chemtrails

Antivaccine cranks ask: Did the flu vaccine kill Prince?

oracknows — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 01:00:51 +0000

Antivaccine cranks ask: Did the flu vaccine kill Prince?

I heard the news yesterday morning.

I was in clinic seeing patients. It was a bit of a slow morning; there was time between patients. So I spent it, as is my wont when clinic is a bit slow, signing charts (OK, signing off on charts in the electronic medical record; I haven’t actually physically signed a chart in a while) and idly checking Facebook and Twitter when finished with that. Then I saw it: Authorities Respond to a Medical Call at Paisley Park, with a comment that Prince was dead. I read the article; it said that someone had been found dead at Prince’s estate in Minneapolis and that it was thought to be Prince. At the time it hadn’t been confirmed yet, though. News rapidly spread around the clinic. I was amazed at how much people were immediately affected.

I saw another patient and then checked again. This time it had been confirmed: Prince was dead at age 57. The news reports also described how Prince had been ill on April 15, with a medical emergency having forced his private jet to make an emergency landing in Illinois, where he was briefly hospitalized. He did, however, recover enough to show up at a dance party the next day, so that people would have “living proof” he was alive. His representative told the press that Prince was battling the flu. Uh-oh, I thought. The conspiracy theories are coming.

Boy, did they ever!

Whenever a celebrity dies unexpectedly at a young age, I’ve learned to expect speculation to run rampant. I suppose it was always so, but what’s different today is the Internet, which allows the rumors, speculation, and conspiracy theories to reach the world as soon as they are conceived. Then there are the quacks and conspiracy theorists, such as Mike Adams, who is known for taking advantage of the deaths of celebrities to push his anti-pharma agenda, as he did earlier this year when David Bowie and Alan Rickman died. He’s not alone unfortunately; he’s just the worst.

In the case of Prince, I knew the mostly unknown circumstances of his death and the reports that he might have been suffering from the flu would give the cranks and quacks a field day, and it didn’t take long for the crazy to start flowing like Niagra Falls. Of course, we don’t know what killed Prince yet. It could well be days before we know. Could it have been the flu? Of course, although there did appear to be a bit of jumping the gun declaring that Prince might have died of the flu. The flu can kill perfectly healthy young and middle-aged people, contrary to the misconceptions so many people have these days that the flu is not a dangerous disease. However, after speculations about the flu as the cause of Prince's death, reports are now coming out that it might have been a drug overdose and that’s what Prince’s hospitalization last weekend was for. The bottom line is that I have no idea whether Prince had a drug problem or not. Although a fan, I wasn’t what one would call an “ardent fan” and didn’t really pay attention to news about Prince. However, I do know that many are the publicists of performers with drug problems who missed concerts (as Prince apparently had missed two recently) who would explain the absences by telling the press that the star was suffering from the flu. Again, though, we don’t know.

That’s why, in cases like this, the prudent thing to do is to take a wait-and-see attitude, until the coroner reports a cause of death. Of course, the celebrity gossip sites (like the TMZ.com articles I linked to) can’t wait, and neither can the quacks. First off the mark was the ever-nutty Infowars, which asked, Did the chemtrail flu kill Prince and Merle Haggard? Was Prince killed by the chemtrails he and Haggard spoke out against?

I must admit that I laughed out loud when I watched the video above; so I thank Alex Jones for lightening my depressed mood. I also hadn’t realized that Prince believed in woo like chemtrails. Oddly enough, I had never heard of “chemtrail flu” before. Curious, I did some Googling and learned that chemtrail flu is what you would guess that it is: A disease that resembles the flu caused by chemtrails, a “mystery flu” that doesn’t behave like regular flu. Of course, chemtrails don’t exist other than in the minds of conspiracy theorists like Art Bell.

I knew, for instance, that, after years of living a rock star’s life of excess, Prince had become a teetotaling vegan and Jehovah’s Witness, a supporter of PETA who was named the Sexiest Vegetarian Alive in 2006, which, of course makes it difficult for alternative medicine believers to be able to blame his death on big pharma, the way quacks like to do whenever a celebrity dies. by all reports (at least the ones I’ve been able to see), Prince had become the picture of health.

Given that, it must have been the flu vaccine. So sayeth TruthKings, the website run by antivaccine loon Sherri Tenpenny, proclaiming Vaccine Injury Suspected In Prince’s Death. Citing the emergency landing of Prince’s plane, Gary Barnes, the writer of this dreck, speculates:

The medical emergency which caused the plane to land remains unclear, but suspicion is now high that Prince was potentially given a flu shot injection or heavy doses of Tamiflu. Prince suffers from epilepsy, and the flu shot can be deadly for those suffering from that illness.

Of course, the story cited also reports that Prince says he no longer suffers seizures. Of course, vaccines are safe in children and adults with epilepsy, for whom routine vaccines on the vaccination schedule are still recommended.

Not that this stops Barnes from pulling this out of his posterior:

The key will be the discovery of Prince being given a flu shot, which isn’t clear as of yet. However the situation seems to reflect such potential.

Thank you, Gary Barnes. I laughed out loud again reading that. The situation seems to reflect such potential (of Prince having been given a flu shot)? Based on what information? Basically Barnes pulled that out of his nether regions. So outrageously dumb is it that one of the commenters at this new wretched hive of antivaccine scum and quackery asked, “Why would they give him a flu shot if he already had the flu?”

Exactly.

Even more hilariously, another commenter tries to explain: “Why do they give you a tetanus shot when you step on a nail?” Well, actually, you don’t if the person has had three or more doses of tetanus vaccine. In the case of an unclear vaccination history or not having had the vaccine, you givetetanus toxoid and a tetanus booster, the latter of which will boost the immune response in time to help prevent tetanus. This is not like the flu. Once you have the flu, it’s too late for the vaccine. In other words, Barnes is wrong, but I thank him for playing.

Still, I saved the best (if you can call it that) for last. I will admit that our old fried Mike Adams threw a bit of a curve ball. Apparently stymied by Prince’s being a vegan and having no known major health issues requiring treatment with pharmaceuticals, he cleverly retreats to using Prince’s death as an excuse to rant against vaccines as only he can in a post entitled No evidence Prince died from a flu shot... rumors are pure speculation that distract from the real vaccine holocaust harming children everywhere.

Yes, Adams starts out trying to be the sane one:

As one of the most outspoken critics of vaccines, I'd like to politely chime in on this rumor and say that to my knowledge, there is no evidence whatsoever linking Prince's death to a flu shot. These stories appear to be pure speculation. (And I say that as someone who likes both of those websites!)

For the record, it is absolutely true that flu vaccines do indeed kill some people. They severely damage some children, in fact, and many flu shots still contain mercury. I've actually tested flu shots in my laboratory (CWClabs.com) and found them to contain over 25,000 times the EPA limit of mercury in drinking water.

There is no question that injecting someone with toxic mercury is going to cause some sort of neurological damage. Sometimes it's subclinical damage that doesn't appear obvious, but other times it can be catastrophic... or even fatal. However, none of this means Prince was injected with a flu shot.

So much antivaccine crazy, leading up to stating the bleedingly obvious: that no one knows if Prince was vaccinated against the flu or not, much less whether it happened recently. It’s unlikely that it did, even if Prince did receive the vaccine, given that flu season is almost over. It’s far more likely that Prince died of the flu (or, even possibly a drug overdose) than it is that he died from the flu vaccine. Hell, given that he was a 57 year old man, it’s more likely that he died of a sudden unexpected heart attack or a cardiac arrhythmia than it is that he died because of the flu vaccine. It doesn’t take an intellectual giant to come to this conclusion, as evidenced by Adams coming to it.

The hilarity continues, though. Adams, knowing of Prince’s apparent belief in chemtrails and other woo, seems to think he’s found a kindred spirit. He goes on at length about how Prince “comes off as extremely well informed about certain agendas” and how he just knows that Prince was not “the kind of person who liked to be injected with vaccines in the first place.” Along the way, Adams spouts ridiculous claim about how he tested flu shots for mercury and found them to “contain over 25,000 times the EPA limit of mercury in drinking water.” I discussed how silly this all was in the long version. The short version is that vaccines and drinking water are two different things and that it’s utterly inappropriate to apply standards designed for drinking large quantities of water to 0.5 mL vials of flu vaccine.

Of course, the crazy in the post above was nothing compared to another post that Adams did about Prince entitled Prince is dead, the Queen is 90, and men can now pee all over the women's restroom toilet seats at Target (satire). It is truly the most amazing “WTF?” moment I’ve ever seen from Adams. You have to read it yourself to see how Adams uses Prince’s death as the introduction to a truly bizarre post about transgender bathroom laws.

The bottom line, of course, is that we don’t know what killed Prince. It could have been the flu, but, sadly, in light of the news being reported at TMZ.com about his having been treated recently for a drug overdose I find the likelihood that he died of a drug overdose to be the more plausible explanation, particularly given his rep’s reports that he had been battling the flu for “several weeks.” However, I do keep in mind that these stories are from TMZ.com and therefore should be taken with a huge grain of salt, even though TMZ.com did report it first and correctly that Prince had been found dead.

And let’s not forget that it could well have been the flu, as the flu does kill and Prince was seen at a local Walgreens looking “more frail and nervous than usual” the evening before his death. Whatever the cause of Prince’s death, the antivaccine loons who try to take reports that Prince might have died from the flu as a cue to try to blame his death on the flu vaccine are a despicable lot, same as it ever was.

R.I.P. Prince Rogers Nelson. I fear the attempts to co-opt your death are far from over.

oracknows Thu, 04/21/2016 - 21:00

Categories

Medicine

I know one thing, for nearly certain, around four sigma in certainty, Prince is dead.
Damned shame, too early, too few new releases of late, oh well. People die and I'm rather used to that. It happens when you're retired military, after near three decades of service, two wars and assorted operations.

Now, I and my wife also had an H1N1 influenza infection. It royally sucked. As in, removing all doubt about how the damned thing could kill someone. At six months, we were capable of carrying out daily life activities - barely. At a year, we were starting to become capable of normal operations.
Influenza isn't a joke, it's nastier than hell. I should know, both of my grandparents lost a spouse to it during the Spanish Influenza pandemic.
Indeed, in our half century and change lives, our immune systems are so damned strong, they're attacking our own bodies! Those are some serious, mean, nasty immune systems there! Mine is attacking various joints, intermittently, my thyroid incessantly and my wife's entire body, randomly.
In short, we're still not sure which autoimmune disease I have, my wife has Lupus. Currently, my thyroid is under the most major attack.
I'm fine with the latter, as I've already beat down the Incredible Hulk - three times. ;)

As for Prince, it's essentially day zero, no facts, loads of bovine defecation being displayed as a meal.
No, it's still the same thing that has to be composted to become fertilizer.
But, I see an astonishing amount of disrespect for a human being's life and loss of his life present in a certain crowd, using it for their cause, before his body even grew cold.
That is equally as disgusting as if one was one's own mother.

who would explain the absences by telling the press that the star was suffering from the flu.

Similar excuses were routinely made for aging first-secretaries-for-life in the various People Republics, East of the Iron Curtain.

I'm just going to avoid speculating as of now, and instead compliment Prince on his excellent choice of eyewear in the photo in the article. It is as if he took one look at the classic "hippie sunglasses" and asked himself "How can I make these even awesomer?".

It could well be days a long time before we know.

Something something autopsy something.

Cranks never cease to amaze me with both the depth and breadth of the awfulness they are capable of. It's not enough for Adams to write some screed about the evils of vaccines, he also had to go on some bizarre rant about transgender people and their urination habits? Boggles the mind.

^ And...

Adams, knowing of Prince’s apparent belief in chemtrails and other woo, seems to think he’s found a kindred spirit.

Dick Gregory's not going to last forever. Oo-ee-oo.

Bear in mind the northern hemisphere flu season may be almost over, but the southern hemisphere one is just starting.

Prince recently performed south of the equator, so the loons may propose he was vaccinated for the southern flu...

It's an unlikely scenario as he performed here a couple of months ago. I only got my quadrivalent shot, on the first day possible, about ten days ago.

If we're (rationally) speculating about ways in which a 57-year old man could die suddenly, let's not forget pulmonary embolism. PE probably kills more folks than commonly thought.

“How can I make these even awesomer?”.

One's third eye needs sun protection as well.

We have 2 in icu w/ h1n1. Both healthy, one in 30s, shes on vent. No vacc hx prior.

Rip Purple Rain.

"Prince recently performed south of the equator"

A-ha! A virulent chemtrails-induced strain of Zika virus!

I smell Monsanto all over this.

And if Prince was a healthy drug-avoiding vegan, what was he doing in Walgreens? Riddle me _that_.

Looks like flu season is waning pretty well but by no means over:

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

Let's not forget that Prince was of the wee-folk. He weighted 120 lbs dripping wet. If only he'd had a cheeseburger. He was a protein deficient wisp of a man too weak to fight to the flu.

My stepmother was Prince's junior high school music teacher in Minneapolis. He was kind of weird little guy even then, but totally into his music, to the exclusion of any sort of teen hijinks. He was never known around The Cities for any kind of drugs. He was an obsessive workaholic, writing at least one song a day. He not only played all the instruments and did all the production on all his records, but also on the records of other artists in his stable. The vocals on the two albums by The Time are by Morris Day, but everything else is Prince, which PO'ed the guys in the band 'cause they could all really play. You just can't work like he did if you're getting high and living the full rock-star lifestyle. Besides, Prince didn't need drugs, his head was trippy enough all by it's lonesome. Dude was eccentric as hell.

Considering his plane made an emergency landing in Moline so he could be taken to the hospital, I'd say a flu shot has to be the least likely cause of death, and the nutters are just doing the same-old trick of seeing everything though their particular obsessions. If you're a Tenpenny Hammer, everything bad looks like a Vaccine to be Nailed. But the only thing being driven at this point is yet another nail in the coffin of anti-vax as a significant cultural phenomenon. Farther and farther to the fringe it goes. As far as Prince's passing goes, the AVs are at the back of the line of the ghouls.
__________

If the flu can kill, Prince is the kind of guy who could ignore it until it reached crisis. They say he got some kind of injection in Moline, presumed (tenuously) by the tabloids to be a 'save shot' for opiate overdose. I don't know if the flu could cause a crisis that could be addressed by any kind of injection.

In addition to TMZ's 'sources' saying Prince was treated for an opiate OD, another gossip organ has 'sources' saying he had AIDS. He did have two degenerating hips in need of replacement for which he had refused surgery, apparently because JW's can't receive blood transplants. So there's speculation he was on heavy pain meds in order to keep performing. I found this comment on those 'theories' [edited]:

KDoc says:
I cannot believe that less than 24 hours after the world lost an icon, such speculations are being made. As for the AIDS allegation-have any of you seen someone in the final stages of HIV/AIDS??? I have-first hand and up close. They are not riding bicycles, hosting parties, or giving concerts. The end is horrific and the patient is in Hospice care with so much morphine they cannot move. As for the overdose speculation, JW’s don’t believe in medication. If he were an addict (like MJ) he would have had a personal physician or at least a handler who would have narcan and the knowledge of how to use it if and when hospitalization would be necessary. It is most likely death due to flu complications-such as bronchial edema or pneumonia. Even if it is discovered that his death was due to substance abuse, all of you should be ashamed of yourselves for these speculations.

I don't know if Prince did have a private physician. There's no mention of one in the news reports. As private, eccentric, and driven as Prince was, he's the kind of artist who could have been hit by any kind of serious health problem and just ignored it, try to wish it away, not tell anyone about it. On the day he was later spotted at his neighborhood Walgreens, he reportedly visited a hospital, was seen by a doctor and released, returning home to Paisley Park. Of course, you can buy all kinds of stuff at Walgreens. Maybe he was out of eye shadow.

Anyway, rest in peace, Prince Rogers Nelson. Here's a little of the Minneapolis sound, with Prince playing all the instruments, including the neo-Hendrix guitar:
https://youtu.be/8_eEzp0Kiew?t=4m

In addition to TMZ’s ‘sources’ saying Prince was treated for an opiate OD, another gossip organ has ‘sources’ saying he had AIDS. He did have two degenerating hips in need of replacement for which he had refused surgery, apparently because JW’s can’t receive blood transplants. So there’s speculation he was on heavy pain meds in order to keep performing.

Actually, after I wrote this, I thought of this possibility. All TMZ can report is that Prince was seen frequently at the Walgreens near his compound and that he didn't look so good when he was seen there the night before he died. This suggests to me that he had to refill lots of short term prescriptions. (Either that, or he needed to make a run for junk food. Potato chips, for example, and lots of other junk foods whose production doesn't involve animal products are perfectly acceptable vegan food.) So when I woke up this morning, I thought: Did Prince have a prescription opiate dependence? It is, unfortunately, a possibility, and it sounds more credible to me now that I know about his degenerative hip disease. I didn't know about that when I wrote this post.

I heard something similar from Toure, who wrote a biography of Prince and knew him well: the Purple One had avoided pain meds for as long as he could but needed them for his hip problem. The writer mentioned that Prince performed sitting at the piano recently because of this.

