Beware genetically engineered T4 bacteriophage nanobots!

Every so often I come across something in the world of woo that catches my attention because it’s so completely batshit loony that it demands my attention, either for the sheer delusion on display or for the extreme cleverness with which the pseudoscience and conspiracy theories are woven together. No, this time, I’m not talking about the Food Babe, either, because there’s no cleverness at all there, other than cleverness at self-promotion and quackmailing food and beverage manufacturers for fun and, most of all, profit. All that’s there besides that is an incredible ignorance of science and basic chemistry. There’s a reason why the Food Babe, a.k.a. Vani Hari, is rapidly making a name for herself (not in a good way) to rival Mike Adams for sheer pseudoscience. My not-so-secret hope is that one day, Mike Adams and the Food Babe will go after each other, the way Mike Adams has gone after his competitors by doing mass spectroscopy on their supplements and trumpeting the results that show elevated levels of heavy metal and the Food Babe quackmails food companies. It’s coming, I bet, and it’ll be a quack fight to cherish.

In the meantime, did you know that this latest Ebola outbreak in Africa is likely a hoax to trick you into getting a viral nanobot-laced vaccine that will destroy you? You didn’t? Well let’s take a look, pardner, because I’m in one of those perverse moods that makes me want to take a look at an article that claims Ebola is just a plot to get us all to inject ourselves with nanobots. I realize that Ebola is serious business, but unfortunately serious business often brings out serious quackery and conspiracy theories, and I have a week spot deep in my Tarial-cell fueled heart (or whatever passes for a heart in an awesome computer). Besides, even though I’ve toned things down over the last few years (if you don’t believe this, go back and read some of my posts from c.2006 or so), I do occasionally need to have a little fun, and this is fun:

A NOTE TO THE SHILLS: What will happen if you end up with these things inside you? These are NOT Iphones, WANNA SHILL THIS? ARE YOU SURE YOUR ISRAELI LAB GOT THIS RIGHT AND THESE WILL NEVER GET INTO YOU?

With only 183K of super efficient DNA code, viral nanobots were released into the wild via vaccinations on September 22 2007 and are being peddled as a natural variant of the T4 bacteriophage. But this report PROVES THESE NANOBOT PHAGES ARE NOT NATURAL, AND WERE INSTEAD CREATED BY ISRAEL.

That’s right, WHAT’CHA GONNA DO WHEN THOSE VIRAL NANOBOTS RUN WILD OVER YOU?

For those of you who might be budding skeptical bloggers or writers out there, it’s a good rule of thumb that any post you encounter that starts with a “note to the shills” is likely to be chock full of grade-A pure conspiracy mongering. Either that, or it’s a parody or a Poe. Thus endeth the lesson. Well, not quite. Another lesson is that it’s always the Jews. Always. Except, maybe, when it’s the Arabs or the Chinese. But usually it’s the Jews. In any case, this post references posts by someone named Jim Stone, who bills himself as a “freelance journalist.” My guess is that he’s most likely a freelance writer because the content he produces is too unbelievable even for Alex Jones-affiliated websites, but that’s just my speculation.

I do, however, love the precision of this conspiracy. Stone knows—knows in his very bones—that these viral “nanobots” were released into the wild on September 22, 2007. Not September 21. Not September 23. September 22. He also points to antivaccine websites being taken down right now as proof of his conspiracy, specifically Megan’s website, which, as anyone who knows anything about the incident knows, was almost certainly do to a hilarious a misunderstanding. Of course, that’s what THEY want you to believe.

In any case, Stone also doesn’t know why T4 bacteriophages couldn’t be “viral nanobots” that affect humans. Here’s a hint: It’s because they’re frikkin’ bacteriophages! They’re viruses whose function is to infect bacteria. Basically, the T4 phage infects a hapless bacteria, hijacks the bacteria’s protein-making and DNA replication machineries, and then bursts forth with lots of new virus particles, destroying the cell that was infected. All of this means that the phage can’t “invade host organisms or cells and insert DNA that causes the host make more nanobots until the host organisms or cells die from overexertion producing them” if those host organisms are not bacteria. There’s a reason they were named bacteriophages, after all, and not just viruses.

Now get a load of the “proof”:

Something called a T-4 bacteriophage existed before, but it certainly did not look like this.

