or are the fibers implanted by government "inspectors" in the processing plant?).
Of course, it's difficult to infiltrate such places while carrying a heavy microscope.
I tend to be a bit squeamish. I don't want to watch sausage being made. I tend to favor geometric simplicity over organic "messiness." I generally prefer foods with homogenous textures. But I accept that life is full of messy details, no matter how much I want otherwise. It's just the way things are, and that irrational squeamishness of mine is just a personal problem.
It seems to me that Mike Adams and his ilk believe that their squeamishness is rational and tells them what is good and bad. If they find something icky, they conclude it must be bad. They can also reverse it, by selectively taking something they believe is bad and reinforce their belief because, life being messy, they will find something icky about it.
A Macdonald's meal once a month isn't going to hurt you. How about a cite of those "real studies"?
If you trust anything that the Health Deranger says, you are hopeless.
Raise hands...if you immediately thought of Adams' theory of "Chicken Morgellons"...before it was mentioned by Orac.
Could those threads (drum roll) be rosemary?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_McNuggets
Where's Pareidolius with his dancing hens video?
@ tim:
"Mike Adams is trying to stop people from eating that bullshit i’d rather follow his follies and see where he ends up then listen to a big mac like you."
Why is Adams feeding you intellectual horseshit Tim?
@ TBruce**:
But but but even one molecule of chicken might pollute your precious bodily essence ( see homeopathy- less is more).
@ lilady:
One of his forensic chicken*** videos/ audio clips (@ Robert Scott Bell's show; he also did one for Alex Jones) hints about morgie pollution. What would happen if someone *ingested* (((shudder))) morgellons? Perish the thought.
I can see it now....
Mikey: " Observe the dangers of fast food" ( 3 second lag)
"Visit the Natural News Store for GMO- free, organic, fluoride free, MORGELLON free super foods"
@ Curious:
All jesting aside, Mike ( and some of the others I survey) adamantly opposes the use of meds for SMI, MI, LD, ASD and any other psychological problem.
** not TRex?
*** new dance craze?
“Oh wow, he sounds like a Morgie!” You cannot imagine my delight when he actually went there.
He's going for plausible deniability: "so-called “Morgellon’s” (without the personal endorsement). Even Mike retains enough perspective to know that a reputation as a Morgie will not enhance his reputation, but he doesn't want to drive away any traffic from the believers.
Note the Grocer's Apostrophe in 'Morgellons'. He just can't help himself.
Never one to disappoint us, Mike today discusses the "chemical weapon" added to a water product targetting infants.
See what those corporate monsters will do to little babies in order to enrich themeselves!
At Natural News, we sell the finest water filtration systems available to protect you and yours from the treat of chemical warfare and
governmentally and medically approved toxins.
THREAT- not treat ( altho' you never can tell)
Mark Thorson@16 -- Surely there is someone, somewhere, who actually believes that the government is implanting nanowires in McNuggets. And surely they have a website. And surely they have never, ever heard of paragraph breaks.
As the spirograph guy says in a Simpson's episode, "Think about it ... ."
Someone please tell me I wasn't the only one who walked away from that craving Chicken McNuggets.
I do so wonder what the "Morgellons Research Foundation" would have to say about the idea of fibers from chicken nuggets finding their way from the human digestive system to directly below the skin. I mean, I know what intelligent people would say. I wonder what they would say. I imagine it would be spectacular.
Am I the only one who suspects that if you examined fake crab—"Krab"—under the microscope, it would look less scary than real crab? Does that make it healthier? (Probably a wash, actually.)
Alex Jones: "I don't mean to be an extremist"
Is he freakin' serious? The dickhead parades himself as a venerable extremist against establishment. What a toss.
@Lilady
Yes, as soon as I saw the word "fibers", it was "OMFG he is not going to claim that McNuggets have Morgellon's." Seriously, where does one go from here?
And oh yes, I do love me some McNuggets. They are much crispier than other nuggets, and that special hot mustard dip just makes them awesome.
tim,
Please, show me the studies that show that eating at McDonalds once a month has any negative effects on a person's health at all. I'd even love to see a plausible theory, come to that.
There are several things I'm not happy with McDonalds about, but such silly claims just make me hungry for a Big Mac.
All I can think of reading this is, "STAND BACK, MIKEY'S GOING TO SCIENCE!"
Is a microscope in one's basement now a "Forensic Food Lab"? Is Mikey now using "Sid the Science Kid" as an instructional guide?
You know, eventually with you bullying Jones and Adams, they and their followers might just start in on posting things about this site one day and have sort of a little website warfare going on. They have probably been ignoring you due to having more important hings to do than argue with useless members of society, but one day when the threat of global war and us government concentration camps is diminished and they have nothing lese to do, Orac might just be the center topic of the day on so many websites. Looks like Orac is on Monsanto's side. if that is the case, then science really has gone down the crapper.