I was always captivated by his incredible musicality and fashionable weirdness.
I was also impressed that he sponsored a project that helped minority youth to learn how to code.

Did Prince have a prescription opiate dependence? It is, unfortunately, a possibility, and it sounds more credible to me now that I know about his degenerative hip disease. I didn’t know about that when I wrote this post.

My understanding too is that he was a Jehovah's Witness, and rumors were he was putting off hip surgery until he had no choice due to the transfusion restriction.

An emergency landing for the "flu" was so odd, especially since it was so close to it's destination.

Whether is was a vaccination or a drug THAT KILLED PRINCE, one thing is for sure -- his death was pharmaceutically related and there is no amount of damage control to cover that up, including this post.

One’s third eye needs sun protection as well.

After all, who'd want to be third eye blind?

It isn't that close. Moline, IL is still nearly 350 miles from Minneapolis.

Seriously, what is a person with severely degenerated joints supposed to do, Nancy?
NOT take pain meds?
Did you ever meet people like that?

Right, alternative medicine suggests cayenne, ginger and turmeric for pain. I'm sure that that will help them immensely.

Whether is was a vaccination or a drug THAT KILLED PRINCE, one thing is for sure — his death was pharmaceutically related and there is no amount of damage control to cover that up, including this post.

One other thing is sure, Nancy. You are an idiot.

These conspiritards must have had this story locked and loaded well before Prince's death was announced.

"blah blah blah INSERT SUDDEN DEATH CELEBRITY NAME HERE blah blah blah..."

Whether is was a vaccination or a drug THAT KILLED PRINCE, one thing is for sure — his death was pharmaceutically related and there is no amount of damage control to cover that up, including this post.

Oh have you conducted the autopsy that you could be so certain Nancy? Just another hysterical ghoul.

Moline, IL is still nearly 350 miles or so from Minneapolis.

That's about 45 minutes flying time, give or take. Maybe an hour if there was heavy traffic in the MSP area. So not a diversion you would do unless it was for something sufficiently serious and acute for those 45-60 minutes to make a difference. The flu itself wouldn't do that, but there are some complications of flu that might.

I've seen speculation elsewhere that Prince was trying to work in his studio and was unable to catch his breath. It's consistent with his personality--working in the studio was something that gave him pleasure--and consistent with what we know of his condition. It's at least as plausible as the drug overdose theory, and certainly more plausible than the flu vaccine or chemtrail flu theories the conspiracy-minded are pushing.

I briefly considered the AIDS theory and rejected it. It may have looked sudden in the case of Freddie Mercury, whose died hours after the fact that he had AIDS was announced, but it was a long-term thing: Queen had stopped touring several years earlier, and for some of the last studio recordings Mercury had to resort to extensive self-medication (he reportedly drank an entire bottle of some distilled liquor before recording the vocal of "The Show Must Go On"). It's still possible Prince had AIDS, but that's not what killed him.

However the situation seems to reflect such potential.

This is one of the most perfectly-worded weasel sentences I have ever read, and I am going to save it. I can't think of a single situation where this could not be used.

I mean, it's White House press secretary-worthy.

So, Nancy, under the right circumstances, all pharmaceuticals can kill you, and therefore, pharmaceuticals are bad.....

I feel the same way about water. After Natalie Wood drowned, I swore off water entirely. Been living on hopes and dreams ever since.

Really, Nancy, really? Speaking as the wife of a man with severe degenerative joint disease, you likely wouldn't last 5 minutes in his shoes without screaming for those pharmaceuticals you so smugly, snidely, and stupidly decry.

By the by, your idiotic comment does beg a question: Since you are so certain this musical genius' death was "pharmaceutically related," do you think that if a person never takes a pharmaceutical they will live forever? I would actually like to see an answer to this question.

My apologies to fellow readers for what is likely a failed blockquote. I've never done it before and do not anticipate success on this first attempt.

I briefly considered the AIDS theory and rejected it. It may have looked sudden in the case of Freddie Mercury, whose died hours after the fact that he had AIDS was announced, but it was a long-term thing: Queen had stopped touring several years earlier, and for some of the last studio recordings Mercury had to resort to extensive self-medication (he reportedly drank an entire bottle of some distilled liquor before recording the vocal of “The Show Must Go On”). It’s still possible Prince had AIDS, but that’s not what killed him.

He also looked terrible in the video for "These Are The Days Of Our Lives." All the soft lighting and black and white filming in the world couldn't hide that. He looked gaunt as hell. https://youtu.be/oB4K0scMysc

Wow... I knew Mike Adams was a total anti-vaccine scienc denialis and woo'ny... but also being an ugly transphobic bigot?

Hey Mikey... I know you read this blog... and thus likely to see this comment... so this one is for you too:

https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/denial-is-not-a-river/

sadmar: Love the quote, made my afternoon. I will likely borrow or make a variation of it at some point:

If you’re a Tenpenny Hammer, everything bad looks like a Vaccine to be Nailed.

Whether is was a vaccination or a drug THAT KILLED PRINCE, one thing is for sure — his death was pharmaceutically related and there is no amount of damage control to cover that up, including this post.

Funny how she never even considers the possibility that it was neither a vaccine nor a drug that killed Prince - to hear these people talk you'd think humans were immortal before the advent of pharmaceuticals.

Yesterday when I heard of Prince's death and a possible connection with flu, I knew the loons would be out.

Look in Diseases of Man and find how many different diseases start with flu like symptoms.

Prince is riding away in his little red corvette wearing a raspberry beret.

Somebody over at Forbes yesterday had an article speculating on how influenza could have killed him. I found that rather annoying as well given that no one knows the true cause of death. I'm sure the anti-vaccine people will accuse us of opportunistically speculating as well.

Yeah, me too, which is why I mentioned it. The blogger is, however, a friend. Perhaps I should have e-mailed him and explained that I thought he was jumping the gun and that his post was way too click-baity. He's usually a lot better than that.

I saw some of the HIV speculation on the web this morning, and I wasn't surprised. I'm sure lots of people would take satisfaction in the idea that Prince, with his flamboyant sexual persona, died of AIDS. It'd give them a great opportunity to tut-tut about what awful choices he made.

I can't help but be reminded of the accidental overdose that killed Heath Ledger. All the creative genius in the world cannot guarantee good judgement when self medicating.
http://www.m.webmd.com/men/news/20080206/accidental-overdose-killed-hea…

Prince had a history of idiopathic epilepsy, which would have put him at risk of sudden death through an as-yet poorly understood mechanism. Other potential causes of sudden death in a 57 year old man include MI, ruptured aortic aneurysm, CVA from a cerebral aneurysm, AV malformation or atherosclerosis, pulmonary embolism, pneumonia and sepsis.
I have seen all of these as causes of sudden unexpected death in middle-aged people.

They OD speculation makes me uncomfortable. I don't really like all the speculation in general but I feel it's very disrespectful to suggest the man was an addict especially absent any public acknowledgement of such a problem. Similar problem with the AIDS theory.

Sorry to stray away from the subject of this blog, but I had to react on something written.

@ Kay Brown
Read your blog and some stuff on it and I'm not sure I an fully agree with the idea that a transgender always wants a traditional life with a husband and perhaps adopted children. I've known several who were lesbian and didn't fit in your autogynephilia category.
Alas there is no posibilty to react on your blog or contact you (which I can understand), so I react in this way.

Dear God, DrRJM, you've hit on it. The conspiracy theorists must have killed Prince so they could speculate on the cause of his death. They probably had prepared scripts for what they'd say about it!

Orac wrote: "Whatever the cause of Prince’s death, the antivaccine loons [...] are a despicable lot"

Rayne at Insufferable Intolerance blog posted a phenomenally accurate description of the typical antivaxxer on his Facebook page. He ought to know; he almost died twice because of them!

https://www.facebook.com/InsufferableIntolerance/posts/627437110750744:0

Whether is was a vaccination or a drug THAT KILLED PRINCE, one thing is for sure — his death was pharmaceutically related and there is no amount of damage control to cover that up, including this post.

Whatever killed Prince, one thing is for sure -- no amount of 'vaccine injury' can explain the paranoid divagations boiling up your brain!

Francois #42 that would be HER Facebook page.

Studies show that gender dysphoria is caused by glyphosate or excessive vaccines, which explains why it is increasing. And it's your own fault for poisoning yourself. But colloidal silver can help, and it's on sale.
(Yes, this is sarcasm. )

@ Sadmar
"If you’re a Tenpenny Hammer, everything bad looks like a Vaccine to be Nailed."

Brilliant! Possibly the best thing you eve posted here Sadmar!

@ORAC
Did Prince have a prescription opiate dependence? It is, unfortunately, a possibility, and it sounds more credible to me now that I know about his degenerative hip disease.
The speculation is hot and heavy about this.Especially considering what we know bout Percocet.

But colloidal silver can help, and it’s on sale.

Colloidal silver may help with gender dysphoria, but it can cause species dysphoria, in that you may turn into a smurf.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/paul-karanson-papa-smurf-turned-blue-colloi…

I'm just going to wait for the autopsy results.

Hey, Dave, you should call those of us in the C.A.M. realm a few more names, simply because we disagree with your Education-by-Pharmaceutical Brochure "logic."

Whether you care to admit it or not, you're part of a bigger cult than any of us "quacks" could ever dream up; you've been indoctrinated into the AMA cult, which is a legal monopoly specializing in "doctors" that routinely die in their late 50s or early 60s---that is, if they don't off themselves before then. These same "doctors," in their quest to achieve god-like status, thus try to advise OTHERS on the health benefits of injecting attenuated viruses, heavy metals and formaldehyde, and cytotoxic agents into their bodies.

Sure, sport. Whatever you say, because, hey, you once passed a physiology course.

But I'm sure, down deep, you're the one MD in America that refuses to accept all those generous commissions from Big Pharma, right? And I'm sure you'd rather picket night and down outside a convention center than accept an invitation to one of those AMA-sponsored CE weekends, right?

I'm glad I earned a REAL research doctorate, like a Ph.D., rather than some Symptom Care Certificate from the AMA.

And while I don't agree for a minute that Prince died from a flu shot---his long-term vegetarian lifestyle and faulty genetic blueprint most likely did him in---to hear someone like you rant and rave and call everyone not in your AMA cult a "quack" and a "crank"...

It's nauseating.

Hey, Dave, how ever old you are now, count the years until 58, because that's the magic expiration number for your average male physicians. Good luck, buddy.

I dare you to post that last comment.

What are you hearing this speculation? I don't know.. Possibly because the US Government has given out $3.5 billion in settlements for vaccine injuries and deaths by vaccinations since 1986 AND Prince has a history of seizures that could indicate he would be very susceptible to an adverse reaction by a flu shot? I mean really man. Come on.

And FYI, doctors give flu shots to people with the flu all the time. They're brainwashed, overzealous morons that thing that people can't possibly exist modern medicine.

Seriously.. get a life man and develop some critical thinking skills while you're at it.

I’m glad I earned a REAL research doctorate, like a Ph.D., rather than some Symptom Care Certificate from the AMA.

What a coincidence! So did I! Or didn't you know that I have a PhD in addition to my MD? :-)

BTW, what is your PhD in?

I dare you to post that last comment.

Be careful what you ask for...

BTW, what is your PhD in?

Nelson only says his research doctorate is "like a Ph.D". That leaves a lot of options.

@Nelson

Do you happen to have a citation for 58 being the average age of death among male physicians? I mean, you wouldn't just pull a number out of your nether regions, would you? If only there were some studies looking at mortality in physicians.

Colloidal silver is also good against colloidal lycanthropes.

@Nelson - besides not liking being called a quack, did you have something specific you disagreed with Orac on?

I’m glad I earned a REAL research doctorate, like a Ph.D., rather than some Symptom Care Certificate from the AMA.

So many people comment here, inadvertently demonstrating their poor research skills and unwillingness to do any due diligence before writing. A few days ago it was Toni B failing the "Who is Orac?" test, and now Nelson stumbles in displaying their ignorance and failing to do the most basic fact checking.

I dare you to post that last comment.

Clearly Nelson has not been reading this blog for very long if they think people disagreeing with Orac end up banned, or their comments withheld. People really have to work for that.

He owned a house in this neck of the woods and though my better half did not know him, he knows people who did, and he was reputed to be soft-spoken, not fond of curse words, quite religious, and not a partier by any stretch.

Probably the most underrated American guitarist of his generation and in my top 3 of live musical performers. However he died, it was too soon, and I am sad that he seemingly passed all alone.

No backing track and in the pouring rain. Eat it, everyone else. http://deadspin.com/lets-watch-princes-super-bowl-halftime-show-the-bes…

He did have two degenerating hips in need of replacement for which he had refused surgery, apparently because JW’s can’t receive blood transplants. So there’s speculation he was on heavy pain meds in order to keep performing.

There are ways around this for elective surgery - you do an "autotransfusion". You take units of the patient's blood, process them and store them, then thaw them out for the surgery. And there are now scavengers to collect and return blood during surgery.

But he might not have been to the point of accepting the need yet. or was misinformed about the ways to avoid the typical transfusions.

Not all JWs accept autotransfusion as religiously acceptable. In fact, many of them don't. There is a school of thought in JW that once the blood is out of the body, that's it.

I’m glad I earned a REAL research doctorate, like a Ph.D.

From a university that readers are likely to have heard of, or from a diploma mill?

BTW, what is your PhD in?

Also a relevant question. I have a Ph.D. myself, but I don't claim to be an expert in biomedical subjects because said degree is in physics. I know it's even possible to get a Ph.D. in fields that have nothing to do with science--most professors in liberal arts departments would fit that description. Assuming arguendo that you got your Ph.D. equivalent at a real university, that only means that at the time you finished your thesis you were the world's leading expert in some particular subject of some particular sub-sub-sub-field. It doesn't mean you know anything about anything else--indeed, many a Ph.D. holder has become notorious for holding kooky views in subjects outside of the field in which they earned the Ph.D. (Linus Pauling and Brian Josephson being just two examples that immediately come to mind).

The Dunning-Kruger is strong in this one.

many a Ph.D. holder has become notorious for holding kooky views in subjects outside of the field in which they earned the Ph.D.

Well, except for me, of course.

But I'll go emeritus before too long, and then, watch out world!

If earning an MD isn't innoculation against quackery, neither is earning a PhD is any field from any school. Nelson's academic achievements are irrelevant to his bonkers anti-doctor screed, which is filled with assertions that, had they any validity, could be supported by research in history/law/sociology/economics...

I really shouldn't dignify that comment by reply, but the notion that no MD's refuse to accept 'generous commissions' from pharmaceutical companies is so pathetic as argument I guess I'll feed the troll this once. The burden of proof for the claim is massive, but the real problems are that it's so misleading. The larger premise is that all MDs belong to some Borgian think-alike cult. Thus, the implication is that most MDs are on the take from the generous largess of Pharma. But the literal claim is limited: 'those MDs offered generous commissions accept them.' Now this could be true, and absolutely trivial, since only a handful of MD could be offered "generous commissions", these offers could only be extended to MDs the pharmas knew would accept them, and of course, the commissions could be for valuable work that saves lives.

Sorry Eric, I don't see any D-K here, as there's no claim to knowledge, just infantile ranting.

@ Eric, @ sadmar - perhaps Nelson has too much investment in movie scientists.
https://upmic.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/real-vs-movie-scientist1.png

I suspect that this PhD like degree came from a school like the U. of Berkeley.. If you notice I didn't say UC-B. U of Berkeley was in some corn field in Iowa (I believe it is no longer selling degrees). I won't go in to how I know of this supposed school but didn't directly involve me..

Nelson's rant reads like a textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Nelson said: "But I’m sure, down deep, you’re the one MD in America that refuses to accept all those generous commissions from Big Pharma, right?"

Yet again a troll valiantly sallies forth, armed with a plastic spork, neglecting to dig deep enough to find out that ALL payments from pharmaceutical companies to doctors are on a public database.

Arguing with these guys is like stepping on a centipede with legs on only one side, which spends its life walking in circles. Who do we call to get trolls with a triple-digit IQ?

I dropped out of grad school twice. Yet, with my measly BSAA I know how to produce verifiable scientific documentation after making a claim, and what is even more important: admit I made a mistake.

Hmmm ... Merl Haggard believes in chemtrails and dies. Prince believes in chemtrails and dies.

I severely doubt chemtrails exists in any form than high-bypass turbo-fan engines causing moisture to condense and leave visible trails. Chemtrails is pretty obviously hokum.

That said it seems clear to me that belief in chemtrails is deadly.

Well, technically, chemtrails do exist. They're the contrails and exhaust of the U-2 spy plane and formerly, the SR-71 spy plane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-7
Nothing at all like what the conspiracy theorists think, but technically correct, as the exhaust plume would have otherwise been highly visible on radar and thermally.

Art, I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but I'd like to point out that Haggard was 79. I can't figure out why the government/illuminati/ reptilians would bother. (Seriously, just wait for a stiff breeze to knock him down.)
However, I'd point out that stress is known to be unhealthy for people, especially old people, and worrying about non-existent things does add to one's stress level.