I knew the six legged T4 bacteriophage was NOT NATURAL and that Israel did it and I found a way to PROVE IT. Click the image to the left to see how I proved it, this is NOT a hoax. Google yields NO image results for T4 bacteriphage before September 1 of 2007, and TONS for September 1 of 2008. So that is the time frame this little six pointed demon was released into the wild. And if Google is subsequently rigged to screw with this, I already have it documented, this is REAL FOLKS.

If you want the full effect of this “proof,” you’ll have to check out the actual images:

I can’t argue with logic like that, can you? Well, actually, I can. I remember seeing electron micrographs of T4 phages that had six legs back in the 1990s, when I was a graduate student actually growing up T4 phages to screen phage libraries. (Those of you in biomedical science will probably not be familiar with that technique unless you’ve been around a while. These days, it’s a very quaint technique.) For instance, this 2006 paper shows an illustration of the six-legged structure, and so does this 2003 paper, but obviously these could be faked, right? Indeed, our intrepid conspiracy theorist is insisting on only printed images from journals before 2007 to demonstrate that this six-legged structure was demonstrated a long time ago. Who knows, I might still have one of those old textbooks, but I’m not about to go searching to see if I do just to answer such a ridiculous charge.

On the other hand, I can laugh:

To provide a background on this, I have a really close friend who is a doctorate of pharmacology and an expert in the related microbiology fields. While having lengthy discussions about the future of weaponized medicine, this friend went on and on about how bacteriophages were being re engineered to attack our brain cells rather than their normal host - bacteria, implant DNA directly into our cells to change us immediately and forever change future generations by delivering a DNA payload to the egg cells in the ovaries and also to the male reproductive system. This would have a permanent impact on the future of mankind. Once this type of phage was received via a vaccination, those vaccinated would have the vaccine induced traits passed along via DNA insertion by the phage to all future generations.

Though phages (which are viruses that attack bacteria,) of various types have been around virtually forever, they have thus far been harmless to anything other than bacteria, and are even highly selective in the exact type and species of bacteria they will attack.

While it’s true that bacteriophages can demonstrate exquisite specificity for bacterial species and even strains of bacterial species, it would nonetheless be an amazing feat to change a T4 phage into a virus that can specifically infect specific types of neurons, particularly given that the genetic “package” delivered is all bacterial genes. Of course, one could imagine scientists replacing that genetic “package,” but why not just use an already existing human virus? Of course, there’s an answer for that:

When discussing this topic, I raised the question WHY were they modifying phages instead of common viruses that have a history of attacking people. One answer is in the fact that phages, more so than ordinary viruses which can cross the species divide, are highly selective in their targets and are programmed to only attack precisely what they were designed to - a bacteriophage will prefer only one variant of a particular type of bacteria. For example, there are many different types of salmonella bacteria, and among salmonella bacteria, a particular phage will attack only one variant while leaving other variants of salmonella alone. In the brain, not all neurons are identical, but all are similar so when administered via an intentionally tainted vaccine, the high selectivity of a modified bacteriophage can be used to target precisely the type of neuron a sabotaged vaccine would be intended to wipe out.

This is just silly. The T4 phage enters E. coli by its tail proteins (legs) binding to OmpC porin proteins and Lipopolysaccharide (LPS). LPS is the molecule that’s responsible for some of the biological effects of infection with gram negative bacteria. Specifically, it’s an endotoxin. It acts as an immunomodulator and contributes to the symptoms of sepsis. One also notes that humans don’t have OmpC. So the whole tail assembly would have to be reengineered to bind to specific human proteins and to contain genetic material that could replicate in humans. Remember, bacteria have a very different machinery for protein synthesis and DNA replication than eucaryotic cells. (Humans are eucaryotes.)

If I were an evil Reptilian overlord, I’d dismiss such a hair-brained scheme as a long run for a short slide. Given that vaccines don’t even contain bacteriophages, I’d tell my minion that it just doesn’t make any sense, even by my nefariously evil standards. But, then, what do I know? I’m not Alex Jones:

I will tip my hat to him. He’s still the master. Even Mike Adams doesn’t come close.

More like this

Hey, I tried the searches myself, and it's ALL TRUE. I can even go one better than Alex Jones, and reveal EXACTLY when the phage was released. Search 4/15/2008 and earlier, there are no results. Search 4/16/2008 and later, there are loads of results. SEE?