Because this post totally mentioned Monsanto.
Oh, wait. No. It didn't.
Slightly off topic - - -
There are plenty of reasons to pick on fast food in general, and McD's in particular, but because ground up and reformed meat looks funny under a microscope isn't one of them.
My sister tells the story that back in the day, as a young mother with two young kids, when they were out running about, they would stop for fast food for lunch. Kids being kids, they would often want to go to McD's (advertising works), and while she never forced the kids to order any particular kids meal, she would encourage the chicken nuggets, because, hey, it's just fried chicken, right? Fried chicken is good food, and we have chicken farmers in our DNA.*
One day, they wound up at a different fast food place (she thinks Jack in the Box). My nephew (7 or 8 years old at the time) was eating his nuggets, and said to my niece (5 or 6, and eating something else), "Hey, (sister), you should try these, they are really good, and no chewy things."
Needless to say she did feel bad, and wonders how much cartilage and gristle she fed the kids over the years.
* I have my great-grandfathers shotgun. It's an old single shot, break-open, no name model, the kind you can buy for $50 to $60 dollars. My dad says that it was kept loaded, by the back door of the house, "in case the hawks get after the chickens". Things were different back then. It's the last gun I'd ever sell, and the nephew above would get it first.
The only "fibers" truly relevant to Adams are the sawdust ones occupying the space where his cortex once fired sporadic action potentials.
I bought my kids some high school lab microscopes last month and we've looked at bread mold (OMG, alien spawn...oh, wait, it's only hyphae, phew!) and mosquito heads (pass the DEET, please). I've a hankering to get some mcnuggies and see what I see under reflected light illumination (these microscopes cost < $100). If I see fibers, I will tell you what they taste like, too.
we have chicken farmers in our DNA.
Were they injected into you as one of the ingredients of vaccines?
The fibers could be hairs acquired from the many environments the chicken nugget had passed through on its way to Adams. Rodent hairs in particular are quite a common occurrence in food processing.
You know, eventually with you bullying Jones and Adams, they and their followers might just start in on posting things about this site one day and have sort of a little website warfare going on.
Oh please. Pretty please? It would be better than Christmas AND a birthday, all rolled into one.
uh oh. You said that nasty C word that liberals hate so much. nevermind, I fogot that we won the war on Christmas.
shay, you are imagining things if you think you could ever win an argument with me, much less with any other followers of Adams and Jones. It is comical that you think you could win an argument with me. Orac would not allow it. he would delete me so that contest is over before it starts, but if you could convince Orac to let it go, no rules or words of war, anything goes, I am up to the task. Before it's over you will have to go to one of your obumaScare specialists to seek guidance on calming your nerves and blood pressure which I could do here at home for alot less money.
Yes I mentioned monsanto. somebody had to.
No larry, actually no one had to. I'm sure your superior intellect will grasp the concept of a "strawman argument".
Also, what is an "obumaScare specialist"? Are these spooky people who specialise in scaring us? You mean like Monsters, Inc.?
Of course no one could win an argument with you, larry. Just trying to means losing. Can't argue with delusional.
My mother-in-law believes we sold arms to Germany in WWII. I don't argue with her. There's no point. She's just cray-cray.
At least you have the joy of company.
Herr Doktor -
My first thought was to say that the DNA injection was done by my father some months prior to my birth, but I think my mom's family might have raised a chicken or two.
@larry
You will find our host moderates this forum with a very light hand. I can think of less than a dozen people who were banned in the years I have been reading this blog.
While I am only a bit player on this site, if you throw down with the 'science' of Adams and Jones, you will get your a$$ handed to you by the more regular players here.
But don't let that stop you. I love to see the likes of you get chewed up.
larry:
Why? You mentioned it apropos of absolutely nothing whatsoever. This isn't even a post about agriculture. It's about Mike Adams making it totally clear he's never used a microscope before. (Either that, or that he has a very low opinion of his audience and not much imagination.)
Johnny:
They've definitely changed in recent years, probably as a result of McDonald's shift to all white meat, which is fashionable at the moment. They're a lot better than they were when I was a kid. I'm not a huge fan of them, though; I'm very much a Quarter Pounder sort of gal. ;-) Though those new Chicken McWraps are pretty awesome too. I like the ranch one; it has cucumber, which I like.
makeinu: My mother-in-law believes we sold arms to Germany in WWII.
Didn't we, at least in the beginning?
Oh please. Pretty please? It would be better than Christmas AND a birthday, all rolled into one.
ummm......target rich environment, load the round please, I'll fire at will :)
Alain
Double ummm.....guys and gals, you should have seen how I healed fast enough from my surgery on junk food, pepsi and cup of sugar with some coffee and milk thrown in for good measure. proof that my corpse (pun intended) is robust and don't about whatever's thrown at it.
Alain
don't care about...