Palindrom: PE probably kills more folks than commonly thought.

Considering that he was traveling a lot, and had a couple of medical emergencies in the last few days of his life, this makes a lot of sense. I wonder what the autopsy says.

DB@11

Erm... New Zealand isn't exactly zika prone. (I presume he performed in other areas south of the equator, but haven't checked up)

@Orac: Going off on a total and complete tangent, I'm curious as to what you mean by 'signing off on charts'? I mean, wouldn't this be done at the time you made each entry? I'm a GP in the UK and can't think of anything I'd do in a between-patients moment that would quite correspond to this. I know it's not relevant to your post, but am just curious as to how things work in other medical systems!

According to the first page of a Google search, there are 970,000 doctors in the US. How much does each of them need to overcome any moral qualms about mass murder? Would you need the same amount each for the 10,000,000 or so world wide? In the US the pharmaceutical market is around 350 billion but only 30% is profit. So a pot of 105 billion to spread around. So, I guess each doctor in the US gets approx 100K per year pharma shill money? Hmmm, but that leaves no money for research and advertising....we know that big pharma spends more on advertising than research. Let's say only half the profit is used. So 50K a year to all doctors in the US. A fair bit less than the average doctors salary isn't it? Wait a minute, it's not just doctors. What about hospital administrators? They need some loot. The people at the Pharmaceutical companies that process the bribes probably need a bung or two. The tax inspectors would need to be paid off wouldn't they? Pretty sure this sort of thing would show up in regular audits. So, what, 20K? Per year? To take part in mass murder? Get more than that as a hitman wouldn't you? Maybe that's what is really happening. Doctors don't get bribes. Hitmen do. Every doctor gets a letter saying that 20K has been put aside to pay a hitman to get rid of them if they don't stick to the party line. Maybe Orac could post his letter?

Snark!

@Numberwang #74

In the US the pharmaceutical market is around 350 billion

And let's not forget that "the pharmaceutical market" is subdivided in several companies, in competition with each other, but who mysteriously find a common ground to share funds to pay / corrupt all these people.
(In fact, competition and pressure is one of the major reasons why companies commit fraud in the first place !)

I'm not going to totally disagree with you because the autopsy comes back, but I see you're against anti-vaxxers well I just happen to be one that u so find humor in! I'm not a Dr MA RN LPN or CNA I'm jus a southern country girl that's done her research . I'll use the tetanus as an example a child gets a Dtap Vitamin K an Hep B ? Why I don't think they'll be having sex exchanging body fluids as in sex an the funniest one of all is the tetanus why does such a small child need one ESPECIALLY if they can't walk ?!?! U can step on rusty nails all day long as long if it has livestock manure or fecal matter that penetrates the skin. So Tetanus is not needed unless u work or visit a farm an some how it penetrates a small child's skin. Few weeks ago I was tearing down a horse stall had boots on but soles was wore out went clean thru my skin between my metatarsal I had to use my other foot to step on board an yank my foot off nail that had been laying in horse crap for years an years I haven't had a tetanus shot since I was a kid I'm 44 soaked it in Epsom salts an that's it. People like u give false information to your patients my kids Pediatric Drs dropped them when I said u won't stick my kids again with no damn vaccine my son is 5 his last shots was around 12 months NEVER is he sick I feed them organic Non gmos Etc if anybody takes the time to read this ask ur child's Dr the ones who care so much to give you the insert of each vaccine an then ask them to sign a waiver that they know nothing will go wrong or be damaged if it's their first or third . They won't it use to upset me but I find it quite funny it don't take a PHD or Rocket science to read the poison they jab in our children. Stop listening and research yourself let's put a dent in. Big Pharmas wallet!! Agree or dissagree I'm not changing my mind no more that vaxxers are!!!

Hey, NumberWang, what about us nurses?

We spend a load of time doling out drugs and monitoring folk for effects, both good and less good. Don't we qualify for some of that Big Pharma Shill moolah?

And then there's the pharmacists...

Expensive business paying us all off so that the millions of us involved never, ever, ever spill any beans about The Conspiracy.

Or do I not count 'cos I'm in the UK?

Hey, Nelson: if we are trading claims about qualifications and experience, well I have a degree in environmental sciences (before I came into nursing) and spend much of my spare time bird watching.

All that has taught me that if something looks like a duck, swims like a duck, spends its time with other ducks, then it will most likely make that sound that ducks make, you know the one...

I suspect NumberWang is a Poe. But just in case: You do realize that one of the problems with running a conspiracy is the risk that someone will spill the beans, right? And that the more people involved in the conspiracy, the more likely someone will spill the beans, right? That's the fatal flaw in almost every conspiracy theory out there.

Orac has been known to direct his Respectful Insolence at what he calls quackademic medicine: infiltrations of woo into mainstream medical schools. If the pharmaceutical companies were really as all-powerful as NumberWang's conspiracy theory implies, any impulses that a medical school to include alt-med programs would be terminated with extreme prejudice. Which is demonstrably not true.

any impulses that a medical school to include alt-med programs would be terminated with extreme prejudice. Which is demonstrably not true.

Although, to paraphrase the great Robert Park, it should be.

@Crystal (77)

There is a little thing called neonatal tetanus, sometimes known as the 7 day death.

The WHO estimates it killed about 787,000 babies a year not long ago. That is about 6 out of a 1000 child births.

A big reason we don'T have a similar rate in the US is because we give a lot of DTP shots, including to pregnant mothers to help protect their infants.

Vitamin K protects babies against uncontrolled bleeding to death before their systems get going properly.

http://www.who.int/immunization/diseases/MNTE_initiative/en/

So how about turning one of your run on sentences into a simple syllogism with supporting evidence?

@ Dr Sarah: in the US, most doctors dictate after a procedure into a recording via telephone which is transcribed and placed on the chart either while the person is still inpatient or afterwards. If it's after the patient is discharged, the doctor still needs to go sign that report after reviewing it for accuracy. Sitting in the Medical Records area or in an office, "signing off" charts, is a regular activity.

It's also used when reviewing labwork/pathology/other tests done upon request by other specialty results, since those usually are received after the patient has left the office. The MD is required to review them and sign off on them.

@Eric Lund: look at NumberWang's post again...you missed the "snark" at the end. He's posted before. Just a very wry sense of humor.

I certainly hope Crystal doesn't get tetanus from her foot injury that she soaked in Epsom salts. That's not an illness or death I would wish on anyone. Though, given she typed her screed with little punctuation, one could worry that it's already starting to affect her brain.

Crystal--

That's like saying "I ride a motorcycle without a helmet and I'm fine." This puncture wound, this time, didn't give you tetanus, but nobody has ever claimed that all puncture wounds kill. You're an adult, which means you get to risk your life rather than get a tetanus booster. That doesn't make it a good idea.

However, since you are avoiding the pertussis booster, stay away from infants and small children. Your life is your own to risk: a small child's is not.

Nelson of the "CAM realm" tells us that the average male physician dies at age 58. Actually, typical life expectancy is 73 years, higher than some other professionals and better than males in general:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11020591

Gotta love the crank belief to which Nelson and so many alties subscribe, which states that the A.M.A. rules the medical profession. In reality, A.M.A. membership has been declining for years, only about 15% of practicing physicians are A.M.A. members, and the organization has no real power to regulate the profession.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153537/

Whatever degree Nelson has that is "like a PhD", it obviously did not mandate elementary reading and statistical skills.

Do Jews vaccinate their kids?

Are vaccines kosher?

To rebut the "just a Southern girl" comment, on the contrary, we have a vibrant and strong medical community here involving highly educated medical, research, and health care professionals. There are certainly high levels of chronic disease concerns in the South. If diabetes was as painful as shingles, we'd have a much much lower rate of DM problems. Further,
our ability to combat infectious disease through vaccination is substantial, most states in the South have 98+ compliance rates. And it ain't because we're a bunch of stupid rural hicks following the herd of sheep. It seems we understand evidence-based better than a majority of the supposed "smart" communities open to infectious disease with dreadful 75-85 vaccination rates. So smart, yet dumb as a sack a mud.

Do Jews vaccinate their kids?

Yes

Are vaccines kosher?

Yes

Is Mephistopheles a rabbi?

Do vaccines contain porcine matter?

YES

I like it when the stupid shows its face, if only because I believe there's a segment of rational fence-sitters who might read and think, "I don't want to sit with that."

I’ll use the tetanus as an example a child gets a Dtap Vitamin K an Hep B ? Why I don’t think they’ll be having sex exchanging body fluids as in sex

Whenever I see mockery over giving children the Hepatitis jab, I know I'm dealing with a typically ignorant antivaxxer.
@Crystal McClinton #77:
Hepatitis B is not only spread through sexual contact. It can be spread through bodily fluids like blood. Biting and scratching can transmit it, and children frequently do both. In addition, Hep B virus can survive outside the body for a week. If you refuse the jab, you are putting your children at risk of a disease that can cause liver failure later in life, necessitating an expensive and unpleasant transplant to survive. That is, if there is a donor liver available.

Do vaccines contain porcine matter?

According to http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipi…, only Influenza (FluMist) Quadrivalent and Zoster (Shingles – Zostavax) contain "hydrolyzed porcine gelatin".

M O'B -- Well, there's also the consideration that the vast majority of Jews I've known have been at least somewhat secular and pay no attention to kosher.

Are vaccines kosher?

Kashrut only applies to food, you moron.

First Rabbi Mephistopheles and now Rabbi Narad :)

As Wendy O. Williams would say --
"A pig is a pig and that's that"

How about aborted human fetal tissue?

I guess Rabbi Mephistopheles and Rabbi Narad would say that's kosher too ...

http://shalomhealthlchaim.blogspot.com/2011/03/kosher-vaccines.html

How about aborted human fetal tissue?

Vaccines do not contain aborted foetal tissue, Captain Ignorant.

Rabbi bob seems to believe a great many silly things written on the Interwebs.

Oy gevult!

Rabbi Julian -- please read this piece for the ingredients of vaccine which include aborted human fetal tissue as well as pig...

http://shalomhealthlchaim.blogspot.com/2011/03/kosher-vaccines.html

One reason that pig-derived material in vaccines or medicines will not make them of limits to observant Jews is the principle of pikuach nefesh: the preservation of life _mandatorily_ takes precedent over all but a few commandments. (The commandments that cannot be broken are those relating to idolatry and, more or less, blasphemy.) Not a rabbi, of course, but this is Judaism 101. People have strange ideas about Jewish and Muslim attitudes toward pigs and pork; it's as if they think it's like vampires and garlic.

One has to love all of the lecturing going on. We have a "country girl" who redefines the origin of tetanus (it's not only in animal excrement, it's also a soil bacteria), people telling Jews about what Judaism requires and "like a Ph D" (whateverinhell that is).
Seriously, it's like dinner with a free show!

What we're actually seeing is a combination of Kruger-Dunning and an indictment of the failure of both our mental health care system and our educational system.

Please read this

http://shalomhealthlchaim.blogspot.com/2011/03/kosher-vaccines.html

"Orthodox Jewish parents, like responsible parents across the United States, overwhelmingly vaccinate their children against measles, mumps, rubella, polio and the other childhood diseases for which inoculations are now almost miraculously commonplace. As in many communities, a small minority of parents chooses not to do so. The ongoing measles outbreak demonstrates how this could bear very serious consequences, not only for their own children but others’ too, especially those medically unable to be vaccinated. The Orthodox Union (OU) and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) strongly urge all parents to vaccinate their healthy children on the timetable recommended by their pediatrician."

https://www.ou.org/news/statement-vaccinations-ou-rabbinical-council-am…

O/T -- But when are the doings of snake-oil salesmen like Mecola ever O/T at RI?

http://wonkette.com/600910/snake-oil-bulletin-no-quacks-for-old-men

DB -- Yeah, but what does this so-called "Orthodox Union (OU) and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA)" know about Judaism? They're obviously just pharma shills.

/sarc

I gotta say also, that bob's 'not kosher' argument is especially hilarious given how many tremendous advances in medicine have come from Jewish (religious or simply ethnic) researchers. Salk himself came from Jewish roots, according to Wiki.

I'm not patting myself on the back here, seeing as how I'm a total goy.

I guess Rabbi Mephistopheles and Rabbi Narad would say that’s kosher too …

Are vaccines food? What part of the word "kosher" are you not understanding?

One reason that pig-derived material in vaccines or medicines will not make them of limits to observant Jews is the principle of pikuach nefesh

It's possible to argue that vaccination is a mitzvah aseh on multiple halachic grounds.

I went to grad school with a guy from the 'hood' who insisted you could buy a contract hit in Detroit for $500. That was 1979-ish, so even adjusting for inflation, if the Big Pharmaspiracy wanted to put people in hospitals, or morgues, they wouldn't be paying off MDs. They're too pricey. I'll leave it to Murmur to weigh in on how much it takes to buy a hit from a nurse.

I'm very concerned about the bob epidemic. So many many people on the Internet have symptoms of bob, and the number grows by the day. By 2032, 80% of the boys born will end up on the bob spectrum. Something must be causing this alarming trend. It must be the vaccines.

They’re obviously just pharma shills.

Are Alt-Med shills paid in Dunning-Krugerrands?

For anyone having trouble decoding the reference to Wendy O. Williams above. WOW was the vocalist for the shock-punk band the Plasmatics. She committed suicide in 1998.

Plasma—>suicide.

Perhaps backmasking on Plasmatics records is hiding screams of "INJECT PORCINE MATTER!", 'INJECT HUMAN FETAL TISSUE!"

And what about Queen records? We all know what happened to Freddy MERCURY. Wanna bet 'Bohemian Rhapsody' played backwards at the right speed says "SHOOT ME UP WITH THIMERISAL!"

The signs are right in front of you sheeple. Connect the dots!

It might help to double check your spelling.

MarkN #113: two hoom re uu spiiking?

From your reference, bob:

If you are following Yahweh's laws, one of the things you are not to consume is pig. You are not to eat it, nor are you to even touch it if it's dead!

So I guess football is right out.

Also, there are several references to Dr Andrew Moulden and his arguments against vaccines. Moulden was a smart but tragic fellow who was seriously mentally ill and eventually committed suicide.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Andrew_Moulden
http://vaccineconspiracytheorist.blogspot.ca/2011/01/quack-of-day-dr-an…

Rabbi Julian — please read this piece for the ingredients of vaccine which include aborted human fetal tissue as well as pig…

I guess bob and his superduper blogger never heard of filter sterilisation. And geez, you'd think someone would notice a pig in a vial.

Please read this

Narad, Julian and Mephistopheles being insufficiently rabbinical for bob, he refers us instead to the unquestionable authority of "Kim, wife to one and mother to five".

@ #53 Nellson
"I dare you to post that last comment."

And I triple dog dare you to get better informed.

Narad, Julian and Mephistopheles being insufficiently rabbinical for bob, he refers us instead to the unquestionable authority of “Kim, wife to one and mother to five”.

Who, BTW, is neither a Jew nor, apparently, interested in the details:

"Kosher to us means that it follows YHWH's guidelines of what is okay to put in our bodies and what is not. We do not follow the Jewish guidelines for keeping kosher which involves the blessing of a Rabbi and all sorts of other stuff."

Crystal: I’m jus a southern country girl that’s done her research."

And quit school after sixth grade, apparently. I doubt you even have a high school diploma. News flash, hun, real research isn't "I looked up some bullshit online." I hope you don't have kids, ever, or that they go to a better home.

Not terribly relevant, but just read this about the contributions of 'the king' to vaccine promotion

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/24/elvis-presley-polio-vacc…

"Kosher to us means that it follows YHWH’s guidelines of what is okay to put in our bodies and what is not"

That is some impressive goysplaining right there. Someone woke up one morning and thought "This whole business of defining a group identity through the observance of arbitrary purity laws, the Jews are not doing it properly, fortunately we're here to show them how Judaism works." How can you do that?!

Herr doctor, it seems to be a relatively recent trend. Just a week ago or so, John Kasich was doing that with a Rabbi and group of Talmudic scholars during their religious studies and telling them all about Joseph or something. He muddled it horribly, in a way that any other group of men would've beaten him to a pulp over.
Embarrassing, really.

"the Jewish guidelines for keeping kosher which involves the blessing of a Rabbi and all sorts of other stuff.”

I'm guessing that by "other stuff" she means "Christian blood in the Matzoh".

@MI Dawn: Ah, thanks! That not only makes sense, it also answers another question I thought of - namely, how it works using electronic records in a hospital. In the UK, we use electronic records in general practice, but in hospital everything's written.

And, yes, we have to sign off on results all the time as well, plus incoming letters. But of course consultation notes are normally made and saved at the time of each patient - easier to do when they're coming to you instead of you doing ward rounds!

Here is some reading material for Chrystal and her punctured foot: Philosophic Objection to Vaccination as a Risk for Tetanus Among Children Younger Than 15 Years.

Oh, Crystal.... So many misconceptions, so little time. I'll try to hit a few that haven't already been hit:

* C. tetani actually has no particular affinity to rust. Nails do not have to be rusty to introduce the organism.