OMG! You know what else is a conspiracy? CATS!!!! I swear it's true! If you Google search for cats on the 4/15/2008 there NO CATS ON THE INTERNET. But if you search on the 4/16/2008 - LOADS OF CATS! And trees! And people! And phones! And cheeseburgers! In fact, between those two dates the conspiracy not only invented cats and cheeseburgers, they invented cat macros, too. The fiends!

Or...maybe it's an artifact of when Google started storing image date information? Nah. It's definitely a conspiracy.

By The Grouchybeast (not verified) on 06 Aug 2014 #permalink

So according to Jim Stone, anything that doesn't appear on Google didn't exist at the time? That's fascinatingly backward logic.

"six-legged bacteriophage"

Well, there is one such monster in the flash game Mardek RPG.
Guess it was a documentary.

I believe bacteriophage pictures have become increasingly familiar outside of microbiology-related fields in the past decade.
Because let's say it, it's a cool-looking critter.

By Helianthus (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

I'm fairly certain someone could discern that mathematics behind the "impossible to fake" grid patterns of his incredibly crappy pictures of a computer screen. Stone, of course, could have screen captured a search and then photoshopped it to say what he wanted and *then* taken his silly picture.

By Chris Hickie (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

The design of the T4 bacteriophage was clearly inspired by the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Chris Hicke
If I remember correctly you can just edit html from the browser.

Were honeybees also invented by Israel? All those six-sided cells...

LW: Don't give Alex Jones any more ideas.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Curses, he just bounced off the real purpose of Gardasil - hope he doesn't realize it:

"READ THE FOLLOWING REPORT CLOSELY: It is
OBVIOUS the Gardasil vaccine is not for Papaloma, it is for attacking the emotional centers, and the following report PROVES IT."
Alas, it does not attack the 'emotional centers', but instead inoculates us against Papal infection...

By Skeptical Hunter (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Looking at the construct it must be obvious to anyone that the phage is from "the desk of an engineer", just like flagellum and the conoid of Toxoplasma Gondii.

As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!" I'm disappointed that, at least in the excerpts posted here, Mr. Stone did not attempt to bring the Bavarian Illuminati into the conspiracy.

Also, Mr. Stone seems not to have heard. They have invented this tool called Photoshop. It's perfectly suited to faking photographs, even those of the kind Stone claims cannot be faked.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Papal infection -- so it's the Catholics and not the Jews?

Burn, heretic.

Gardasil vaccine is not for Papaloma

Of course not. You can get the Gardasil vaccine and still participate in the running of the bulls.

Oh, wait, that's Pamplona. Never mind.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Just for fun, I sent your post to the host of "This Week in Virology" (twiv.tv) for his own enjoyment.

Seriously.
Toxicologist Dr Hildegard Staninger of California found PRIOR to 2007 that, under the microscope, morgellons often resembled tiny "nanomachines" ( or tiny dragons) and appeared after exposure to chemtrails and pesticides ( see Allstop.com), Although she isn't clear on the identity of the culprits who visited this malfeasance upon us.

As if that isn't bad enough:
today Mikey has figured out exactly WHY these horrors are happening-
" Viral pandemics, wars, droughts, escalation of violence, irrational behavior, corporate greed gone wild, open border conflicts, media ( something) and more.."

Perhaps, he speculates, the "more sensitive" amongst us can *sense* .... "Gaia's psychic scream" as we plunder her fair abode. Others react violently. ( in bold) " we cannot be at peace with each other unless we are at peace with nature".

Wasn't there a Doors song like that?

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

It was "media madness"
I'll say!

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

I too am old and quaint. As an undergrad I created and screened a genomic library contained in bacteriophage. And then, I got to sequence parts of it using long gel, radioactive nucleotide sequencing. I wish I had kept some of those films to show people what we used to do in the old days as we walked up hill both ways.

Wait a minute.
about those honeybees:
wasn't the *land of milk and HONEY* promised to the you-know-whos by YouKnowWho?

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

MESSAGE BEGINS----------------------------

"If I were an evil Reptilian overlord . . ." Yes, if only you were, then I'd have a bit more help around here, someone who might understand the kind of pressures I'm under cycle after cycle. Not that I don't appreciate my native shills and minions, I do. I really do. It's just that even the most evil of your kind isn't blessed with the sange froid necessary to carry out the really nasty tasks. No. That takes reptiloid rancor.