You will find our host moderates this forum with a very light hand.
Larry has been commenting here for long enough to know that.
He may or may not have noticed the contradiction between (a) Mike Adams' readers would totally BURY the comment threads, if Respectful Insolence was prominent enough to come to their attention; and (b) Orac would just ban Mike Adams' readers so we will be forever deprived of their argumentation.
shay, you are imagining things if you think you could ever win an argument with me, much less with any other followers of Adams and Jones.
I have no intention of getting in an argument with you; it's much more fun watching the experts use you as a chew toy.
And if you've been around this site for any length of time you know very well that Orac doesn't ban people unless they absolutely, positively, have violated his rules.
So put your big boy panties on and go for it.
Herr Doktor: there you go being all logical an' stuff. Fight fair, now.
It is amazingly that these people always seem so confident that they have Orac and the readers here pegged when they so clearly have no idea what goes on here. It is almost as though they prejudged the place without actually forming their own opinion.
This blog has had plenty of infestations in the past and I do not think anyone is worried about having another one. As others have mentioned, Orac rarely bans anyone. I cannot remember the last time I saw someone banned. The comments of ignorant people stand here as a monument to that ignorance, for all the world to see and laugh at.
Arg, I hate it when I go back and edit a sentence and end up screwing up the sentence instead. It should be amazing, not amazingly.
Jeez, Tim and Larry are the best the Loonitarian Milita can muster? Kinda weak sauce for the vanguard of The Truth About (insert imaginary crisis here).
And Denice. Anything for you . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU4L70m43So
I guess I am just sick and tired of this martyr complex. It would be so much less annoying if you actually criticised the content and addressed the post, rather than getting yourself ready for a ban. Is it a badge of honour thing?
We're supposed to be afraid of the semi-literate ramblings of the lunatics who post comments on Natural News?
Seriously, has anyone ever taken notice of the poor quality of the writing in the comments there (as well as on AofA)?
It seems like the readers of those crank websites don't have the faintest idea about grammar, punctuation, spelling or sentence structure. It's hard to take their arguments seriously when the writing is barely in English.
I guess education is a "liberal/Obama" concept. Have any of those readers ever finished grade school?
Larry's comments here are not immune to this criticism. Larry, one tip: there is no such word as "alot."
Just yesterday on AofA one commenter kept referring to the GI "track," another said the autism situation is "too much to bare" (several times) and a third comment referred to Mr. Wakefield as a "marter."
I know Orac hates pedanticism but it's hard to take these people seriously when they can barely (bearly?) string together a coherent sentence.
And don't even get me started on "it's" vs. "its."
So bring it on, Larry, and invite your Natural News/InfoWars buddies. We could all use a good laugh. You'd all be punching out of your weight class.
Time to go get me some fibre-laced McNuggets with a nice big glass of aspartame-laden Diet Coke and some GMO fries.
"Fibre" is the Canadian spelling, by the way. Not wrong, just different, before anyone jumps on me for misspelling a word after my pedantic tirade.
"Fibre" is the Canadian spelling, by the way. Not wrong, just different, before anyone jumps on me for misspelling a word after my pedantic tirade.
After seeing that double post I suspect I am not alone in having problems with Scienceblogs tonight.
It's a couple of days I've been having trouble. For hours RI wouldn't even load. I thought maybe AofA got their way and had NatGeo take down the blog for a while. Then when I'd hit "Submit Comment" I'd get the error screen. When I reloaded the site and resubmitted my comment, it would appear either twice or not at all.
I lived in Ottawa for a few years but got better. :)
Woo Fighter,
I understand. I do not think the city is as boring as some people make it out to be, but I am an east coast boy, have lived on the west coast, and Ottawa is not the best place I have lived in.
As a great philosopher once said, "Stupid is as stupid does."
Travis,
No offence to Ottawa or the people who live there.
Keep in mind I am a native Montrealer (living there again now). And I used to spend about two weeks a month on business in Toronto. Compare and contrast both those cities with Ottawa.
I do miss the Lebanese food and atmosphere at The Garlic King, however. Ever been there?
I really like both Toronto (I know, I know, this apparently makes me some sort of heretic, everyone outside of Toronto is supposed to sit around and bash it all of the time) and Montreal. I wish I got to Montreal more often. I bunch of friends were there this weekend for the Fet weekend, I should have gone with them.
Never been to The Garlic King, but I have heard about it and have seen their van cruising around on occasion.
Natural News is basically the health nut version of InfoWars. Both deal in quackery and both have hysterical fanbases.
@Woo Fighter. It's "pedantry".
Rich,
Dang! I even went to the trouble to look it up before writing it. It appears the two words may be synonyms:
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/pedanticism
I like to think that someone, somewhere, owns the trademark on "pedant" and gets a nickel every time someone looks the word up.