* C. tetani also has no affinity to livestock stool. You find stuff like E. coli in there; livestock stool is hardly clean, but is more associated with food poisoning than with tetanus.

* C. tetani furthermore has no particular affinity to agriculture. It can be encountered just about anywhere on Earth. You do not have to be walking barefoot outdoors to encounter it. It rarely produces its toxin, tetanospasmin, but when it does, the stuff is so incredibly toxic that undetectably tiny exposures are all it takes. (Tetanospasmin is the second deadliest toxin known, after botulin.) It is thus virtually impossible to eliminate the risk of exposure. The only effective prevention is vaccination.

* Epsom salts became fashionable for a time as having some special healing properties, but for this you can thank the same people who decided to market magnesium sulfate as Epsom Salts -- the people of Epsom, in Surrey. Magnesium sulfate is beneficial for certain things (it's used intravenously in treatment of pre-eclampsia, for instance), but the soaks are just about useless. It's no better than using table salt -- and table salt is cheaper.

Regarding Prince -- as soon as I heard the flu mentioned, I too knew the crazies were gonna come out. So far, here in the Twin Cities, the mourning has been a much bigger deal and nobody much is speculating about the cause. First Avenue held an all-night dance party, no cover charge. The 35W bridge, the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, the Como Conservatory and more were lit up purple. Target Field did a showing of "Purple Rain". The fence outside of Paisley Park is festooned with flowers and purple balloons, left by fans. Speculation about cause of death has been very subdued, overwhelmed just by sadness at his abrupt passing.

I know someone who knows someone who was one of the last people who saw him alive. But out of respect I am not going to ask any questions. None of my business, whatsoever.

So, Bob, how do you know whether Mephistopheles is a rabbi? He's certainly doing his best to teach people here.

I have no idea of whether Mephistopheles is ordained, or even whether he's Jewish, but a rabbi is not a priest*: the word means teacher, and a person doesn't have to be trained as a rabbi to lead services, perform weddings, etc. I have a friend who regularly leads services at her synagogue, including for the high holidays. The rest of the week, what she teaches is biology.

*Secular authorities may insist that only certain people may perform legally binding weddings. So you get things like a judge or justice of the peace doing what the state requires, while a relative or friend handles the ritual side.

“Christian blood in the Matzoh”

Some fans feel he jumped the shark with this album, but I believe it's one of the Captain's finest.

My Daughter Danielle was a nurse a RN, beautiful, young healthy
she got a flu shot and two weeks later she was dead, she was working in Florida.
her immune number was 0, she had nothing to fight with.
she had been to the ER twice and released her,
i don't know why she died, someone called me and told me, she worked on a Friday and went out to lunch, Monday she was dead.
This was December 1 2014---i have no closure.

Calli Arcale: "I know someone who knows someone who was one of the last people who saw him alive. But out of respect I am not going to ask any questions. None of my business, whatsoever."

Just as well. You know that it is both "hear-say" and an anecdote. Personally I am withholding judgement until there is more data available. Especially since reading about his recent health issues, and him not getting hip surgery (something my dad said he resisted at first, but was so glad he did!). If the hip issue is true, he must have been in serious pain, hence the pain meds.

We should pull baby boomer privilege and let no one under the age of fifty who has never ever broken a bone nor had any kind of age related disorder comment from now on.

But that is not going to happen. The reality is that an investigation will be done, and in a few months be released to the public. and then no one will care because they will be focused on someone else for no real reason other than the passing of time.

Well, the labs alone will take a fair amount of time to get back. CSI is excellent fiction, but cultures and some parts of a toxicology screen take a fair amount of time to be performed.
Hell, there's been a great deal of supposition of pain medication, where nothing has been absolutely reported as fact (HIPPAA and all). The only fact that is currently, absolutely known is that he's dead. Everything else is supposition, suggestion and innuendo.

@Linda L Remaley: That's so sad. I'm sorry the autopsy which should have been done didn't find any results that have brought you closure. But, remember, google is forever and you've posted on many sites that your daughter died of the FLU - NOT from the vaccine (which would not and could not have given her the flu).

Please note that on this site we question all such postings and use google to view changes in story.

@ sadmar #114

MarkN #113: two hoom re uu spiiking?

Reminds me of a dialogue I read in a webcomic:
Faithful sidekick - "Sir! Watch your grammar!"
Dark Lord in barbarian disguise - "What's wrong with my grammar?"
Faithful sidekick - "Nothing! That's the point!"

@ Science Mom #117

And geez, you’d think someone would notice a pig in a vial.

Aah, now that you mention it, I reckon that's the bit sticking out. I knew I had troubles putting the cap back on the vial.

Also, I am reminded of Dibbler's sausages. "Real pig products".

@Linda L Remaley #132, I'm sorry for your loss. However, you seem to be implying that the flu shot was what caused your daughter's death. What is your evidence for that?

@Julian Frost: She doesn't have any. If you google, you'll find her 45 year old daughter died from Influenza A and had medical problems. It wasn't caused by the flu shot (and, if Linda's comments are correct and one trusts contemporary media articles), the fact that her daughter got the flu shot 2 weeks before her death, was seen in the ER a few days after that with the flu, given Tamiflu, seen again in the ER, but died, means that she had some bad complications from the flu.

Delphine: I'm missing the Beefheart reference...

As squid eating Matzoh in a polyethelene bag is fast and bobous?

sadmar -- can't say I know much Beefheart, but the line

O-paque melodies that would BUG most people

is a personal favorite.

More anti-vax fol de rol:

AoA, @ KIm Stagliano, @ Jeffery Jaxxen** inform us that
Sharyl Attkisson ( !!!!) interviewed Del Bigtree at the Manhattan Film Festival.

Oh boy, they're coalescing into _A Gathering_ of Loons.
Where's Celia?

** new one - cropped up when VAXXED appeared.

Oh noes, the Whistleblower has been "handled."

Heard on National Public Radio, in a program that was a tribute to Prince: his contract with people who worked with him specified that they were forbidden to make eye contact.

That plus his workaholic obsessive perfectionism and other brilliant eccentricities, indicate that he was on the spectrum, probably Asperger's.

The reason I mention this, is that it could do some good for folks who are on the spectrum, if it was acknowledged that one of the most talented people in modern music was himself on the spectrum.

---

I am getting downright sick of all the anti-narcotics stuff directed at people who are on pain meds. Who cares if someone is "dependent" on narcotics so they aren't in screaming pain? Heart patients are "dependent" on heart meds, etc. etc.

It's straight-up puritanism, the moral righteousness of suffering and/or suffering as God's punishment, etc. IMHO puritanism is a disease in serious need of a cure.

Not giving people all the narcotics they might need to be free of chronic pain, is a form of torture. Torture is evil.

If Prince had a narcotics dependency, that's better than being in constant agony.

---

As for the anti-vaxers and woo-meisters seeking to earn clicks by spreading garbage every time someone famous dies of unknown causes, they are so far beneath contempt that they make payday lenders look like angels. Grrr.

Pardon my incoherent rant mode here, I'm sleep deprived today.

@Dr Sarah. Depends on the NHS hospital. My main hospital has already fully transitioned to all electronic records and my two other hospitals are about half way through the process.

Really? OK, shows you how far out of date I am. :) So how does it work? Sorry, I should check - are you writing from the point of view of being a medical worker or a patient?

Dr. Sarah, he did day two of his hospitals were in transition. Perhaps yours will follow suit soon.

Typo alert: "he did say two of his hospitals were in transition."

Missing word alert: “he did say day two of his hospitals were in transition.”

Confused by the rhyme. Oh, just go with the flow.

Um, not really, but I thought it was amusing.

Opiates are great for acute pain but they kinda suck for chronic pain due to tolerance and withdrawal.

Oh and not breathing enough. Another downside to opiates.

titmouse: "Another downside to opiates."

Don't forget the constipation associated with opiates. My mother-in-law did not enjoy the "flushing out" she had to endure when she became seriously medically backed up after back surgery.

Don’t forget the constipation associated with opiates. My mother-in-law did not enjoy the “flushing out” she had to endure when she became seriously medically backed up after back surgery.

Oh, if it weren't for privacy concerns, I could tell you a story about someone who decided to deal with opiate withdrawal by means of the noted tranquilizer LSD.

@Dr. Sarah. As a patient. The main hospital, which is not local but one of the national centres of excellence for my particular treatment need, fully transitioned to electronic record keeping and taking in the last 6 months or so. Each individual room has a terminal and all your readings taken by the nurse or anything that needs adding to your file is done there and then at the terminal. They also carry tablets with a built in barcode scanner that reads your wrist band and can call up your record any time you are not in your room or in another department so they know they are dealing with the correct patient.

The other two, one of which fed me to my now main hospital but still looks after my local needs, and the other for a different condition are well along in the process and have both electronic and paper records with the paper records being phased out each time I visit. I imagine when I next visit in a couple of months they will have likely finished the process.

In fact, in my area, about the only thing you can't do electronically/online now, is for my surgery to electronically send a repeat prescription for a controlled drug to my chemist but non controlled drugs are no problem. Though if I call in or ring and tell the chemist that I need a repeat prescription they will let the surgery know and the non controlled drugs part will be forwarded electronically and controlled drugs part they will pick up in person and text me when it is ready.

No, opiates aren't great for chronic pain, because of side effects, as you've mentioned.

The problem is, what do you use instead? I assume that as a decent person, your answer isn't "just tell people to grit their teeth, even though they're in too much pain to think clearly." Acetominophen overdoses can also be fatal. NSAIDs in quantity can be bad for the stomach and kidneys.

The other thing is that the focus on withdrawal as a problem with opiates for chronic pain assumes that the patient's goal should be to avoid medication, rather than to alleviate pain and improve general quality of life.

@Narad; "Oh, if it weren’t for privacy concerns, I could tell you a story about someone who decided to deal with opiate withdrawal by means of the noted tranquilizer LSD."

That sounds like either the beginning of a fascinating case study or one hell of a bar story.

Omitted here are the chronic pain patients who experience tolerance, but not physiological addiction and hence, only pain when their opiates are withheld. ECG patterns turn into modern art, BP does interesting things as well, that's about it and when the pain is treated, BP and ECG patterns return to normal.
Here's a concept: If you want a chronic pain patient off of opiates, treat the cause of the pain.

@Wzrd1, I fall into the group you mention, though fortunately, my tolerance builds up very very slowly. E.G. it took twenty years before I needed to step up to a stronger opiate about 4 years ago and am now on two different ones. One, a patch, to deal with a base level of chronic pain and one a top up tablet as the pain level increases above the base level. Thankfully, my GPs are of the opinion that living a relatively normal life either free of chronic pain or at a low enough level not to affect the individual too much is more important than worrying about addiction too much for someone in my position, Not that they dismiss it, simply treating it as something to be considered along with everything else that is important to the individual.

As for addiction, physical or mental, on a couple of occasions I have forgotten to take my pain meds with me when away for a few days and the worst 'withdrawal' symptom I have suffered is a slight loosening of the bowels for a day or two and which quickly settles by the second or third day, but nothing else. Admittedly, I know I am extremely fortunate in both in my atypical reaction to opiates and in my doctors.

@John Phillips, you're a step beyond my wife's condition. She's up to 7.5 mg hydrocodone for her chronic pain, with plenty of times of breakthrough pain.
To the point where she's started talking to me about talking to doctor about a fentanyl patch, to which I agree.
She's *finally* gotten her MRI, the damned insurance company being a royal PIA in approving it and now, all medical professionals are falling all over themselves to see to it that she receives appropriate treatment. As she's been ignored for years, yeah, for professionals now, ignoring her further is a major liability issue. Something about being very near paralysis and all, which I've been warning one and all of, based upon easily verified observations, signs and symptoms.
But, in this country, wimmen don't count - until they're in such a condition that a lawyer would be able to gift wrap an entire medical system for the malpracticed upon woman patient.

@Wzrd1, the patches made a real difference when I started using them four years ago, especially at night, though they don't work for everybody, and with tablets as top up when needed I also have much less pain throughout the day than I used to. Though I had to increase the patch size about two years ago and will shortly be increasing the size yet again. But that is due to the accelerating deterioration of my condition leading to an increase in base level chronic pain rather than a build up of tolerance to either of my opiates.

Yeah, she's had ignored and untreated cauda equina syndrome, with the disc now pressing onto the spinal canal to the point of severe dysfunction.
Now that we've bulled the MRI through, it's suddenly of importance, where previously she was treated as if she had "female hysteria", despite her symptoms remaining unchanging.
Meanwhile, they're busily ignoring the hell out of her aortic flutter, as to what the root cause of that is.
We'll suffice it to say, I'm getting seriously irritated with our medical profession ignoring my wife's health issues. Maybe I should reconnect with my inner Sicilian and start making these fine folks an offer that they canna refuse...

Treatment of pain should always be between the patient and their doctor. As with abortion, between the woman and her doctor. Last I checked, the vast majority of elected officials were not MDs in current practice. Politicians need to butt out and let the doctors do their jobs.

I've been fortunate in that a) I haven't had many major pain events and b) I'm ferociously sensitive to drugs that affect the brain, so c) my encounters with narcotics have been brief and successful with no trouble other than minor constipation.

And it's also clear that we need to devote much more money to research on pain, its causes, and more effective treatments. The idea that people should suffer without relief is anathema to any civilized society. All the more so when their suffering is an indirect but effective objective of shortsighted policy.

Treatment for pain has to be evidence based, lest we reintroduce full scale quackery into what has become largely evidence based medicine.
It was only a century ago that quackery was in full swing, with radium water and thorium water being considered excellent restorative beverages and snake oil a very real "treatment". We curbed that largely via the pure food and drug act, reinforcing that with various acts that founded the FDA and USDA, ensuring the safety and security of our food and medical supply.
Today, we still have quackery peddlers, under "complimentary medicine" and other umbrellas and "supplements", plus real medicine, plus our war on drugs.
Therein, in that last, lies the root of our current predicament, we've turned our war on drugs into a war on both illicit drugs and on chronic pain patients. I honestly wonder if it'll eventually turn into chronic pain patients returning fire, via suicide attacks against our governmental interference with effective pain management!
What we need is for sanity to return to our medical treatment of chronic pain patients, with politicians letting our medical establishment continue doing what it is effective at, without hampering or attacks by drug enforcement agencies, while the same establishment also patrolling its membership for those diverting our drug supply.

I can't take it anymore. I tried holding back, but I just can't help myself from pointing out how the above image of Prince reminds me of Garnet..!

The "National Enquirer", a rag I refuse to justify with the tag "newspaper", is claiming that Prince had AIDS.
And I thought antivaxxers were ghouls. >:(

@Julian Frost:

From the always credible "Anonymous Source" no less!

This blog is a psyop, and I can prove it's very unscientific if given the opportunity. According to the blogmaster 'doctor' - vaccines are good medicine, and chemtrails are just "woo". I challenge him to a public debate about those two issues, but I know this comment will just be deleted. I think most of the comments are fake comments made by the blogmaster themselves, except for the inane uneducated ones, which are the only type of person who would believe the snake oil drivel peddled here. I have plenty of proof geoengineering is real, and that the substance being used is primarily coal fly ash, as proven by Dr. Herndon. I have statistical proof that every epidemic was caused by the same vaccines supposedly used to stop them, including the so-called "Spanish flu". Allopathic fascism causes more suffering and death than all the wars put together, therefore this blogmaster 'doctor 's working for the evil entity, knowingly or unknowingly. What say you 'doctor' blogmaster: care to debate me here on your blog? I feel sorry for you because of your ignorance and greed in pushing the matrix version of reality, which is an inversion Truth. I sincerely hope you awaken to your pitiable plight, before it's too late. My sister went to Harvard Medical School, and ran an entire OB/GYN wing in a major hospital - she is well respected by her peers. BUT she doesn't know anything about REAL medicine! Nothing!! I've watched how she raised her family, which led to health problems for them all, including the dog (he has a vaccine caused disease). REAL medicine is holistic medicine, NOT the allopathic fascism you practice. Hippocrates was the father of HOLISTIC medicine, and all the allopathic fascists who take the "Hippocratic Oath" are hypocrites and liars, deceived by their own greed. Here in Oregon Naturopaths can prescribe allopathic drugs and vaccines too, but they rarely if ever do, because vaccines and drugs don't work at best, and at worst are toxics that can wreck havoc on their patients immune systems and lives. The only allopathic drugs that work are derived from plants or fungus, and its always better to use the whole plant or fungus instead. For example: turkey tail mushroom mycelium is used to make anti-cancer drugs, but I use the whole mycelium and fruit (the mushroom is the fruit). Marinol is synthetic THC, but it doesn't work nearly as well as whole medicinal cannabis: did you know cannabis has been PROVEN to kill cancer? I'll furnish the proof if you care to debate me, or you can do a simple search to learn the truth about medicinal cannabis curing cancer. White willow bark tea works better than taking aspirin, which was derived from it, plus its more gentle. Tincture of opium, an easy to grow plant, works much better than extracted opioids like morphine and codeine. "Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food", as Hippocrates said. That is REAL medicine - drugs and vaccines = poison.
Namaste!

See:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/08/18/medical-marijuana-and-the-…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/03/25/medical-marijuana-and-the-…

My sister went to Harvard Medical School, and ran an entire OB/GYN wing in a major hospital – she is well respected by her peers. BUT she doesn’t know anything about REAL medicine! Nothing!!

I am not sure that a comment thread is the ideal place for Pharmerdavid to work through his family issues.

Pharmerdavid needs to go elsewhere to find his missing paragraph breaks, and any coherent train of thought.

Paragraph Breaks, mate. They make your comment more readable.

Paragraph breaks wouldn't make it comprehensible though.
Dud goes the gamut, from vaccines actually causing disease to chemtrails and some blather about his sister being a physician and knowing nothing about medicine. Mix in some driven that raw opium is superior to morphine for something, I'm honestly wondering if this was a poe or not.

I challenge him to a public debate about those two issues,

because we all know that the best way to settle questions of fact is public debate.

but I know this comment will just be deleted.

Score: Pharmerdavid (PhD!) 0, Orac 1.

I think most of the comments are fake comments made by the blogmaster themselves,

I am not Orac, but I am still Spartacus and Bonnie Offit.

except for the inane uneducated ones, which are the only type of person who would believe the snake oil drivel peddled here.

OK, that stings a little.

I have statistical proof that every epidemic was caused by the same vaccines supposedly used to stop them, including the so-called “Spanish flu”.

Can you prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt with geometric logic?

My sister went to Harvard Medical School, and ran an entire OB/GYN wing in a major hospital – she is well respected by her peers. BUT she doesn’t know anything about REAL medicine! Nothing!!

What does she think about your knowledge of REAL medicine*? Who should we believe - someone who has been trained at a major university, run a department, and earned the respect of her peers? Or her brother with no particular qualifications that he cares to share?

* Would that be like medicine for real estate?

On the subject of chemtrails :
http://contrailscience.com
https://www.metabunk.org
Begin by looking if one of your questions is not answered here.

Something real and accurate about chemtrails.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-7
All because the government didn't want a giant lit up pointer up the exhaust of their spy planes.

Every epidemic? I would like to see your statistical proof that vaccines were the cause of the epidemic that killed so many people in Periclean Athens, for starters. I could use a good laugh.

Why do cranks always need to debate when they are given a free platform to barf out their cherished conspiracies?

This blog is a psyop

I take it that this is the same "pharmerdavid" who hangs out at Zen Gardner:

NASA has always been a military organization secretly working for the evil entity – space is already weaponized, and the secret satellites being launched for NSA are being used against us – we pay for our imprisonment.
The psyop “metabunk” ‘debunked’ this, so it’s likely mostly true? -> h[]tp://www.stopthecrime.net/nasa.html

Hi, Mr. Currie.

So "psyop" is a term of art here, roughly synonymous with "source of information"?

Well, in the real world, psyops is short for psychological operations, which bear no resemblance to what the OP was referring to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Operations_(United_States)
Typically, the paranoid conspiracy theorists out there refer to psyops that are more akin to magic than any kind of real world operation that is even possible.

Somehow, I'm reminded of how mental illness can be a real tragedy.

Somehow, I’m reminded of how mental illness can be a real tragedy.

Indeed. If it hadn't been for years of mental illness, sometimes severe (often severe), I might not be looking at leaving grad school, moving back in with my mom, and getting some sort of a crappy job in the area to get by.

Kind of feeling like a failure and like this is the end of my life at the moment.

We're all pullin' for ya, JP.

I was referring, of course, to another poster a bit farther upthread, who seems to have caught a serious case of some kind of disordered ideation.

All the best -- please do take care of yourself, and let yourself be cared for. You obviously have a great deal to offer the world. A failure is a setback -- it isn't who you are.

All the best — please do take care of yourself, and let yourself be cared for. You obviously have a great deal to offer the world.

What Palindrom said.
What annoys me about loons like Pharmerdavid upstream (who does not appear to be crazy but rather to have chosen a delusive belief system) is that they give the rest of us a bad name.

JP, please hang in there.

Perhaps there will something special that can use your skills. Plus Apple Health is actually working, at least my son and his autism needs.

When someone can tie your real name to a nick-name chosen for an online 'handle', that is telling about who they really work for - how would a mere 'doctor' find that information? Do you have copies of my emails too 'orac'? "Contrailscience" should be called "chemtrailscience" (or CONtrailscience) since most of the pictures there are not condensation trails - see "geoengineeringwatch.org" for proof about geoengineering-warfare (part oreduction plan). Do a search on "cannabis cures cancer" to find PROOF it does exactly that. Dennis Miller's website will be at the top - he is a biochemist who cured his own prostate cancer using medicinal cannabis. There are many other websites that have all the proof needed to prove cannabis cures cancer, along with being a useful medicine for many other diseases. My dog recently had a mammary-gland lymphoma, which I cured by rubbing medicinal cannabis extract into it. When I stopped using the cannabis extract too early, the tumor began growing back, so I resumed rubbing in the medicinal cannabis extract again, which yet again shrunk the tumor. I'll continue using it this time, because it DOES cure mammary gland lymphomas ("breast" cancer in humans) and other cancers. My dog wags here tail when she realizes its medication time again, because the effect is pleasing to her, gives her an appetite, eases her pains from old age, and allows her to sleep peacefully through the night (just like it does for me). Canines have more CB1 and CB2 receptors than humans though, and they are hyper-sensitive to too much THC, so use CBD dominant strains for doggies, which moderates the psychoactive effect of THC. The UK doc below who asked a logical question, but got no answer...? Maybe our 'doctor' is actually a "spook" and has outed himself?

(snip)

Dr Sarah

http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhumanist
April 23, 2016
@Orac: Going off on a total and complete tangent, I’m curious as to what you mean by ‘signing off on charts’? I mean, wouldn’t this be done at the time you made each entry? I’m a GP in the UK and can’t think of anything I’d do in a between-patients moment that would quite correspond to this. I know it’s not relevant to your post, but am just curious as to how things work in other medical systems!

(end)

Dr, Sarah: Your question is valid and a simple point, but you got no answer, which is an answer in itself. Please don't take offense of my distaste for MOST (not all) doctors. My life was saved by a REAL doctor the day after my birth, when an esophageal operation was needed to open my solid esophagus - the most common birth defect. At the time (1955) my chance of survival was <10%, but I was one of the first babies to survive that operation. Dr. Gands, who performed the operation on me, later got a plaque on the wall of Cedars of Lebanon hospital for pioneering this pediatric operation often needed to save babies with the most common birth defect. So I have a good reason for having the highest respect for REAL doctors, but I have the highest CONTEMPT for FAKES like 'orac' (= "oracle" - NOT!). I have contempt for most MD/PhD people, because they are mostly brainwashed and indoctrinated fools who peddle death and nonsense, but think it MUST be true because a professor told them it was. Universities and colleges are finishing schools for matrix indoctrination, and 'educated' people are the most difficult to awaken (by "awaken" I mean seeing reality the way it really is, rather than the fake matrix world pulled over our minds since birth). There is ample (for anyone with common sense) evidence that vaccines and chemtrails are part of the globnalist banksters (House of Rothschild and associates) depopulation plan, that rather than wasting time posting links here, I suggest interested people do a simple search on "chemtrails coal fly ash" and "vaccine dangers", but be prepared to spend days-weeks-months reading...! Yes I know my writing isn't perfect, and I don't waste time worrying about grammar, spelling and paragraph breaks, but comments are for communicating, and when people criticize you for that stuff or use ad hominem attacks it's because they can't debate the facts. Every epidemic in modern times (didn't mean to go back to ancient Greece) since vaccines were 'invented' have been caused by the very vaccines which supposedly eradicated those epidemics: smallpox and polio for example, but also many other diseases of post-industrial-revolution times. Cancer was very rare until the industrial revolution caused massive amounts of toxins to pollute our biosphere, but cancer is totally preventable and curable. Don't tell that to the 200 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR cancer industry though, because they are still searching for a cure, wasting well-meaning people's money - never donate to frauds like them. CHEERS!!

Perhaps there will something special that can use your skills.

Oh, I don't know, we'll see. I kind of doubt it. At some point I'll need to find a job, any job; for now it might mean getting on where my mom works, which would be monotonous and physical work, but at least it would be a paycheck, and I could save up for a move to Portland or something. And I would have a ride to work.

I don't feel like I could hold down any type of a job right now, but maybe by August (when I would be started, presuming I got hired) I could at least do that job.

In my darker moments I have thoughts that I'll have to go on disability or something, but SSI isn't much money, and I'd probably have to be living with my mom long term, so let's hope it doesn't come to that.

I hope things will work out one way or another. One thing's for sure, I just can't cope in academia any more.

Hello, JP!

Listen, is there a way that you can make a non-irrevocable decision about the doctorate? Take a leave, time off?

I think that your university and profs/ committee know that you are in a difficult period... don't just sign off. Wait. I'm not sure how far along you are with your dissertation and your area has differing requirements dependent upon institution and location. So I don't know.

Your condition is also as we know, cyclic: you may be at a particularly low point. Don't judge the rest of your life based upon how you feel now altho' I realise that your have been having difficulty since ( about) the holidays.

Also getting a degree is not the be-all and end-all of existence: there are many other avenues that can use your skills. You are expert with languages that most English speakers don't know- you can also teach. Interestingly, one of my cousins, TF, worked for a large international bank and had to go to Russia to help set up their operation- he got to meet (( shudder)) Putin because of it- companies like banks and retailers need translators and people who can write in diverse languages. You have a rather hot one ( a few, actually).I also know someone who translates Chinese/English business material who is not a legal .

Now if I were a Jungian, I might say that low points in life can be the start of transformation - like a seed in the soil in darkest winter or a state of suspension like that of a chrysalis, a bud not a flower. A turning inward to the riches within rather than seeking them out in the World. But oh sh!t! I'm not a Jungian at all and I know that people get run down and weakened through suffering and worry that last more than a few days.

So take time, talk to people- including those with whom you've studied/ have written and counsellors/ friends. Take your time. Understand that your choices aren't only Top of the Heap doctorate/ Bottom of the Barrel barista.

I hope you feel better soon.

JP; I didn't see what you just wrote but I still say the same.

I should add you that maybe you can't cope NOW.

JP: "Oh, I don’t know, we’ll see. I kind of doubt it."

There have been many immigrants from Eastern Europe over the last few decades.

My Russian is rusty and my Polish is rustier; I doubt I could use them in any professional capacity at this point.

I've thought of taking a medical leave, but I think it might be better to just cut the cord. I was flailing for a long time even before I got so ill, although the depression (and an absentee advisor) certainly contributed to it.

In fact, I almost got kicked out this semester, and barely managed to make it through. Better to leave than to get kicked out, I think, and I could potentially leave with at least a Master's degree, so I have something to show for all the years in school. (It might look odd on a resume otherwise.)

I do have editing skills, and I have some references in terms of potentially finding decent employment one day; I worked on my advisor's manuscript this past summer, for example.

So we'll see. Hopefully one of these days I'll find at least a decent job. Right now my prospects don't look so good, though. Especially if I'm living out here in the middle of nowhere with my mom for the time being. It's really great to be surrounded by family - basically my whole family is out here - but there's not a lot on offer in terms of employment, so while I'm here, I'd have to take whatever I can get, I suppose.

^The manic episode actually started in the fall and lasted until the spring. It was long and severe.

The depression has been a constant in my life, and grad school hasn't been doing much for my mental health. The department has been terribly supportive, as much as they could be, but I imagine their patience is going to run out soon. My mom and I have plans to go back to Michigan in early June and move me out, settle things with the department, etc. I wouldn't feel right taking all the summer funding if I can't fulfill the obligations it entails; right now I'm just hoping they won't ask for the first half of the stipend back. My friends assure me that this is just worrying, and they wouldn't be that petty. I might really need to money to get through the summer, the transition, etc. Hoping the landlord can just terminate the lase; my mom is going to talk to him and explain the situation while we're heading out there.

Feeling like I might need to really ratchet down my expectations for myself and my life and the moment.

My sister-in-law encouraged me to try to look at any positive parts of the situation; living with my mom, I could save money, at least, and if I can get some sort of a job, like I said, I could save up for a move at some point.

My mom should be able to get me on where she works. It's decent money, especially since I wouldn't have a lot of expenses, and she could show me the ropes. Again, it's sort of depressing to think about it all, so I'm trying to focus on the short term and what I can do about my situation, and leaving grad school sooner rather than later seems to be the right decision.

My mom assures me that it will all work out one way or another, and I'll have some sort of a decent life eventually. But she's my mom.

Apple Health is pretty good, from what I can see. We would need to get me on it pretty soon, if I leave grad school, since I wouldn't have any health insurance. I would have help and support out here to take care of my needs, at least.

Sigh. It's all kind of a mess.

@HDB: pharmerdavid is probably closer to 'crazy' than "chosen a delusive belief system". His comments in the Zen Gardener threads reveal he did a fair amount of Acid in the 70s.

Narad Googled 'pharmerdavid' and discovered he'd revealed his real name on Zen Gardener. PD reads that, and thinks Orac is some kind of super-spy who is into his emails. I guess that follows from his belief Orac writes al the comments here.

If you check pharmerdavid's web comments with Narad's 2nd link, you'll find links to the sources for PD's 'scientific proofs': a hodgepodge of crackpot websites.

The NASA take Narad quoted is one of PD's less entertaining remarks. Some highlights follow. The best is the last, about the death of Prince. I'd guess PD's interest in this topic led him here.

Cannabis is a non-toxic plant which can provide everything humans need, and help heal ourselves and the planet we live on, so its no wonder the evil entity banned it. All my life I believed cannabis would only be legalized during the end times, after the evil entity had total control of the planet…or so it thinks!
A few weeks ago, so I bought a couple orgonite pendants (flower of life) for me and my dog, and I can feel the difference! “Orgone” is the life force in air we absorb. Orgonite helps to block the negative effects of EMF ‘smog’ and increasing negative ions and positive orgone. Orgonite makes plants grow better too, so I’ll be gifting my crops with it in the future. I paid almost $100 for the two little orgonite pendants I bought recently. The organite creates scalar torsion fields which radiate into the sky, clearing the negative miasma from the atmosphere.
Albert Einstein was a fake scientist. Telsa declared Albert to be a fake. I think the evil entity picked him to be its fake great scientist of the era because of his face, which looks wise. Mandela was picked to be the man of peace because of his innocent baby face, even though he was a cold-blooded terrorist who murdered countless innocent civilians, including women and children, with his terrorist bombings. After Einstein was anointed the greatest scientist of the era, his supposed opinion of Wilhelm Reich helped to destroy him and his work, which could have saved countless people from suffering and death. Einstein was a fake used to discredit a REAL scientist!
Christian, Moslem or Jewish, they all worship the evil entity. I’ve yet to see any evidence Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. There may have been a man who was a prophet that was crucified by the evil entity, and then the ‘Jesus’ psyop was overlaid on his life? That I can believe, considering what they did to Pat Tillman! It has been said that Jesus came to free humanity from all religions, which were created by the evil entity to keep people from, worshipping the “one true faith”, and I can entertain that version of a person existed who the “Jesus” psyop was modeled after.
As most people know, positive ions make you lethargic and depressed, while negative ions make you feel energetic and positive. During full moons, on hot summer days, and before storms, there is an increase in positive ions, and there is also more violence and mental illness during those periods. It isn’t just the heavy metals and other toxins in the fallout miasma and/or EMF radiation that makes us feel lethargic and depressed – the ions effect us too.
The coal fly ash must be stopped ASAP. Perhaps this issue will be the catalyst we need to spark a peaceful revolution? We can't allow ourselves and our host planet to be gradually poisoned to death much any longer. The time is here and now for the revolution to commence – maybe on Saturday April 23 during the global march against chemtrails and geoengineering?
It makes me angry to think about how “allopathic fascists” cause more suffering and death than all wars combined. Allopathic fascism is a key component of the full-spectrum depopulation being waged against humanity. I have the highest respect for all REAL doctors and healers, but despise allopaths, especially the ghoulish oncologists who needlessly torture people to death for a living.