Now, having this cretinous rebel spouting off about our absolutely delightful new MonKee-phage™ brain-chomping vaccine additives makes my long day just that much longer. So, cadre 26-B, please do what you can to quash this unpleasantness.

Yours in Pharma Eeeeevil . . .
Lord Draconis Zeneca, VH7ihL
Super Uber Grand Mavoon of the Great Fleet, Main Monitor of Manahassett, Overworked and Underpaid

Glaxxon PharmaCOM Orbital
000111000001

--------------------------------MESSAGE ENDS

By Glaxxon Pharma… (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

FELICITATIONS BEGIN-----------------------

Oh, and felicitations on a certain someone's hatchday, or is that incept date? I can never remember.

--------------------FELICITATIONS END

By Glaxxon Pharma… (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

You know what else has six points?

Snowflakes.

Snow kills people every winter -- but not in Israel. Obviously snow has been weaponized to kill ... the rest of us.

My dearest Lord Draconis,

Well, don't look at me.

Yours truly in servitude,
DW

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Perhaps, [Adams] speculates, the “more sensitive” amongst us can *sense* …. “Gaia’s psychic scream” as we plunder her fair abode. Others react violently.

I'm pretty sure that the Earth will come out alright when we're done with what we're doing. Whether the human race will be alright is another question. He's right that some are reacting violently. Desperate people do desperate things. But his proposed solution isn't going to work. This planet can't come close to supporting its present population without advanced technology.

Obviously snow has been weaponized to kill … the rest of us.

It's not doing a very efficient job of it. Snow kills very few people around here, and most of the ones it does kill are idiots who drive too fast in it, so it's more of a natural selection force than a weapon.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

You know what else has six points?

Benzene. And hex nuts. And soccer ball panels.

So... What you're trying to tell me is that cats didn't exist before 2008? Phff.

By Chadwick Jones (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

"It’s not doing a very efficient job of it."

None of these tools for exterminating large parts of the human race, like vaccines, chemtrails, and GMO rice, seem to work very well. I think the evil geniouses need to up their game.

Oh gracious. I am always amazed at the new levels of creativity that can be attained by crackpots. Though I still haven't found anyone to top the guy who claimed that Apollo was hoaxed to cover up the fact that supersonic speed is impossible by any manmade object. Fighter jets are fakes. Satellites are fakes. The guy started off with something along the lines of a Xeno's Paradox, only dumber, and went downhill from there.

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Calli @29: Hey, at least that guy tries to explain (albeit in misguided fashion) why NASA would go to the trouble of faking the Moon landings. I'll admit I haven't looked too deeply, but most of the Apollo hoax crowd that I have encountered don't try to explain why anyone with NASA's resources would attempt such a hoax.

Back in the 1990s I ran into a couple of doozies. One of them was the one and only Archimedes Plutonium (he was calling himself Ludwig von Ludwig when I first encountered him), who insists that the universe is an electron in a plutonium atom. There was another guy on Usenet who insisted that energy is not a conserved quantity, but decays with time (of course, he made no attempt to produce any testable predictions of his theory).

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

In any case, this post references posts by someone named Jim Stone, who bills himself as a “freelance journalist.” My guess is that he’s most likely a freelance writer because the content he produces is too unbelievable even for Alex Jones-affiliated websites, but that’s just my speculation.

The budgetcamerareview-dot-com site that wound up posting "Dr." Megan's personal information in a deranged attempt to contact her to "check on her safety" is nothing other than the "Jim Stone Forums."

Nobody seems to have a good explanation for what they're doing there, but if one uses the Wayback Machine, jimstonefreelance used to be a freelance photography site. Whether it's the same Jim Stone is anybody's guess.

" this post references posts by someone named Jim Stone, who bills himself as a “freelance journalist.” My guess is that he’s most likely a freelance writer because the content he produces is too unbelievable even for Alex Jones-affiliated websites, but that’s just my speculation."

He's got all the tools to be one of Natural News' trusted "citizen journalists".

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

The video damn near killed me,
GM mosquitoes are meant to inject vaccines into you?! I thought they reproduced to form fewer females.
If I wanted to, I'd probably use airbourne viruses that transmit from one host to another rather than by using injections.

Could someone explain the mechanics of vaccines against drug addiction, cause what he says doesn't really make sense to me.

The guy sees a major conspiracy, it's weird to watch. The way he divides everything black and white.