"Can't muck up pedant," I'm sure many have uttered over the years. "That'd be completely balls."
Mewens and Rich,
As the kids would say, this is getting very meta. Pedantry about pedantry about pedantry.
Rich: Are the namesake "Scopie" of Scopie's Law?
@Woo Fighter
Arf. And yes, that's me. :-)
Thanks everyone - I needed a good laugh this morning
@Pareidolius:
Finally someone ( you) has thought up a meaningful use for Skinner's operant conditioning.
@ Colin:
Adams sometimes sits in for Alex Jones as a substitute show host.
Unfortunately, they are not the only two in this category: there are many, many more - and I usually find them.
woo fighter
I will bring it on. I doubt you could handle me though. Unlike you, my mind has not been damaged from fluoride. You probably still believe in evolution - a fantasy that some hairy old man with a turtle fetish dreamed up one day when he had nothing better to do than annoy God.
Travis,
Yes indeed getting banned by a liberal or getting liberals angry is a badge of honor. As a matter of fact the Boy Scouts should add an annoy a liberal badge to their collection. All it would take would be a friendly Merry Christmas or a nice Bible verse of the day to get them to go off the deep end. and you are wrong, Orac bans people all the time. It gives makes me feel all warm inside knowing that liberals everywhere preach "freedom of speech" all day long so long as that speech includes sex, cursing, dirty jokes, or any evil, but God forbid we use that same free speech to exchnage ideas and even arguments or to promote creationism. When that happens the same preachers of speech freedom flush it right down the crapper and get ready to make us all political prisoners. Nice to know how their minds work. Or don't work, rather.
Science mom
obumaScare specialist is a "doctor" who has delighted in the new ObamaScare "medical" plan. Since obama delighted in accepting the name we gave it (Obamacare), we have sinced changed it to obamaScare becuase when you started costing the all knowing all powerful oz, ah, I mean government too much money, they pull the plug. scary. Hence, ObamaScare.
Clearly the damage came from other sources.
False.
It's been a while since a straight-up creationist has posted here! Though it's way too OT, I really, really would like to see you take us on when it comes to accepting evolution.
Yet here you are, posting freely. You can post pretty much whatever you want here and have little to no chance of being banned. Go ahead, try it!
Larry, I've heard word-salads more coherent than you.
So I know for future reference, is it "obUmaScare" or "ObAmaScare?" Or are you intermittently changing the spelling so the All-Knowing, All-Powerful Oz can't catch on while they continuously monitor you and your ilk's online activity so that they might formulate a plan to neutralize you by forcing you to eat GMOs, say "Happy Holidays," and injecting you with toxic mind-controlling vaccines?
I've also never had a cavity. I know my anecdote means nothing, but bring on the fluoride.
Ah shoot, I put in my online-coupon-email instead of my real email and now I'm awaiting moderation. I promise I'm not sock-puppeting! Must be the fluoride-damage causing mah brain teh stupidz.
Have Larry and "Medicien Man" ever been seen together at the same time?
hdb, actually "Medicien Man" was actually more coherent than "larry." I have tried to parse his last comment, but have failed to make any sense out of it. It is like a failed Turing test.
Just paint fumes huh?
I would expect such dichotomous thinking from a mouth-breather like you larry. So it should make your head go all assplodey to know that there are a fair number of Christians who post here who also accept evolution. I know that takes a higher order of thinking than you are capable of but theist beliefs are not always mutually-exclusive of scientific ones.
Ah yes now I remember that particular urban myth perpetuated by Faux News, Rush and the like and mindlessly accepted by their faithful. Oh I'm quite certain that any of your polemics would have any one of us rushing off to be euthanatized. Righto larry.
No he doesn't and the fact that you are posting is obvious proof that your "free speech"* isn't suppressed. I believe that you are unable to make the distinction between "free speech"* and speaking freely without getting mocked.
*I use the term loosely as SciBlogs is under no obligation to recognise the U.S. constitutional right to free speech. But I doubt larry understands that.
Science Mom said,
Over at Pharyngula this kind of ignorant, misunderstanding of what is meant by free speech is often referred to as freeze peach. I kind of like that.
More credulous reporting on this topic from the Portland Mercury: http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2013/08/19/don…
And the GA daily news (my home state, sadly): http://www.gadailynews.com/lifestyle/food/172693-chicken-nuggets-are-di…
#78 There are conservatives here too. Sorry to pop your fantasy-balloon.
Evil is as evil does.
For example: It's not evil to prevent small children from becoming deathly ill with measles encephalitis. I would actually call saving a child's life good.
Orac has banned two people since I've been here (for at least six months). One posted gigantic off-topic posts, and the other one expressed intent to drag every post off-topic and then started acting to do so. This is a common reason for banning on most messageboards and on most blogs.
You may also want to reread the amendments to the Constitution, which state that *Congress* shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.