I’ll post this here (I didn’t write it). Prince’s death is looking more like a ritual ‘sacrifice’ – eh?
(snip)
Queen Elizabeth turned 90 the day Prince died at 57. 90-57= 33 degrees of freemasonry. Prince also died on April 21, 2016. April 19-May 1 is an occult 13-day blood sacrifice ritual. The Palmyra Arch of Triumph in London was erected on April 19, 2016, originally to be called The Temple of Baal Arch. Baal was a pagan god mentioned in the old testament of the bible in where human sacrifices were given to the pegan statue Baal followed by orgies. It was part of pegan worship in Palmyra’s ancient world.
(and from another comment)
Oh.., and Purple was the Queens birthday tribute color. Niagara Falls and the CN tower were tributes to the Queen. She had Purple “rain” and a Purple “obelisk”/”phallus” in her honor.
(end)
Prince’s death (if he really died) seems pretty suspicious to me. Like Michael Jackson (if he really died), Prince had become an enemy of the illuminati, as had Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, John Lennon, etc. If you are famous and become their enemy, they apparently ritually sacrifice you perhaps?

pharmerdavid tells his life story here: http://tinyurl.com/hoj7apn
In 1976, he was introduced to GHW Bush, who realized PD 'knew too much', and directed the CIA to torture him with microwaves for the next 40 years, Also, "They used their mind-reading machine on me, and told me my thoughts before I knew what they were."
My guess is that life gave PD a bad roll of the dice, he's been struggling with a variety of inner demons for decades, and he's projecting his troubles, and whatever counterstream of hope he can muster, out into a bricolage of conspiracy theories. I guess further that he's harmless, and in the end probably deserving of more sympathy as a human being than the scorn warranted to the claims in his comments.

last indent above was supposed to end the blockquote. missed the /.

"I guess that follows from his belief Orac writes al the comments here."

So delusional he gets it completely backward. It is in fact all the commenters who write the articles. Orac is merely an invention of the commentariat. I am lizard, hear me hiss.

@ sadmar:

He has so much wrong:
- first of all, sacrifices only take place on equinoxes
- Elizabeth is much older than 90
- no one worships Baal any more

When someone can tie your real name to a nick-name chosen for an online ‘handle’, that is telling about who they really work for – how would a mere ‘doctor’ find that information?

It was on the first page of G—le results at the time, bonehead (it's now on the second). Did it not occur to you to look at the link?

his belief Orac writes all the comments here

Note how cleverly Orac varies his style to mask his identity... from terse wording when writing as "Narad", elliptical to the point of cryptic, all the way to the style of the main posts, which have never been accused of being excessively succinct.

Apparently, PD doesn't realize that there is such a thing as Google and web caching.
I am especially amused about the mind reading machine bit. They haven't had one of those in decades, after they tried it out on me and it burned out reading infinite blankness of the thoughts of a long married man. ;)

But no, it's all part of the vast conspiracy of whateverinhell is rattling about in PD's head.

Oh, for the record, I'm not Orac in disguise. I'm really ironman.
Or was that leadbottom... I always lose track which metal and whatnot.

– Elizabeth is much older than 90

How old is David Attenborough really?

I humbly ask anyone who would offer encouraging words to JP to read this page from 'Hyperbole And A Half': http://tinyurl.com/d4aqw73 A lot of the meaning is in the drawings, but I'll pull one sample quote as a preview.

That's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem. It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared. The problem might not even have a solution. But you aren't necessarily looking for solutions. You're maybe just looking for someone to say "sorry about how dead your fish are" or "wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though."

Jamie: No matter how many super-dead-beyond-resurrection fish are in your barrel, and no matter how long they stink up the kitchen, I still like you a lot, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I hope you find some corn under the fridge, but till then the uncontrollable crying thing might be better than the 'nothing'. YMMV.
<3 always,
s.

My true identity not only writes 'Orac''s clear but verbose OPs, and 'Narad''s terse and cryptilliptical comments, but 'sadmar's verbose and theatrically hyperbolic remarks. And 'herr doktor bimler's' witty one-liners. Obviously, only a psyop could explain this faked diversity, but no one spy for the evil entity could create it. The Big Lie is that a real medical doctor invented a fictional blinking box of light as a web persona. The Truth is that a real blinking box of lights wired to the center of the Web at DARPA created a fictional medical doctor as cover for this fake 'science blog'. Unfortunately, some waggish programmer seems to have put some backdoor code into my algorithm that pharmerdave has tripped (unknowingly? or tipped from the astral plane?) making me spill the beans.

The sadmar branch of the algorithm – in reply to the Narad branch's use of "bonehead" – would suggest giving the guy a break because his dog is dying. He writes about her a lot in his comments, obviously loves her very much – maybe she's all he has he can really rely on? – and I'm sure that hard. But since 'we' are just algorithms, I doubt the Narad branch will ease up.

@pharmerdavid
Sorry about Jessie's lymphoma. It's nice the hemp is easing her pain, helping her appetite and get some sleep. You can skip the $100 orgonite pendants, though. They're fake. We have all the real Orgone generators hidden way inside the mountain in Colorado, along with Wilhelm Reich's brain in a vat, as it's mental vibrations are absolutely necessary in making the things work.

@sadmar, so *that's* what makes the internet backbone work! ;)

Sadmar,

I understand what you wrote. Back in 2009, I met a bipolar woman for which, when she was utterly depressive, I used to worry but no more. She needed time alone with herself. When she was better, I spent over 3 weeks a month at her place, discussing, or not even; just stroking her hairs while she was laying on my thighs; or the hair of her teenage daughter, same position, while listening & enjoying the whole series of harry potter.

Matter of fact, we all communicated much more so when we kept silent. In my case, I was their servant, no more, no less but I do understand the emptiness.

To expand on the point of being servant, it served me with a sense of purpose and all that time I spent with them, I was 100% their servant and that was a time where all the diagnostic label were thrown out the windows. They asked and I provided.

Today, the mother is having a change of diagnostic but for the many years I spent with them, it served all of our purpose. Her, to reduce the need of medication (by 2/3rd, don't know how much I served that purpose). Her daughter, she's working on a bachelor degree of law after cegep (college equivalent before university) and me, to build my assertiveness and be a good cook ;)

JP,

I'm a bit far but if you need your hair stroked, I'd be happy to be your servant too ;)

@ Julian Frost - I saw one rag claiming AIDS right next to another claiming MURDER!!! Sigh.

@ JP as a fellow humanities PhD dropout, I feel your pain. I officially took a year off but never really entertained going back, I was so utterly burned out. As a fellow traveler in the depression journey, I know saying "it will get better!" Doesn't Really Help, but I will point out my two biggest regrets from that time (over 20 years ago):
1. I never did the paperwork to get the MA. It felt so overwhelming at the time, so I totally get why you might not want to pursue it, but down the road you'll be glad if you can scrape together the spoons to do it.
2. For several years, I completely avoided anything to do with music, because I felt so All Done With That Crap. Which meant I was denying myself the very stuff that feeds my soul. So I suggest not doing that.

I spent some time crashing with a friend, working as the assistant baker at a small cafe until I scraped up the wherewithal to get to Seattle, where I spent a good year or so temping then stumbled into a job at the phone company. It also wasn't really what I wanted to do with my life, but it kept a roof over my head and food on the table. My boss cried when I told her I was leaving; apparently you can make a difference in really unexpected ways. Good luck.

The sadmar branch of the algorithm would suggest giving the guy a break because his dog is dying.

The sadmar branch has ended up with this branch's share of humanity.

This is FUN here - I may hang awhile! The regular daily commenters here did what I predicted: rather than challenge my points about vaccines and geoengineering, they used ad hominem attacks and juvenile attempts at passive-aggessive snarkiness. That's okay though - I'm used to that by now, and nobody can hurt me emotionally online anymore, because I've gotten into it with Zionistas in the past, and nobody fights dirtier than Zionists (don't get me wrong - my mother is Jewish, but Israel is NOT). So I made the mistake of posting my real name at Zengardner.com and forgot about that - I don't do searches (I do not "google" - I "startpage.com") on myself, so how was I to know? Everything I said was true from my perspective, including my George HW Bush (Director of CIA at the time) story - it's all true. I'm glad you mentioned Zengardner.com here, because that is a wonderful website that I love reading, and now maybe some people here might be awakened by learning from Zen's site? Probably not, but you never know who might stumble on this (sic) "science" blog. Getting back to the original issues I raised here, or just one for starters since there were several sub-issues involved: Let's begin with how cannabis CURES cancer - okay? That has been proven SCIENTIFICALLY, but don't believe me:

http://tinyurl.com/m4rntpw

There you go - I even made a tinyURL to be nice (and did a paragraph break too - see how nice I can be?). ! Please tell me where that information is wrong...? Then we can discuss how the most people died from the horrible polio and smallpox epidemics where the most people were vaccinated against those dreadful diseases. I don't know if that is "hard proof" to you, but it sure makes me a believer. Then there is the mercury, squalline (sp?), and other nasty crap put into the immune system destroying serums called "vaccines". I'll check back later to see what you delightful people have to say about that link. My dog Jessie is 13, but she is still doing well thanks to medicinal cannabis and a healthy diet. Hippocrates said (to paraphrase): "Let medicine be thy food, and food be thy medicine"... He was a wise man that Hippocrates - eh? I have an old medical book from the early 20th century (American) which is a big, thick book, and its full of information about various foods and how they the ways they help medically. Back then the most prescribed medicine was tincture of cannabis indica though, so maybe docs just didn't know anything about REAL medicine back then? Just kidding - of course they knew about real medicine back then, but then allopathic fascism was invented, and the rest is history (and untold millions of people needlessly suffering and/or dead)...

As for the People's Cooperative of Portlandia location - this is where it begins, but we WILL take over the planet eventually.
"People's Evolving Amazing Cooperative of Earth" = PEACE

I'll leave you fine folks with an interview a local writer Jim Redden (one of the best we have in Portlandia) did with David Horowitz MD many years ago. Horowitz even got his degree at Harvard Medical School (!), and in "public health" even, so they CAN produce real healers at that elite institution! Horowitz wrote a book called "Death From the Air"" about 15 years ago, which was a few years after the chemtrails escalated in 1997. The military ADMITS it has been spraying various aerosols since WW-II, so saying it isn't true is illogical.. Dr. Horowitz coined the term "Nazi Chemtrail Flu", so this fits right in with the title of this blog post - it correlates chemtrails with flu!! A local writer friend,, Jim Redden, interviewed the good doctor years ago when he came to Portlandia to give a lecture/seminar on his theories of health (both individual and planetary). I won't even tinyURL this link, since I had wanted to mention the "www.whale.to" website here too. The 'whale' was one of the first websites that enlightened me about allopathic fascism - which is not "medicine" - it's population reduction designed as medicine.. I know many people here are doctors, or wannabe docs, and that's fine - I have the highest respect for REAL doctors. Hopefully some of you will actually read this and think about it, rather than dismiss it as "woo". If this website isn't a psyop, and you all really believe vaccines prevent disease, and chemtrails are just contrails, then maybe this will get you thinking otherwise...? If not, at least I trie (why do I bother? 'cause I luv you!). I won't waste anymore time here (please hold the applause), but in case you aren't all spookies and are really well-meaning, you should/might appreciate this. The fact that Orac(le) uses the 'CONtrailscience' and 'metaBUNK' websites to 'prove' his opinions makes me think he is a spooky, but maybe not? Perhaps you are all much younger than me, and actually believe your college programming? I leave this for you to ponder, and hopefully like Dr. Horowitz did, you too will realize the allopathic (sic) 'medicine' is not what you thought it was for...? Cheers to you for allowing me to even post comments here Orac(le)!!!

http://www.whale.to/b/redden.html

Whale.to?! Whale.to?!?!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Scopie's Law: In any debate about medicine or science, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the forum.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

@Alain:

Thanks for the offer. My mom is doing a pretty good job of stroking my hair right now, so there's that, at least.

For several years, I completely avoided anything to do with music, because I felt so All Done With That Crap. Which meant I was denying myself the very stuff that feeds my soul. So I suggest not doing that.

I can't even read any more. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to at least read for fun again.

@pharmerdavid

I was being snarky about the orgonite pendants. I wasn't being snarky about your dog. She sounds like a dear, sweet creature. I honestly wish you well personally, and hope Jessie's lymphoma goes into remission.

NO NO NO, sadmar!

WE are not purely inventions of our peerless leader, Orac/ DG/ the Doctor, but instead....

WE are LEGION!

Mikey has figured it all out ( yesterday, NN) and has finally written the Truth-
Supporters of SBM, vaccines and fact checking are indeed spawn of the Devil.

Yes, good, honest people like him GRADUALLY- through a series of 5 stages- uncover the revelation that demons are behind the current war for control of the People.

WE bad.

He even mentions the Bohemian Grove. ( where, incidentally, yours truly has visited)

Finally, followers of Mike and his fellow travellers have the goods on us!

Quake in your Gucci boots, minions!

HOWEVER to get to his Good News, readers must first tolerate an ocluding advert banner for his store that takes a while to clear if you don't click.

NO NO NO, sadmar!

WE are not purely inventions of our peerless leader, Orac/ DG/ the Doctor, but instead....

WE are LEGION!

Mikey has figured it all out ( yesterday, NN) and has finally written the Truth-
Supporters of SBM, vaccines and fact checking are indeed spawn of the Devil.

Yes, good, honest people like him GRADUALLY- through a series of 5 stages- uncover the revelation that demons are behind the current war for control of the People.

WE bad.

He even mentions the Bohemian Grove. ( where, incidentally, yours truly has visited)

Finally, followers of Mike and his fellow travellers have the goods on us!

Quake in your Gucci boots, minions!

HOWEVER to get to his Good News, readers must first tolerate an ocluding advert banner for his store that takes a while to clear if you don't click.

Ooops! Spelt my name wrong so you'll have to wait for the BIG NEWS!

But seriously, using that Orac/ Oracle meme!
Bolen has that too.

It only shows how absolutely great they are at researching material / people because that isn't what it means.
It's only their own free association.

@ JP:

Take it easy. For a while, try to focus on essentials like eating, walking around, seeing people you like.
Pull yourself out of the internal monologue/ maelstrom.
Look out wards, not in.

Greetings, fellow minions. I see that you have another victim on the hook. It's highly amusing to see how they keep returning with THE TRUTH (TM) about how to cure cancer, etc, where if they did ANY research into this blog, they would see that most of their sites have already been dissected by Our Fearless Leader.

Needless to say, I have grave doubts that Pharmadavid, PhD, is either a pharmacist OR a PhD (or does Pharma imply he's figured out deep Big Pharma conspiracies?) I'm also really amused that, like so many of our toys, he's US-Centric. Man, if the FDA, CDC, and other US areas really had worldwide power, we'd be in much better shape...

I'll be in an out (recovering from surgery). So keep having fun.

P.S. When he figures out what an ad hominem attack really is, please let me know. So far, he seems to think that if you prove his sites are crap, that's an ad-hom.

"If this website isn’t a psyop"

Bzzzzzt! Wrong-o.

Must be the chemtrails fogging your brain. We rely on this effect to perplex our enemies.

"(why do I bother? ’cause I luv you!)"

M-O-U-S-E.

@ MI Dawn:

I hope you're doing well.

re THE TRUTH (tm)

I read NN/ AoA/ TMR, listen to prn.fm and observe that the investigation of Drs DG/ Offit rests upon the intrepid research and fact finding mission of Jake with a dash of Bolen and vaccine information from Olmsted.

That'll get you far.

PharmerDavid PhD said: I’ll leave you fine folks with an interview a local writer Jim Redden (one of the best we have in Portlandia) did with David Horowitz MD many years ago. Horowitz even got his degree at Harvard Medical School (!), and in “public health” even, so they CAN produce real healers at that elite institution!"

Not so fast buckaroo!! His name is Len Horowitz and he's a dentist. No reason on earth to be skeptical about him, once you've read his lucid prose: Description: Based on the latest science, this monumental book considers both uses and abuses of DNA--"The Sacred Spiral." Stunning evidence compiled herein proves DNA is nature's bioaccoustic and electromagnetic (that is, "spiritual") energy receiver, signal transformer, and quantum sound and light transmitter. "

MI Dawn: I think 'pharmerdavid' is a pharm-farmer. That is, he grows medicinal crops. That is, hemp. (Maybe his source of income? Income maybe dropping do to the legal medical pot shops?) As for a PhD, being born in '55, he could have gone through a lot of changes since getting a 'real' degree.

@ pharmerdavid

Frankly, go comfort your dog, instead of spewing your insanity here. Every hour you spent on your keyboard is an hour you didn't spend with people you care.

A female dog from my grandparents ended with breast cancer, and we let it go untreated (culturally, in my country, we don't treat sick pets to the same extend as sick humans - or didn't, until recently). More than a decade later, I still remember her pain, at the end.

@ Denice

WE are LEGION!

Shouldn't it be "I am LEGION"?

Or maybe "I am large, I contain multitudes"

@ JP, MI Dawn, etc

I was re-reading a few old threads and noticed comments from people we have not seen around for a while. I am missing them.
Please take care of yourselves.