Though I still haven’t found anyone to top the guy who claimed that Apollo was hoaxed to cover up the fact that supersonic speed is impossible by any manmade object.

Man made objects have been breaking the sound barrier since the bronze age--has the guy never heard of something called a "bullwhip"?

Archimedes Plutonium! Oh, there was a net kook. I never bumped into him, but I did encounter Robert E McElwaine on one occasion when I was moderating a message board. (He just did a hit-and-run on us.)

As far as Apollo hoaxers, most of them say that NASA faked it because it was too important to beat the Russians, so when they discovered they lacked the resources to actually do it, they faked it instead. Unexplained is why the Russians would then go along with it....

Another faction claims that NASA faked it to either cover up a military mission to the Moon or to cover up the presence of aliens on the Moon.

The most amusing to me is Richard Hoagland, who is in the strange position of having to defend NASA on having actually conducted Apollo because otherwise he can't continue to claim that NASA has airbrushed out pictures of huge crystalline cities built by aliens on the Moon. :-D

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

After reading Jopari's comment, I started to watch the Jones video, but quit after his mention of Russell Blaylock (#505 at Encyclopedia of American Loons).
Why would anyone want to go to the trouble to genetically engineer mosquitoes to deliver vaccines for population control. "Natural" mosquitoes already deliver a parasite that kills about a million little kids annually in Africa alone. And tsetse flies will happily deliver one well known to mess with your brain.
What's with that giant silver bacteriophage near Jones's face? Nano it aint.

Gotta go detox my computer to get Jones remnants out. I think I'll shoot some coffee up its output port. Or maybe, on the homeopathic principle of like-cures-like, find a very large bull, give it a coffee enema, and dump my computer in a tub of the result.

If honeybees were invented by THE JEWS in the "land of milk and honey," doesn't that mean that the save the bees campaign is proof that the Zionists have hijacked the environmentalist movement, and so global warming is theirs too?

By ebrillblaiddes (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Papal infection — so it’s the Catholics and not the Jews?

Jews have controlled the Vatican since the mid-20th century. The Jesuits aligned with the Illuminati to take over the Freemasons according to a Talmudic design.

\\OMG! You know what else is a conspiracy? CATS!!!! I swear it’s true! If you Google search for cats on the 4/15/2008 there NO CATS ON THE INTERNET. But if you search on the 4/16/2008 – LOADS OF CATS! \\

hey it worked. cats didnt exist before 2008

"the Zionists have hijacked the environmentalist movement, and so global warming is theirs too?"

Of course global warming is theirs too. They have to fight it because it impairs the efficiency of their snowflakes as a population-reduction tool.

Seriously.
Snowflakes are only the TIP of the iceberg....

google: freemason map of washington
or go to dcsymbols.com

Oooops! I wasn't supposed to

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

I thought shaved ice was the tip of the iceberg.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Calli @35 -- To me, the single most conclusive proof that people really landed on the moon is the physical and isoltopic composition of moon rocks. Faking such things would be far more difficult than simply going ahead and putting men on the moon.

By palindrom (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Let's just go all the way down the size scale and posit the release of sub-atomically engineered gluons that will hasten the onset of the Big Rip. That way, we're all screwed and no one's around after it's done.

By Chris Hickie (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Chris - I actually know the guy who came up with the Big Rip idea. I'll ask him if he's working on it.

By palindrom (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

Seriously though, since 2005 DARPA has been working on a nano virus designed to removed the 'religous' or emotional centre of the brain.. the apparent goal .. to reduce religious fundamentalism and slow the rise of Islamic terrorism towards the non islamic.. No doubt at the same time other entities have been working on the same technology for opposing and other reasons.. they have isolated a gene that seems to be responsible for creating a 'religous brain'. The method of delivery of such a virus is known to be aerial dispersion, and the biological delivery method... a nano phage based on the T4 bacteriophage. It is public knowledge that a nanotech T4 bacteriaphage has been created, albeit 10 times larger than the naturally occuring phage.. and that was in 2011 and public.. so what do secret entities have in their hot little hands by now?? Dumbfounded by the recent happenings to Malaysia Air planes? I can help... many governments have known since before the MH370 disappearance that a nano-virus has been released out into the wild... but this ones goal is to create religious fanatacism.. the anti-virus to the US led virus.. this is responsible for the uprising of ISIS you are seeing at the moment. And the rest of the worlds leaders are shit scared..islam wants to destroy all the non believers, whereas the west just want to dominate capitalism... the US, having very poor ties with the Chinese military but they still know that China have the tech to fight such a thing, redirected MH370 to Diego Garcia base as it contained a whole bunch of Chinese miltary tech experts. After getting everything they could from these experts the US realised that they also need virus experts... hence why MH17 came to the demise that it did, but not before the virus experts, on their way to an AIDS conference in Melbourne Australia were removed from the flight and also taken to Diego Garcia , which by the way has been extremely heavily miltary guarded since a week before the MH370 flight. They are currently working on a way to fight the nano virus that is now loose in the world.. and hiding under the guise of Ebola.. before we all either turn islamic or are killed by them... at the same time as boosting religous fundamentalism this virus removes empathy.. you only need to look at any ISIS members Twitter page to know they are not like the rest of us...this is the REAL ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!!