Orac is not Congress. National Geographic is not Congress. The server, which is a hunk of plastic and metal owned by someone who *is not you*, is not Congress either.
You do not have the right to step onto someone *else's* property and do whatever you like.
You may have noticed that AoA is also not Congress; they get to make their own rules too, and while in point of fact their rules are much more stringent, they *get to do that*.
There are property rights in this country, and if you own some, it's yours. You don't own the box this blog is on. You don't own AoA's box either. Abide by the rules of the people who own and manage that property, or yeah, expect to get removed.
Now there's a conservative thought.
Khani @88 --
Excellent post.
Don't forget the silicon. Or, as I have heard it too often, "silicone!. Va va va voom!
khani,
now if those same rules applied to real property to be able to remove protestors from said property ...
I didn;t know liberals knew anything about property rights. i thought they were against owning stuff since most of them are very communistic in their belief system. You are correct in what you say and I wish it was as simple as that, but if you have an intruder in your home and you shoot the intruder, liberals get upset for defending the same property that you claim to be so find of. So, do you or do you not defend sovereign property rights?
travis
if you are quoting pz myers, that in itself is hilarious. he has tried hard to fornicate polls, but I walways seem to get under his skin by turning the tide again. DEventually he stopped doing it. next time you are at his post, let him know I am still lauging at his failure. To make it even more funny, he still believes that evolution is real and that man evolved from apelike creatures. I guess that is what can be expected from a professor. Most of them are all alike. I can stand ina crowd of 10,000 and pick out the college professors with ease. They all have the same things in common, usually the way they dress, speak, or have beards or uncombed hair. It that doesn't give them away, walk up to them and whiasper in their ear "charles darwin was a hairy turtle herder ". If they get up set and argue with then they are pretend scientists. if they look at you funny, they are just regular people.
science mom
christians who accept evolution have a name. Apostates. They can serve no leadership role in chruch until they actually learn that they are there to teach from the Bible and NOt from a hairy old man's beach fetish novels about turtles and birds.
everyone else
bring on the fluoride? Ok suits me. Drink it by the gallons. maybe when your bones start to break and your IQ drop 27 points, you will get the point. sounds like a plan to me.
GMOs and aspatame cause cancer. Do not argue, becuase it is not up for debate. period. happy holidays is old. we won that war already.
observing party, are you candaian or soemthing? I deal with canadians all the time in business and I am here to tell you taht their common sense is abut 22 parsec behind the rest of the world. Their IQs are not quite as bright and fluffy as most people's. Sort of dimwitted. I mean it. i am not joking. 9 out of 10 canadians I speak with do not know their own address when they wish to place an order. seriously? It's not complicate, people. methinks the fluoride is strong up there.
#90
I am not against owning property.
If you don't think a computer is real property, go take one from your local store and see if the shop owner or the police have anything to say about it.
Stop pretending that Orac, or NatGeo is Congress. Read the actual Constitution rather than making up codswallop.
Lord. I've heard a *lot* conservatives complaining about how the Supreme Court finds "penumbras" of meaning in the Constitution, but I think they would be even less happy with you blatantly *making things up* and claiming they came from that document. And then claiming to be a conservative on top of that!
Now quit yammering about the Constitution and other topics you blatantly know nothing about, such as the political opinions of people on this board and gun rights, and get back on topic, because yes, that IS a requirement here.
hdb, actually “Medicien Man” was actually more coherent than “larry.”
Talk about damning with faint praise.
Oh, Larry, Larry, Larry.
Let me demonstrate something to you. Please pay careful attention. You only need to do so for three sentences; that's all the demonstration will take. Here goes.
Evolution is true and those who can't see that it is are mouth-breathing morons! You're full of crap if you think that fluoride causes anything except well-protected teeth! I guess that just like other conservatives out there, you secretly masturbate to the thought of all the poor people who get screwed over by your greedy corporate cronies!
That was my demonstration of "arguing like Larry". I argued the way you do, Larry, rather than the way civilized adults do. I used your favorite techniques of argumentation: insulting those who don't share my beliefs; making bizarre sexual innuendoes; simply asserting that my beliefs are fact instead of giving any reason to think so - I followed your example.
Whaaaaat? You mean, you didn't find it convincing? It didn't sway you the least little bit towards my viewpoint? You found it in fact to be fairly pathetic?
Now you know how your arguments have been coming across to us, Larry.
Ah, so this is the way you "exchnage ideas and even arguments"
I have to wonder where larry come from? I might make a few assumptions on the peoples there about how they treat canadian peoples.
Alain
tim
A Big Mac a day did not appear to have harmed the oldest person to win a Grammy award. Pinetop Perkins lived to the ripe old age of 97.
@larry - What is with all this hate for Monsanto. They are a successful American corporation. Are you some kind of commie?
Sounds like Medicien Man the feces obsessed ham from Dismal Seepage, Missouri.