I wasn't going to return here, but then something clicked in my 'delusional' brain...or maybe it was the potent medicine I grow that did it? No matter, what clicked was this: knowing that "contrail science" and "metabunk" are both Mick West psyops, and remembering they had both been mentioned somewhere here, my delusional brain (left serial processor side only though) clicked...! Are you here too Mickster West? The CIA obviously has a team working here, making comments etc. Why do I even waste my time here then? To warn other unsuspecting fools (like me) who might be tempted into wasting their time debating anything rational here. Yes I like the Whale and Educateyourself websites, which I've been reading since their creation back in the beginning of WWW-HTTP, but I do NOT do not believe everything there (really!). Much of it is enlightening and True according to my wisdom-dar (although it may need recalibrating). In any case, I bid you all a fond farewell yet again! And please remember - I'm only a poor "pharmer" (guess what I grow along with other herbs and veggies..?). so the globalist banksters, or rather the Evil Entity (EE) that controls them who controls (pays) you, has nothing to worry about from me. I just want a peaceful planet to live on, and peaceful people to work cooperatively with to make life better for future generations, and to be self-sufficient for the most part myself, although you always need goods and services you just can't produce yourself (like a good massage or a beautiful organite pendant!), which is where the cooperation comes in handy. Did you know organite can be measured scientifically to create negative ions, which are known scientifically to be healthy for life? I knew you did..! And with that, I will bid you yet another fond farewell yet again, at least until I stumble on another of your psyop websites, probably with the word "science" embedded within its name..? I leave you with this profoundly Loving thought: I am you and you are me and we are all together!!!

~NAMASTE~

@ Denice-bot:

Orac is a bot. We are all bots. The blinking box is not in Detriot. It's wired into the core of the Internet at a secret DARPA facility. (Demon Agents Recruited to Poison America). The box was programmed by Satan himself.

If pharmerdavid didn't ghost-write that post, he should sue Mikey for plagiarizing his material.

Chiropractor Donald Harte chimes in. http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/medical-thinking-killed-prince-accordin…

That's either a POE, or someone suffering from significant mental illness.

@231
The Donald Harte who campaigned against the whooping cough vaccine? Yeah....another one who should spend 24 hours in an iron lung, with a bad case of shingles. I'd spare him the whooping cough, but then, I'm a survivor of that disease. My mother, who thought her infant was going to die, probably wouldn't be as generous.

I understand from YouTube (excellent source for all things science - although not as good as Whale.to), that spraying chemtrails with Windex will make them go away.

Psyonic DARPAte orgonism.

I always figured the strain, Sour Diesel, was a COINTELPRO trojan smoke.

At the People’s Cooperative of Portlandia, our bongs have a secret ingredient -- 50% more PEACE than ever before. That's only 25% less PEACE than a small-yeild, red mercury, tactical nuclear Kenneth Cole Reaction briefcase.

I get some of PharmerDavid PhD's sentiment: It's not hard to believe in vast medical conspiracies over cannabis when millions have been imprisoned over a substance which is innocuous. It just happens that, in the case of cannabis, the 'conspiracy' has been true.

PD, my criteria for repeal of prohibition centered around the arrival of a CO2 tax, a tax on life. It's sobering to think back that I uttered my conclusion in 1993.

Rebagliati was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. After turning pro in 1991, he was the first ever to win an Olympic gold medal for Men's Snowboarding at the 1998 Winter Olympics. After winning the gold, he was found to have Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in his circulatory system following a blood test and he was automatically disqualified. This decision was eventually overturned, largely on the basis that marijuana was not on the list of banned substances, and Rebagliati was given back the medal...

...In 2013 however, WADA amended its rules on cannabis, raising the threshold for a positive test from 15 nanograms per milliliter to 150 ng/ml. In 1998 at the Nagano Games, Rebagliati recorded a level of 17.8 ng/ml, and argued the test resulted from second-hand smoke, which he still says. Ben Nichols, a spokesperson for WADA, said the raising of the threshold is meant to catch only athletes who smoke during the period of a competition. The drug isn't prohibited out of competition....

...Ross Rebagliati is a firm believer that cannabis is a performance enhancer, and that usage can be helpful for some activities such as extreme sports

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Rebagliati

It’s not inconceivable that if the human brain’s endocannabinoid system regulates fatigue, that an artificial stimulation of this system with marijuana could further reduce both physical and mental exhaustion, thereby bringing it ever closer to the designation of a performance enhancing drug.

The World Anti-Doping Agency declined to be interviewed for this story, but said in a statement that in 2013 they raised the levels of acceptable marijuana in an athlete’s system so that out-of-competition use would not disqualify them. Yet any use just before a sporting event remains prohibited.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/02/marijuana-athlete-runnin…

^^uh oh, that doesn't fit the narrative and stereotype of Cheetos-munching couch potatoes.

Oh, wow...
Sorry guys, I was the one who mentioned Metabunk and ContrailScience. Didn't know that it would set PharmerDavid off even more.
Frankly, it has been a few years since I discovered these sites and have heard them called "psyops", "shill", etc. without anyone even trying to provide evidence of this
(except of the "they disagree that chemtrails exist when I know that they do, so they have to be psyops" kind)...

You know, the loons keep talking about depopulation/population control, but the world population just continues to grow. How could the folks supposedly behind the pharma conspiracy be so GREAT at keeping things secret and fail so UTTERLY at their supposed goal?

@ JP Aw, man, that sucks. I'm so sorry. Do what you need to do for YOU. Imaginary internet friend hugs. I still think you're awesome.

I always use Windex to disperse chemtrails, Hasn't failed me yet.

"And please remember – I’m only a poor “pharmer” (guess what I grow along with other herbs and veggies..?)"

Cialis?

But Emma, we'd have a world population of over 20 billion today if not for their continuous culling efforts.

Denise, were that the case, we should all be thanking our pharma overlords daily for, you know, having enough food for everyone (even if we sometimes fail at getting it to the people who need it most).

I can’t even read any more. Maybe one of these days I’ll be able to at least read for fun again.

You will. I don't know how much time it will take but you will.

Alain

“And please remember – I’m only a poor “pharmer”
He's just a Pharmer, from a poor family!
Spare him his life from this Oracstrosity!

He’s just a Pharmer, from a poor family!

I now wish I had the energy to rework "The Ballad of Jed Clampett."

T'was painkiller overdose, ruled accidental as opposed to suicide.

https://www.anokacounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/10066

On fentanyl, that's heavy duty pain relief.
On the higher dosage end, easily OD'd upon accidentally.

Opioid overdoses are a result of vaccination, as thoroughly documented by AoA's "Benedetta."

@Narad, in a way, that is quite true.
It'd be real hard to grow up to OD on a narcotic if one died of a vaccine preventable disease as a child.

That said, opiate addiction is a major problem and one that actually makes it hard for my wife to receive effective pain management, as physicians then tend to not want to prescribe opiates.
Despite her MRI results (we're awaiting a neurosurgeon to develop a plan, now that the latest imagery shows three cervical discs bulging into the spinal cord, plus L5-S1 heavily compressing her cauda equina).
Fortunately, our current primary is giving her adequate pain management. That wasn't always so in the past, with one professional writing a treatment plain with opoids, but failing to prescribe them.
Once her issues are addressed, I'll address some worrisome neurological symptoms suggesting that my L4-L5 bulge has worsened recently.

Or maybe, we'll call our home GCU to order a full body transplant.

Is an Oracle a baby Orac?

The Woo Boat

oracknows — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 07:45:17 +0000

The Woo Boat

File this one under the category: You can't make stuff like this up. (At least, I can't.)

Let's say you're a die hard all-conspiracy conspiracy theorist and alternative medicine believer (a not uncommon combination). You love Alex Jones and Mike Adams and agree with their rants that there is a New World Order trying to suppress your rights. You strongly believe that vaccines not only cause autism, sudden infant death syndrome, a shaken baby-like syndrome, autoimmune diseases, sudden ovarian failure, and even outright death but are a depopulation plot hatched by Bill Gates and the Illuminati who support his agenda. Heck, you even believe that black helicopters are keeping an eye on those who have discovered this plot. To you, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are part of the same plot, pure poison and pure evil. And, of course, you just know that there is a cure for cancer—nay, cures for all diseases—out there but those evil pharmaceutical companies are keeping them from the people, the better to bolster their profits, just as they are preventing Brave Maverick Doctors like Andrew Wakefield, Mark Geier, and Sherri Tenpenny from telling the world the truth about vaccines. Heck, you just know that these same nefarious forces are even going so far as to kill vaccine "skeptic" heroes like Jeff Bradstreet (and, of course, make it look like a suicide) and holistic "pioneers" like Nicholas Gonzalez (and make it look like a heart attack).

And you like cruises.

So where do you go when you want to go on a cruise? Normal cruises are filled with people who just want to have a good time and tend to roll their eyes when you regale them with your ideas about how there is a shadowy conspiracy out there that is promoting toxic pharmaceuticals and vaccines and preventing natural cures from being used by the people, while simultaneously promoting GMOs to make people sick so that they think they need more of those pharmaceuticals and vaccines and more pliable so that their New World Order agenda faces less opposition. By the time you get to how they're also using chemtrails as another means of control, AIDS is not caused by HIV, and ebola can be cured with homeopathy, in other words, by the time you've been on the cruise a couple of days, you'll find yourself basically shunned, eating alone at dinner, and drinking alone at the bar. When you sit down at a table, everyone suddenly finds a reason to be elsewhere.

Fear not! There is now a cruise for you. See the Conspira-Sea Cruise next January, embarking in Los Angeles and taking you on a cruise through the Mexican Riviera:

Our "Conspira-Sea Cruise and Seminar-at-Sea" takes place right on our luxury cruise ship during our seven-day cruise, in conference rooms on the ship, and during our port calls in Mexico.

During this incredible, mind-blowing, truth-telling, spiritually enriching event, we will do our best to uncover the truth about things conspiratorial, including:

GMOs, Monsanto, bee colony collapse, ecology, global warming, climate change, fracking, HIV, autism, big pharma, medical suppression, vaccinations, flouridation, political corruption, government corruption, forbidden archeology, forbidden religion, Federal Reserve, truth about money, World Bank, IRS, strawman, property title, admiralty law, martial law, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, JFK, cover-ups, September 11, Star Wars agenda, nuclear plants, chemtrails, HAARP, crop circles, IRS, MK-Ultra, Fukashima, NASA, NSA, Bilderbergs, sustainability, military industrial complex, pentagon, Waco, Malaysia 370, Pan Am 103, TWA 800, Gulf Oil Spill, Halliburton, Obama, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Vatican, New World Order, false flags, Montauk, privacy, surveillance, Area 51, Dulce, Project Rainbow, Nazi Bell, Vrill, U.S.S. Eldridge, Iron Mountain, psyops, population mangement, subliminal ads, Nibiru / Planet X, Cointel Pro, technology suppression, entity possession, electoral fraud, identity chips, 2nd amendment, and so much more.

Plus we will explore how to heal ourselves and others, and to attain self-mastery and greater integrity through:

Spirituality, meditation, affirmation, prayer, yoga, manifestation, self-development, holistic health, alternative lifestyles, organic foods, healthy living, wellness, self-sufficiency, prosperity, sustainability, freedom, human rights, discernment, wisdom, awakening, longevity, inner guidance, and inner peace.

The purpose of this cruise is NOT about being a victim of conspiracies. It is about taking back our power from corrupt and greedy institutions, attaining true self-authority, and realizing our genuine Self behind the masks. It is about discovering the truth, taking command of our lives, and attaining genuine inner realization.

This cruise will not only uncover the lies. It will show us the truth. As we dispell the darkness, and shine the light of wisdom, we enter the true light of consciousness.

When I first saw this link, I really thought that it had to be a joke, a Poe of some sort. There really couldn't be a cruise like this, could there? Then I looked at the company organizing the cruise, Divine Travels, which advertises itself as a "gateway to spirtual adventures," and I had to admit that this Conspira-Sea Cruise is legit and fits right in with Divine Travels' other cruises, which are loaded with woo, such as a tour of Egypt with Cindy Reed, an energy/spiritual healer, a New Age retreat where you can learn "spiritual healing," and more. In this case, Divine Travels has outdone itself. Look at this preliminary speaker list. There are antivaccinationists, such as Andrew Wakefield, who, hilariously is listed as a "Vaccination & Autism Researcher"; Sherry Tenpenny, who is listed accurately as an "Anti-Vaccine Activist"; and Toni Bark, described as a "Vaccination Whistleblower." I know Tenpenny and Wakefield's activities well, but I didn't remember who Toni Bark is. So I Googled her and quickly found her website—and with it, some serious quackery, including homeopathy, something called "lipodissolve," links to quack movies like Gary Null's Silent Epidemic: The Untold Story of Vaccines, and several appearances on The Gary Null Show.

OK, she fits right in, and I did start to remember her when I saw her picture. For some reason, I don't recall ever having blogged about her before.

But, hey, you say. Antivaccine conspiracy theories just aren't my thing. No problem! How about alt-med conspiracy theories. In addition to Toni Bark doing double duty on vaccines and general alt-med craziness, one of my "favorite" quacks (and by "favorite" I mean favorite target of mockery), Robert O. Young, the man who thinks all cancer is due to excess acidity and that his "alkaline diet" will cure cancer and all serious diseases will be there. So will Len Horowitz and Sherry Kane. Horowitz advertises himself as "The King David of Natural Healing" versus "The Goliath of 'Slash, Burn, and Poison' Medicine," while Sherri Kane is a journalist who works with him spreading his message, describing herself as an "investigative journalist, news commentator, psycho-social analyst, and political activist, specializing in uncovering media persuasion and manipulation, conspiracy realities and women’s, children’s, and animal rights issues." Together, they are collaborating on "Healthy World Organization (HWO), the alternative to the corrupt World Health Organization (WHO), HealthyWorldAffiliates.com, and The 528 Love Revolution advancing the power of the "528 hz" frequency of Love and Healing for a Musical Revolution and Spiritual Renaissance with 528Records.com and i528tunes.com."

He's also affiliated Medical Veritas, if you remember that. I sure do, particularly its cancer quackery and HIV/AIDS denialism.

But that's not all! There are (of course!) anti-GMO activists like Jeffery Smith; HIV/AIDS denialsts, such as Robert Strecker; and "holistic healers" like Dale Allen Hoffman and Dr. Dream. But, hey, medicine isn't your conspiracy topic. For you, there are—of course!—a whole bevy of "spiritual teachers." But that's not all. Don't think other woo has been forgotten! Oh, no! There are "paranormal investigators," an "earth advocate" and "global alchemist" (whatever thatmeans) named Laura Eisenhower, and near death experience survivors. There's Nick Begich, conspiracy theorist who believes that HAARP is a form of mind control. If that's not woo-ful enough for you, they even have a chemtrails researcher named Sharon Schloss, a crop circle maven named Patty Greer, and an astrologist named Helen Sewell. Truly, I'm hard pressed to think of a form of quackery, pseudoscience, or paranormal nonsense. Oh, wait. There's no cryptozoology, no Bigfoot maven. Well, it's still early. Maybe they'll find someone.

Of course, there are testimonials from previous Spiritual Travels cruises, such as:

"The panel of speakers was by far the best attribute of the trip. The speakers covered a wide array of topics... everything from Angel wings to the modern Nazi regime. It was all around enlightenment."--D.R.M., Wyoming

"Enlightenment" isn't quite the word I'd use to describe such a cruise.

When it was suggested to me that a skeptic should sign up for this cruise, I pointed out two things that would disqualify me. First, I'd have to waste vacation time. Second, Andrew Wakefield provokes such a visceral response in me that being in his actual physical presence, particularly on a ship, might actually make me physically ill. Come to think of it, the same can be said of Robert O. Young. Also, as people who know me know, although I would certainly be amused by some of these speakers, I am not very good at hiding my contempt for quacks like Wakefield and Young. After all, a skeptic mole would have to be able to avoid getting kicked off the boat!

Still, if there are any intrepid souls willing to do this, maybe a Go Fund Me page would be able to provide the travel and cruise expenses. I'm sure there'd be blogging material for many weeks. Heck, there might even be enough material for a book!

oracknows Fri, 08/14/2015 - 03:45

Tags

Antivaccine nonsense

autism

complementary and alternative medicine

Entertainment/culture

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

Vaccine Whistleblower

vaccines

complementary and alternative medicine

Even if a Go Fund Me campaign covered the cost of the cruise, I'd go bankrupt from the alcohol I would need to consume to get through this fustercluck of nonsense.

Talk about crank magnetism. If I thought there were any validity to that long list of conspiracy theories (some of which I'd never heard of--what is "Nazi Bell" supposed to refer to?), I would stay the hell away from that cruise, because I would expect "Them" to wait until the ship sails, and arrange at least one of two things: (1) an unfortunate "accident" at sea or (2) difficulties with the customs and immigration authorities.

Since I am not a conspiracy theorist, I will offer two even better reasons not to go: (1) I don't like package tours (which includes cruises) and (2) I have even less tolerance for fools than Orac does. It would be a question of which idiot would push me far enough over the edge to throw him overboard.

Eric -

No need to be so crude. The trick is to make sure that you have conversations with at least 2 wingnuts at once, and whilst never directly contradicting them, subtly point out how their theories mutually contradict. Also raise the possibility that the cruise itself has been infiltrated by people wishing to discredit [insert cause here].

Within a week you'll have most of the ship to yourself.

because I would expect “Them” to wait until the ship sails, and arrange at least one of two things: (1) an unfortunate “accident” at sea

I thought of that, but didn't want to give the cruise directors any ideas to call off the cruise or make it secret.

Man, I regret not having taken that cruise ship band gig out of college.

Plot twist: this cruise is actually put on by the global bankster Illuminati and this cruise ship is going to be disappeared MH370 style via an exocet missile or the like.