By RealityMatrix (not verified) on 07 Aug 2014 #permalink

This had better be a joke.

I never heard of it until this morning, but apparently there really are people who believe in a anti-religion vaccine. The tie-in with the Malaysian airliner and the deaths of all those AIDS experts is obviously more recent, of course.

By Antaeus Feldspar (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

Jopari @ 47: Yes, RealityMatrix @ 46 is a joke, of the type known as a Poe, keyword search 'Poe' on this page and follow Orac's link.

Does anyone here have the TeleTime address for Lovelock & Margoulis in the 1970s? I'd like to send them a TeleTimeGram:

Dear Drs.Lovelock & Margoulis-

Please don't name your new hypothesis after a deity. If you do that, there will be much trouble. Serious ecologists will assume you mean it more-or-less literally, and dismiss it as bunk. A large crop of kooks will also assume you mean it literally, and will start getting all devotional and worshipful, which will make the rest of the scientists hold their noses and run.

Instead, come up with a dull boring name for it: something like 'interlocking ecosystem negative feedback.' Right!, the IENF hypothesis! Even the acronym is dull. It won't offend atheists, scare off scientists, or encourage silly people to fall to their knees.

Sincerely yours-....

palindrom - I'd recently read a sci-fi story where the Big Rip came much sooner than expected, which (if it can even happen) is predicted at 20 billion years in the future. What could be more conspiratorially than a plot to unravel all matter in our universe.

By Chris Hickie (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

" I’d recently read a sci-fi story where the Big Rip came much sooner than expected, which (if it can even happen) is predicted at 20 billion years in the future. "

"Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter?

palindrom -- I'm afraid the no-moonies have an answer for that one as well. They claim the rocks were collected and returned by robots. Why we still struggle to do such a thing today and why definitively robotic missions returned miniscule quantities by comparison is not ever explained, of course. ;-)

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

@ Lurker:

re not-Gaia.

Drop the "i" and go with ENF- pronounced 'enough'.
Haven't we damaged the atmosphere- ENF
Haven't the seas risen- ENF
Isn't it hot ENF?

Maybe that's too catchy but it's better than the mental image-provoking GoddessPlanet lying half naked sprawled across the globe exposing her hills and valleys un-ashamedly.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

If we'd developed the technology to deliver autonomous robotic systems to the surface of the moon, use them to collect mineral samples, and then deploy them from the moon and return them successfully to the earth--all by the end of 1969--I'd be even more impressed than I was with our ability to have conducted a human landing. The Apollo 11's guidance computer was state of the art, remember, and it had four 16 bit registers, a whopping 2K memory, limped along at a clock speed of 1.024 Mhz. and could operate a maximum 8 jobs simultaneously--not a lot for a roboticist to work with.

I don't know how these people survive. I mean really if you're that paranoid how do you leave the house? The kindest thing would be a tranquilizer gun and a large padded room with lots of crayons and paper so they can't hurt themselves.

No Poe... and by the way.. that metabunk link as posted by Antaeus Feldspar is one of Mick Wests worse attempts to date to try and debunk something... even his supporters dont agree he debunks it...

By RealityMatrix (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

RM: You didn't read the same comments I did. It looked like everybody there was laughing themselves sick that anyone could believe that. Sure, there'd be some chatter, but in the form of thought experiments. Frankly, it's hard to see a downside to having less religion around.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

Probably the same people that would have laughed themselves sick at somebody proposing the ridiculous idea of setting off 100s of nukes in the Pacific Ocean, it would be ludicrous to think somebody would be so psychopathic to do such a thing ..but they did... the tech to do what he is desscribing in the video indeed does exist...