It seems that larry is a classic example of conspiracy theory magnetism. There does not yet exist a conspiracy theory he doesn't buy into.
I am starting to think there needs be created a corollary of Scopie’s Law to do with citing Natural News in all seriousness.
At this point, I can't help thinking that this larry person must be a troll. I mean, no-one's really THAT obtuse, right? Right?
Oh, goody, it's "Guardian of the Poll."
... who is "Doctor Smart" and all the other characteristically moronic incarnations.
aspatame - didn't Cleopatra die from that?
Orac re the microscope- i have difficulty squaring the cost too. a confocal it aint, unless he is operating it solely in brightfield mode (finding mode-its how you line up the samples) and anyway unless its second hand good luck finding a confocal that cheap. but also the way it operates and moves focus makes me think it actually may be a USB microscope. Its got quite a long focal length and seems to move around quite easily. USB microscopes will go to 200x but are typically 100 times less expensive than stated even for a good one.
a nice inverted stage microscope with motorised stage will set you back about 50k near me
From looking at the vid, my guess is that it is a disecting microscope on about 20X. Look at the forceps tips in one of the shots. I bought one of these recently with a USB linkage for about $100.
Someone needs to do a parody video looking at kale under a microscope, imagine how scary that looks. And they need to get the kale from an organic farm market, imagine all the fecal matter you could find from the hippies who don't wash their hands before handling the vegetables!
Larry,
No, I'm not "Candaian." I'm not Canadian either; true blood American citizen here. I even have a flag tattoo (from my younger days). Try again! I do know many fine, fine Canadians though.
Keep it up though, I rather enjoy trying to decipher your rants and the grammar/spelling mistakes within them.
And pray tell, how exactly does one "try hard to fornicate polls?" Is there another meaning for that word? Sounds kinky.
#105 a Poll is a kind of sheep
"Doctor Smart"/"I.M. Smart"/"Televisionless Conservative"/"Guardian of the Poll"/"larry," etc., was beset by some sort of priggish indignation when, e.g., P.Z. Myers would suggest to his readers that they chime in on meaningless Internet opinion polls. So long as he disagreed with their opinions, of course.
Thank you @narad. I guess his attempt at humor--or maybe keeping it clean?--was so deep my flouride-addled mind couldn't grasp it.
@ Narad, is larry the same dude who years ago promised us that a mind-blowing, neuron-exploding exposé on vaccines as a result of his "interviews" with the CDC, FDA, NWO etc.?
@ Narad, is larry the same dude who years ago promised us that a mind-blowing, neuron-exploding exposé on vaccines as a result of his "interviews" with the CDC, FDA, NWO etc.?
observing party, are you candaian or soemthing? I deal with canadians all the time in business and I am here to tell you taht their common sense is abut 22 parsec behind the rest of the world. Their IQs are not quite as bright and fluffy as most people’s. Sort of dimwitted. I mean it. i am not joking. 9 out of 10 canadians I speak with do not know their own address when they wish to place an order. seriously? It’s not complicate, people. methinks the fluoride is strong up there.
You're such an idiot it's hard to know where to begin. BTW you should be looking in the mirror when you accuse people of having no common sense. It is obvious you have none. Anyone with a shred of common sense would not insult an entire nation with stupid comments. I suspect your order taking job is one step above jobs that require you to ask, "Would you like fries with that?" Troll!
@kiwi girl: kudos for that one.
Larry is Dr. Smart/Medicien Man/Rob Hood/a total waste of neurons all right. Canadians being dim because of fluoride exposure were one of his less disgusting fixations. And not only does the tyrannical Canadian government allow cities to improve people's dental health, they force publicly-funded health care on us too. Oh, the humanity!
Methinks Larry is hitting the moonshine again, or possibly the still blew up in his basement and he has nothing better to do until it's fixed.
Actually, Larry does not appear to be Dr. Smart/Medicien Man/Rob Hood, unless he's figured out how to use IP addresses from locations over a thousand miles apart. It's possible, but Dr. Smart/Medicien Man/Rob Hood has shown a relentless persistence over the last three years in using the same IP address block to post from, and Larry is not posting from there. I could be wrong, of course. Maybe Dr. "Smart" has become smarter than he was in the past, but I highly doubt that Larry is another Dr. Smart/Medicien Man sockpuppet.
Oh, right, Rob Hood, lowly Technician class KE5BMP! Thanks for jogging my memory. Still jerkin' it on 2 meters, Robbo? I do so wish you'd at least get up to General class. I have a frame all ready for the QSL card, XYL. I mean, it's been nine years and there are only 35 more questions. I'd think that a scion of Mississippi's Finest Junk would be encouraged to engage in such professional development.
And what happened to your blog? More Northern aggression? It's a pity, truly it is.