By RealityMatrix (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

This was cringe-inducing.

I seem to remember that the Maniatis' "Molecular Cloning" protocols from Cold Spring Harbor included extremely detailed directions on how to work with T4. We used it in 1997 for insertional mutagenesis, the very old fashioned method for gene mapping... I guess we didn't realize it wouldn't be invented for 11 years.

By c0nc0rdance (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

Lunar module lands on the moon.
Extrudes legs.
Penetrates crust.
20 minutes later, the moon lyses, releasing 25,000 lunar modules. -- from a classmate's cartoon, 1973

By murgatroyd (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

Andrew #51 -- yes, that's the one. I have a penchant for end-of-world stories. They never have happy endings, but at the end of one I can usually think "well, glad that wasn't me that got eaten by zombies, pummeled by asteroids, killed by contagion, etc." And if armageddon comes while I'm alive, perhaps I can say "hey, I read that in a book".

By Chris Hickie (not verified) on 08 Aug 2014 #permalink

On the contrary, Mick West's debunking was extremely convincing.

All the supposed revelations about "FunVax" have come from ONE single WordPress blog. All by itself, that definitely shifts the question to "where is the evidence to show that this extraordinary conspiracy theory is TRUE?" not "has Mick West definitively proven the negative that there is NO government conspiracy hinging on the tenuous identification of a single gene?"

But in fact West showed that the blog was registered by the same filmmaker who then ran a Kickstarter campaign, soliciting funds for a "documentary" about "a conspiracy theory circulating around the Internet" - without disclosing that he was the principal mover in the circulation of that theory.

Many of the objections to West's debunking came, not from "his supporters" disagreeing that he'd exposed the fragility of the theory, but from guests or new members trying to argue legitimacy on the basis of subjective internal evidence (like 'there's redaction in these documents! surely no person who prepared fake documents as part of a hoax would redact those fake documents!' ... even without pointing out that the redactions don't appear to obscure anything important, the objection dissolves itself the second you postulate anyone citing the presence of redaction as a marker of authenticity.)

Frankly, I'd be surprised if most of the comments from that point on still arguing for the plausibility of FunVax weren't Ryan Harper himself. Even if they weren't, though, they're an excellent illustration of an often-forgotten principle: "Just because you haven't stopped arguing doesn't mean you haven't lost the argument."

By Antaeus Feldspar (not verified) on 09 Aug 2014 #permalink

murgatroyd #60 wins the thread. :)

By Scottynuke (not verified) on 09 Aug 2014 #permalink

Weren't bacteriophages mentioned in Arrowsmith?

By Joseph Hertzlinger (not verified) on 09 Aug 2014 #permalink

How is it impossible for me to do a screen capture, tamper with it, then take a photograph of that screen, complete with impossible-to-mess-with interference pattern?

Not really a deep thinker is he?

Andy - clearly that's impossible. Just like it's impossible to do a Google search, save the HTML code, modify it, an open it in your browser before taking a picture of it. I mean - how could anyone do something like that? The entire concept is ludicrous.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 10 Aug 2014 #permalink

Anybody with half a brain knows that Alex Jones is a sensationalist disinformation agent.. he takes an otherwise plausible story and ads his ridiculousness to it in order to silence any intellectual debate on the topic. He walks around with a net full of red herrings throwing them ino any story that threatens his puppet masters hold on the general population. The true story behind this IS NOT that the T4 bacteriophage was created by man back in the day. THE REAL STORY IS that recently they have perfected the nano-tech version of the T4 bacteriophage that can be programmed to attck any cell, work in intelligent swarms and carry any DNA they wish to inject into the host cells... Alex Jones is in the public screaming his sensationalism so you dont see the real 'plausible' story.

By RealityMatrix (not verified) on 11 Aug 2014 #permalink

Anybody with half a brain knows that Alex Jones is a sensationalist

recently they have perfected the nano-tech version of the T4 bacteriophage that can be programmed to attck any cell, work in intelligent swarms and carry any DNA they wish to inject into the host cells

I'm betting you don't appreciate the irony here, Mr. Matrix. please, do go on about these intelligent T4 swarms! Evidence, as always, is essential.

Are you delusional? Not a single one of those links is evidence of the existence of "T4 bacteriophage that can be programmed to attack any cell, work in intelligent swarms"

What exactly do you mean by 'intelligent swarms?' You don't seem to have a very good grasp of the history of phage and its use in genetics.

If this is the kind of paranoid delusions you come up with based on phage, god knows what you'd think of lentivirus...

I think its you who is ignorant, not me who is delusional. You obviously did not read or understand the text, because they all point to the development of an intelligent T4. All the pieces for the described device are possible.. like i said..Should i go on?? Those quick links (that i found in 3 seconds by the way) are just the tip of the iceberg.... there are many more publications that prove its possible...
What i just posted shows....
1. That in 2005, a nano T4 copy was made.. albeit 10 times larger than the real phage..but that was 9 years ago...
2. That biosensors and biochips are being worked on and possible on a nano scale..
3. Pieces of the nano T4 have been going through development since 2005, and most probably sooner.
4. The ability to put any DNA inside the phage is possible.

'Intelligent Swarms' means programmable phage swarms that be directed at a certain target... not just the bacteria that a phage would normally attack... and current nanotechnology can indeed make this a reality. What delusions am i guilty of suffering from?? Educate me Einstein...

By RealityMatrix (not verified) on 11 Aug 2014 #permalink

Anybody with half a brain knows that Alex Jones is a sensationalist disinformation agent. this angle is not an improvement in the stupid department.

FTFY.

Then again, I've spent the whole day reading French pseudospeckle constraints, so maybe I just can't detect attempts at humor.

@Narad... The truth is not an 'angle'... and you didnt laugh because this is no laughing matter.. PEACE!

By RealityMatrix (not verified) on 11 Aug 2014 #permalink

THE REAL STORY IS that recently they have perfected the nano-tech version of the T4 bacteriophage that can be programmed to attck any cell
Out of curiosity, who are "they"?

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 11 Aug 2014 #permalink

The truth is not an ‘angle’… and you didnt laugh because this is no laughing matter.. PEACE!

No.

Those quick links (that i found in 3 seconds by the way) are just the tip of the iceberg…. there are many more publications that prove its possible…

What is it with these black-ops scientists? They secretly funnel billions out of legitimate budgets to make hi-tech weapons without anyone knowing about it, but then they can't resist putting all their research on Google where any idiot can read it.

Anybody with half a brain knows that Alex Jones is a sensationalist disinformation agent.

I'm shocked; she seems so nice on The One Show.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 12 Aug 2014 #permalink

who are “they”?

They are small, angry men with hairy faces and burning feet. They came to escape poverty, intolerance, oppression, the law, and the army. We took to them, and they took to us. And what do you think they took? Oil from Canada, gold from Mexico, geese from the neighbor's back yard (boom boom).

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 12 Aug 2014 #permalink

What is it with these black-ops scientists?

Sadly, they fall victim to Evil Genius Syndrome, the need to create clues to the only flaw in their otherwise perfect plan and allow Bond to live long enough to find them.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 12 Aug 2014 #permalink

I suspect evil geniuses live a relatively lonely life. They view the people around them as rivals, social inferiors, or intellectual inferiors. It is a strange irony that it is only with an enemy that they can have a frank, intellectually challenging conversation.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 12 Aug 2014 #permalink

All I can say is, Coca-Cola's primary ingredient is a variant of a WIDELY USED INDUSTRIAL SOLVENT! !!! 1!!!!11

@DLC: I know! Dihydrogen Monoxide! Worldwide, hundreds die each year of dihydrogen monoxide suffocation!

By Julian Frost (not verified) on 17 Aug 2014 #permalink

Dihydrogen Monoxide is a solvent but an industrial one? I'd say it's part of...

Alain

I rather like Hoaglund and his ideas. I REALLY, really want there to be billion-year-plus-old ruins on the moon. The thought pleases me ascetically and emotionally. And there ARE some strange artifacts in certain photographs. Sadly I fear the majority can be written off due to problems with the emulsion - certainly the 'castle'. However the 'Tower' and its mile-long shadow does appear to exist on photos from different angles and different times. But... The concept of ancient ruins is not so far out there; the idea of an actual, world wide and water-tight conspiracy to hide their existence is. Sadly.

Damnit. I want to believe!

I did lose some respect for him when he started on his most recent thing about George Lucas having knowledge that Iapetus was a real-life death star and gave visual direction accordingly.

By Gemman Aster (not verified) on 25 Aug 2014 #permalink