The ongoing purposeful misunderstanding and misuse of IQ test scores by the anti-fluoride agitators bugs me. That's even when they use the one Chinese study (which had extremely high natural fluoridation in the water) *and* get the (mean) IQ score difference correct. None of the studies have shown a 27-point difference - that's orders of magnitude wrong. It was 0.45 IQ points, and they did neither matched for age and sex or included those two variables as cofactors in the analysis. Norming the test scores is not going to completely remove either factor as an influence. Quality of teaching (the kids were from different schools), nutritional value of diet, home environment, test anxiety, etc, were not measured either. The reason a 0.45 difference hit statistical significance was... sample size.
Plus, there's the big assumption around what IQ tests actually measure, and the fact that there are differing definitions of IQ - not all of which are measured with the normed IQ tests.
/sigh
Science Mom, that was Smarter Than You:
I don't think we heard from him after 2011.
The "fornicate polls" line is awfully specific. If he's posting from a mobile device, IP geolocation isn't reliable. Indeed, this, given the "NJ" reference, strikes me as pretty strong evidence.
He's never posted from anything other than a single IP address that I can find. I checked again. That doesn't mean he hasn't figured it out now, but, seriously. It doesn't look that likely to me. If it is him, though, he'll eventually give himself away, and if he gets too annoying I'll eventually deal with him whether it is him or not.
Even morons take holidays (sorry, vacations: I'm Australian). Clearly 'Larry' isn't letting the in-trailer wi-fi go to waste. Or he can't find his way out of the internet cafe.
Not sure what all this robin hood talk is about. Must be part of the homersexer agenda.
at any rate, I didn;t come here to try and argue with people who think they already know everything. I simply came here to make a statement and defend what is left of AmeriKa.
Judging from these "science" blogs, looks like the America we once knew has went down the crapper. too bad universities hire left wing kooks to indoctrinate young minds, but hope remains. many of those young minds usually get out into the real world outside the classroom and figure out the hard way just how wrong that nut in front of the class really was. it may take a decade or more, it happens more than you think.
happy vaccine day to you all. May your vaccines give you all the hopes and dream of the globalists have for mankind - misery. as for me, I will not comply. and what's better than that, no one on this planet has the authority nor the power to change that.
narad is weird. must be canadian.
Just felt like adding one point that probably needs to be made explicit, since Larry may be new to the internet if he isn't feigning ignorance of basic social conventions (granted, that's a big 'if'):
Sock puppetry is inherently cowardly and deceitful, hence it is strongly discouraged on the internet by civilized society and typically regarded as a clear sign of malicious intent and insincerity. Sock puppetry is for people who want to avoid the accountability civilized discussion runs on. It's a way to intimidate using the illusion of a crowd. It's a way to deceive people using the bandwagon fallacy/propaganda tactic through that illusion. It's a way that insincere trolls can get their gits and shiggles riling up a community with insincere arguments they don't believe in and then potentially avoid detection when they come back under a new name.
Using consistent names or pseudonyms means you stand by what you say and aren't afraid of being accurately quoted. To do otherwise without a good reason often implies that you know you're doing something indefensible.
@Bronze - I'd even think that larry is pulling a POE, but unfortunately, I've seen more than my fair share of his kind.....
Oh right Chris, thanks. I get my nutters mixed up. And I was looking so forward to STY's revelations of the global vaccine conspiracy.
Can't argue with the IP evidence. It's quite eerie though how similar Larry's (Curly, Moe?) writing style is to Dr Smart's demented ravings, right down to the misspelling of "flouride". Or maybe all the Jonesbots spell it that way, who knows.
are you people still hung up on this robin hood tirade? what the crap are you talking about. I never mentioned anything about any Dr Smart, robin hood, or any other said misgiving. That's it. You people shoul definitely stay clear of the woods. The squirrels will mistake you for great big nuts. Leave the outdoors to us sovereign citizen survialists.
for the record, if you goofle it, many conservatives including some forms of sovereign citizens actually mispell words on purpose in order to not fit in with the rest of the establishment slaves. Some even refuse to capitalize the the first letter of their name in order to stand out as being sovereign and in control of our own destiny. Basically it is an in your face approach to the real world. You can google it. If you dig deep enough, find out a way to get my $650,000 back.
Again, without following down the allocation, it doesn't tell you everything. The following, for example, is standard-issue Swampjack:
As is its follow-on:
What's a "homersexer?" *head scratch*
I was waiting for the "sovereign citizens" comment. Six will get you ten he goes full metal birther on us next.
@AOP -- someone who checks Mr Simpson's genitalia?
Back on topic, slightly. "The Director" of the "Natural News Forensic Food Lab" has posted anothe video. If you put teeth in phosphoric acid for a couple of days they start to dissolve. Who knew?
http://www.naturalnews.com/041933_phosphoric_acid_teeth_sodas.html
Is now a good time to explain to Mikey that fluoridation of water improves dental health by making the tooth enamel less soluble in acids?
@Shay: LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!
A "goofle" search for sovereign citizen turned this up:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen
What a surprise - larry is into pseudolaw as well as pseudoscience. I assume that the $650,000 refers to the imaginary Social Security trust funds that sovereign citizens believe they can access if they show up in court and say the magic words. So (larry:stooge) of the family Fine, let us know how refusing to pay your taxes or obey any laws works out for you.
Actually, if larry really is the scat-fetishist troll, that could explain the change of location. He may have skipped out on outstanding debts while he plots to make the US Treasury cough up his 650K.
I didn't know that deliberate misspellings are a statement against the establishment. What a moron! Larry's definitely at home with the other Adams Family kooks.
I watched the phosphoric acid video! Mike puts a wild boar tooth into phosphoric acid, not a human tooth, maybe they are hard to come by! "What you are about to see has never before been shown in any video!" he says. We did this in school over 30 years ago. Not quite, we used a human tooth in Coke, which is also really good at cleaning up 'coppers' (1p and 2p pieces in the UK).
@Edith - recently, a number of "Sovereign Citizens" have taken it upon themselves to attack members of law enforcement - resulting in a number of deaths, including one situation where a small number of these individuals were planning on kidnapping police officers & holding them in a DIY jail to protest the Government.....these guys are extremely dangerous.
Oh my lord -- he seriously had never seen videos of that before? I take it he didn't spend five seconds to look up "tooth in coke" on YouTube or anything like that; it's a very common elementary school experiment, usually also a not-so-subtle attempt to get them to brush their teeth regularly.
Good grief.
Regarding misspellings.....
The "sovereign citizen" movement is, frankly, insane. Somehow it doesn't surprise me that they even resent grammar, given the common crank tactic of attempting to "win" arguments by redefining words without telling anybody. But regarding "flouride", I have to confess I often misspell it that way. It's one of my blind spots. I also have trouble with "necessary" for some reason -- if it weren't for spellcheck, I'd be messing that one up all the time.
@Lawrence - yes I know. We have them in Canada too, though they call themselves Freemen on the Land here. They've been in the news recently due to similar concerns about their potential for violence: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/09/02/bc-free…
@Julian - now you know why the colonel used to call me "Gutter."
@Edith - It i oddly comforting to learn that our neighbors to the north have their own brand of Fruitloops.
Basically it is an in your face approach to the real world.
I have tried a similar approach but the real world doesn't seem to care.
at home wit the adams family is better than at home with the darwin monkey hoarders.
as for the sovereign citizen "movement" as the lamestream media calls it ... yes some organizations do resort to violence. There are those factions in every time of political movement. C'mon president obama's right hand buddy tried to bomb the pentagon and van jones wanted to kill 25 percent of the world population in the name of the environment. Margaret sanger wanted to eliminate the black race. I do not belong to any sovereign citizen "movement" or local, national, or global organization. That in itself is silly being that being a sovereign free individual means making decisons for yourself and not with others. The basic principle of being a soverign citizen is this ... Every man, woman, and child is Created by God as a free individual. Government is a must for a fully functioning civilized society. Even Heaven has a government complete with representatives of God and even warior angels to combat evil. So, government is necessary to have a successful economy, to combat crime, and to ensure that peace and prosperity IS ALLOWED (not mandated) to continue FREELY in an open market that anyone of any race, creed, ethnicity, gender, etc, can freely participate in. However, a soverein citizen believes that once government tries to mark out God and install itself as a God with supreme authority over all mankind and starts to mandate immoral acts, illegal wars, and the confiscation of citizen prosperity, that govenrment is no longer a common good. It is now an enemy of the people and does more hard than good. Taxes are necessary to provide a police force, a sizeable and capable military, and to provide an education as well as take care of citizens who are poor, hungry, and down on their luck . However, when government starts confiscating large amounts of citizen prosperity and uses it to bail itself out enormous amounts of debt that could have been prevented to start with, the sovereign citizen has a right to remove himself / herself from such an immoral, unethical, and wicked society.
Most sovereigns are not violent and not outspoken. They keep to themselves and sometimes screw with people by being annoing to make a point that we can be just as much a pain in the arse as the thing that is bothering us at the time.
Most are non violent and wouldn;t hurt a flea. Now, take the occupy movement. Now those clowns are violent bunch of idiots.
Basically it is an in your face approach to the real world.
The Kayfabe slipped for a moment there.
#104 Kale is non-Euclidean (it has a negative curvature) and, according to H. P. Lovecraft, "the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours." Kale is obviously the Vegetable Not To Be Described.
I saw this link elsewhere (Merseyside Skeptics podcast comments), apparently the editors of this webpage have apologized to posting the video:
http://www.upworthy.com/correction-that-time-we-let-pretend-science-rui…