A 'red wedding' of sorts against conspiracy theorists who are getting too close to the truth...

And I see Eric already posted that. Here's what I get for posting in my not-yet-caffeinated-enough mind fog...

Bwahahaha. The Great Andy Wakefield and Sherri Tenpenny reduced to talks aboard a ship full of whackaloons. How apropos. Now in light of the pHARMa/CDC/Gates hit jobs on alternative practitioners, is it wise to put such a notable collection of Truth Tellers and their wise flock together on such a convenient target?

More like the Idio-Sea Cruise.

Snakes on a plane...meh.

How about Measles on a cruise ship instead: http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/rapid-risk-assessmen…

Tenpenny's flogging it

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Join-DrTenpenny-on-a-Cruise-to-Mexic…

I've been on a few cruises...I get the feeling that the paying guests won't have very good rooms available due to all the (cough) celebrities on board. And WTH is the issue with Montauk? Sure, it's on the eastern end of Long Island, which in and of itself is suspicious, (I'm not a LI fan...) but I'd never heard of it being part of a conspiracy...

If I wasn't already going on a cruise next year, I would so be there. Sounds like it'd be great fun.

I wonder if the cruise directors are savvy enough to have a list of names of people not to sell rooms to for this cruise. :-)

Plot twist: this cruise is actually put on by the global bankster Illuminati and this cruise ship is going to be disappeared MH370 style via an exocet missile or the like.

The world should be so lucky.

Given the requirements for traveling on a cruise ship, it would be very difficult (and almost certainly illegal) to travel under a phony name. So--they could easily have a list of us big pharma trolls they don't want on the cruise, but if the cruise is not selling well, the cruise company is going to want to sell to anyone they can. My wife and I once got insanely cheap tickets to go on a themed cruise at the last moment to sell out the empty cabins.

@ Eric Lund, Orac, EBMOD, Science Mom

Plot twist: this cruise is actually put on by the global bankster Illuminati

How comes it was the first thing so many of us thought about?

**read again laundry list of conspiracy theories, most of them being about suspicious deaths**

Never mind :-)

I cannot stop sniggering over this "cruise". I can't believe it's real and not a joke. But it is real. To think of Andy Wakefield in the company of such loons and to think of the conspiracies flying when the diarrhoea outbreak happens is just so funny. Oh how Andy has fallen; I'd be embarrassed for him if I gave a toss.

The seminar organizers haven't booked the entire 3080 passenger Ruby Princess, but appear to have booekd a block of cabins as reservations for the January 24th cruise to Mexico are available from other travel agencies which aren't advertising the seminar.

So while the seminar organizers might have their own 'no-cruise' list of names banned from attending their presentations/events, nothing would prevent anyone from going on the cruise itself and engaging seminar participants in the ship's common areas.

@ Science Mom--cruise ships are adamant about passengers hand-gelling before entering the dining areas. I feel for the staff who will have to deal with these toxinz-fearing, germ-theory-denying loons.

Oh, if ever a ship were primed to sail into the Bermuda Triangle and disappear...

And WTH is the issue with Montauk? Sure, it’s on the eastern end of Long Island, which in and of itself is suspicious, (I’m not a LI fan…) but I’d never heard of it being part of a conspiracy…

Montauk is part of the Hamptons, and of course everybody who is anybody in the financial world is expected to have a summer home in the Hamptons.

I'm also recalling a line from a movie called Deathtrap. One of the male leads, an aging playwright whose latest play has just had a disastrous opening night, is explaining why he didn't get home until after sunrise: "I passed out on the train and symbolically woke up in Montauk--the end of the line!"

Other than that, I got nothing.

Top insolence. Very very funny blog.

I wonder if the nursing staff aboard the ship will be required to treat seasickness with pressure point wrist bands instead of Bonine or promethazine.

Because you know, Big Pharma created sea sickness as a big conspiracy to sell these medications to unwary travelers.

You know, I take back my comment on the Exocet missile scenario. I'd be satisfied if there was a nice little food poisoning outbreak, instead.

Something lingering, as the Lord High Executioner says.

@Eric Lund

"what is “Nazi Bell” supposed to refer to?"

See this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Glocke

I can't wait to learn all about "Fukashima"

Panacea@23

I wonder if the nursing staff aboard the ship will be required to treat seasickness with pressure point wrist bands instead of Bonine or promethazine.

I was thinking the same thing. I have a friend who works as a paramedic on a cruise ship and he said they actually have very nice medical facilities. I feel like there's probably some kind of regulations they need to comply with but who knows, maybe a medical staff of naturopaths and chiropractors is good enough. Heck, they probably don't even need medical staff; you could swing a dead cat and hit an alt-med practitioner just among the guests and speakers.

You have got to be kidding me. I cannot imagine a more terrifying week at sea.

That said, I've taken many cruises and have often thought what an attractive "soft" target a ship with 4000 people aboard would be for conspirators.

According to Princess Cruises, "All of our onboard medical facilities meet or exceed the standards established by the American College of Emergency Physicians. Our onboard medical facilities are staffed by full-time registered doctors and nurses."

I can only image the garbage these poor doctors and nurses will have to put up with.

Another thought- imagine the scene on board if the ship lost power or had a norovirus outbreak.

Norovirus is nasty, by the way. Got it on a cruise in 1994. I wouldn't wish that on an anti-vaxxer.

@ AdamG:

I saw that too!

Actually, might the cruise itself be a form of advertisement/ foot-in-the-door for woo-meisters/ spiritualists/ charlatans to sell future services?**

Let's say you front energy-healing or trance channeling, you can acquaint yourself with potential clients whilst a conspiracy theorist can also get a list of possible website 'insider' members/ store customers/ buyers of forthcoming books - it could be the start of a beautiful relationship. Passengers can socialise with presenters especially the stars of the show. Imagine that! Lunch with Andy and Sherri! Disco night with Toni!

I do find the cruise hilarious and entirely worthy of derision.

I wonder what they're going to eat as many alties/ conspiracies theorists fear standard cuisine: GMOs, non-organic food, meat ((shudder)), dairy, fluoridated, chlorinated water, chlorine, GLUTEN, regular salt, sugar, caffeine, alcohol etc?

There may be many food prohibitions and phobias: how can they ever supply their passengers' special dietary needs? Can you imagine waiters having to listen to this? "What's in that salad- is it organic? Is the chicken free-range? I only want raw milk!"

Aren't food and drink often the focus of cruises?

** currently, a woo-meister is testing out his future spa/ health resort through an independent radio station's fundraising efforts. Estates in Florida and Texas, the later will eventually provide altie treatment we're told.

And WTH is the issue with Montauk?
Well, there's Montauk Monster - a raccoon carcass washed up on the shore that spawned some conspiracy teories due to it's unusual appearance. There's wikipedia article about that.

"How comes it was the first thing so many of us thought about?

**read again laundry list of conspiracy theories, most of them being about suspicious deaths**

Never mind :-)"

Yes, the glaring cognitive dissonance really stands out. Anyone who is truly paranoid enough to believe all of those conspiracies would surely not get within 1000 yards of this ship for fear of a trap.

Did just have another random thought, would make for an awesome prank to dress up the ship to look like a giant black helicopter...

@capnkrunch #27 I can just hear the shouts now as somebody crumples with a heart attack "Is there a homeopath on the ship"

@ Brook:

No no no!
The latest woo treatment for a heart attack or stroke is taking a megadose of vitamin C, a large dose of magnesium and cayenne pepper. **

( I wonder if anyone is so brainwashed as to follow this insane, potentially deadly advice?)

** via PRN

Given the gullibility of the conspiracy theorist, it's never too late to plant an interesting conspiracy prior to this ship embarking on it's journey. Imagine you are Big Pharma, Big Government, Monsanto, or [insert group here]. Now, as a member of these groups, what is the easiest way for you "silence" those spreading the "truth". It seriously can't be that hard to plant that seed of a Woo-themed Inglorious Bastards style plot to take down the top who's-who of the conspiracy movement. Seriously, can we get Bristol-Myers Squibb, Monsanto, Nabisco, and American Airlines to sponsor this cruise? Just sit back and wait for the conspiracies to bubble up.

I'm most excited for "Introduction to the Constitution" (parts 1 thru 6).

an examination of the Constitution, Article by Article, and Section by Section, leads any thinking individual to the startling conclusion that most of what our government does is unconstitutional!

It's ok, you can still attend if you don't buy into the whole 'paper money' conspiracy!

The class is valued at $300 or more, however students may attend for only $150, or 4 ounces of .999 fine silver.

@ Science Mom–cruise ships are adamant about passengers hand-gelling before entering the dining areas. I feel for the staff who will have to deal with these toxinz-fearing, germ-theory-denying loons.

But but but...Diseases are good for you and strengthen the immune system. I so want to go, really I do.

All those conspiracies! But didn't they forget alien abduction?

My tarot cards tell me that the stars say there is a Marie Celeste event in the offing, and my palm reader agrees. It'll be the final proof needed to wake up the world to the true nature of UFOs.

PS. Beware the one who calls himself Terry Wogan.

The Montauk Project

@Denice #34:

The latest woo treatment for a heart attack or stroke is taking a megadose of vitamin C, a large dose of magnesium and cayenne pepper.

Does the spell require the magnesium to be ignited before or after ingestion?

OK, somebody's got to do it...

"Woo, exciting and new
Come aboard, we're expecting you!
Woo, life's mindless reward,
Let it flow, it backfires on you.
The Woo Boat, soon will be making another run;
Conspiracies promising something for everyone...."

I was wondering how they would handle the contrast of "look the world is a dangerous place and we'll show you that they are all you to get you" with "join us for a nice, relaxing spiritual retreat in off the beautiful coast of Mexico".

All things considered, I think they handled it pretty well in their marketing blurb:

"The purpose of this cruise is NOT about being a victim of conspiracies. It is about taking back our power from corrupt and greedy institutions, attaining true self-authority, and realizing our genuine Self behind the masks. It is about discovering the truth, taking command of our lives, and attaining genuine inner realization.

This cruise will not only uncover the lies. It will show us the truth. As we dispell the darkness, and shine the light of wisdom, we enter the true light of consciousness.

And we are set free.

ALL are welcome to discover the real truth, together."

Classic marketing, actually. Create a fearful need and a way to relieve it. All at a price of course. I am sure this is all a set up for selling stuff at the seminars and/or in the future.

I'd be curious to monitor the mood during the course of the week. It looks as if the seminars are a mix all throughout so maybe you could lurk in darkness or smile with joy at your discretion.

Side note: While looking at the schedule, one thing stood out as not like the others. And that is Introduction to the Constitution, Part 1 of 6.

One of the most rational documents in all of history...on a ship of fools.

The Montauk thing has to do with Camp Hero. Now it's a state park with hiking trails, but it used to be a fortified coast artillery battery. Supposedly it has something to do with disappearing/reappearing ships, time travel, and secret experiments. There was IIRC something about hauntings as well. The proximity of Plum Island, until recently a level four animal diseases lab also feeds in somehow.

"I was wondering how they would handle the contrast of “look the world is a dangerous place and we’ll show you that they are all you to get you” with “join us for a nice, relaxing spiritual retreat in off the beautiful coast of Mexico”."

Assuming this cruise ever hits international waters, seems that someone with strong entrepreneurial skills and questionable ethics could stand outside the door to the conference room offering Xanax and a paper bag for nominal fee...

@ Rich Woods:

Ha!
No, they're all in capsule form- I forget exact dosages. Probably available at his website store.

Seriously can you imagine a poor; lost, misguided elderly person or their equally lost adult son or daughter, upon experiencing /witnessing symptoms of the aforementioned conditions, ACTUALLY adminsitering the woo to forestall or cancel the MI/ stroke?

What irresponsible self-aggrandisement to offer sh!tful advice like this to unsuspecting people!

Oops. Meant to write "we’ll show you that they are all out to get you”.

EBMOD, substitute some marijuana, Amanita mushrooms and cane toads for the Xanax and I'm sure you could do a banner business (as long as you didn't kill anyone).

It really doesn't surprise me. You have to remember that a cruise line is basically a chain of floating resorts. It's not much different from booking a convention center, but with a bit more exotic cachet. More expensive than booking a convention center in Watertown, South Dakota, but much less expensive than booking a Caribbean resort while still having a certain exotic cachet.

So yeah, it's pretty goofy, but think of it like a mini ComicCon of conspiracy theorists. ;-)

I'm having a problem with the bee colony collapse . Perhaps someone can help. Is there a conspiracy to wipe out honey bees or are the reports of bee colony collapse part of a deeper darker conspiracy? Come to think of it, I suppose it could be both.

There are 76 conspiracies listed here. It's going to be something like a major scientific conference with multiple sessions going all the time. How can one choose between bee colony collapse and false flags if they are on at the same time. And for that matter what is the false flags conspiracy?

The class is valued at $300 or more, however students may attend for only $150, or 4 ounces of .999 fine silver.

The current silver price is $15.22/oz, and my first thought is that I could make a fortune standing at the door, selling 4 oz for, say, $100, saving each fool $50, and me making about $40, but there probably aren't enough of those idiots to pay for the cost of the trip.

@ Denice Walter / Rich Woods

The latest woo treatment for a heart attack or stroke is taking a megadose of vitamin C, a large dose of magnesium and cayenne pepper.

Does the spell require the magnesium to be ignited before or after ingestion?

That's that the cayenne pepper is for.
True connoisseurs will go for the nanopepper. That's how you make nanothermite. Much more efficient.
The vitamin C is just here to give it a lemony flavor, really.

It's obvious that there will be no nurses or practicing medical doctors on board. Rather, the spa will be staffed by acupuncturists.

jrkrideau
Big Pharma specifically Bayer is killing the bees.

If you want to believe that.

@ jkrideau

I’m having a problem with the bee colony collapse . Perhaps someone can help.

At a guess, it's because strong suspects in bee colony collapse are pesticides.
I'll let you connect the usual dots up to Big Agro, GMOs and everything else.

In reality, from what I gathered from articles on the Genetic Literacy Project and other places, it may be a bit more complicated than just "chemicals".
Although it wouldn't be a bad idea to look more closely at the interactions between agriculture, apiculture and the use of pesticides (including organic pesticides).

Criteria for return to port from norovirus on-ship infection = more vomiting heads than the ship has heads to vomit into.

Run, run away, its a conspiracy! You are being lured onto a boat that will be sunk by Monsanto's minions.

I really should start reading the other posts before I jump in.

Princess Cruises is offering a special right now: unlimited alcoholic beverages if you book a cabin with a balcony.

I really feel for the other passengers who booked the cruise for a winter break and did not realize they were part of Conspira-Sea!

Yes. Coming so soon on the heels of the Holistic Doctor Murder Conspiracy, it is obvious that this "cruise" is a Pharma plot to eliminate the top practitioners of woo who threaten its financial security (what a coup to be able to dispose of Wakefield and Tenpenny in one fell swoop). Just ..connect...the.....dots.

Maybe they could combine the conspiracy seminars with an onboard Holistic Doctor Murder Mystery, inspired by those popular mystery trains. Wakefield turns up "dead" at the buffet - whodunnit???!?*

*gotta be the MMR.

I suggest we take up a collection and send our esteemed host on this cruise. For one thing, it'll give him enough blogging material for three lifetimes, and for another, it will be interesting to see if he can retain his sanity until the cruise ends. We'll also have to include a pair of Groucho Marx glasses because if they find out he is on board, they'll probably make him walk the plank... Or perhaps have him hanging by the yardarm... If there is a yardarm on cruise ships.

If this nonsense is successful**, can you imagine the economic lure of woo tourism?

Picture if you can
- being led on a pristine, shining path through the mountains until you behold magnificent _Machu Picchu_ where you will stay in a stone hut, be treated by native shamans all whilst the pan pipes flute away and you ingest medicinal mushrooms!

- learn ancient Brythonic self-healing with herbs and distilled elixirs from a Real Druid nearly in the shadow of Stone'enge! Collect berries, nuts and pretty rocks with an authentic high priestess named Fiona! Hook up with someone in the pub!

- climb cliffs alongside the mysterioso Pacific when taking classes in chanting, meditation, spirit-guides-made-simple and hot yoga as you enjoy an organic juice fast and various water treatments in beautiful Big Sur! Lose weight and cares!

** my best guess is that it won't be
-btw- Mikey tried something similar in Ecuador

Look at the rest of the Divine Travels website. There's already quite the market for woo cruises, apparently!

If there is a yardarm on cruise ships.

No, but they have radar masts.

"ALL are welcome to discover the real truth, together."

But I thought they already know the truth. Their problem is that no one else believes them. Than again, there wouldn't be a conspiracy if everyone was in on it.

"Big Pharma specifically Bayer is killing the bees."

The conspiracy is to kill the bees, causing a global agriculture crisis, and discovering that only Bayer has the technology - Pollen-Copters - to artificially pollinate food crops. You can get a Pollen-Copter in any color you want, as long as it's black.

there probably aren’t enough of those idiots to pay for the cost of the trip.

Never underestimate the supply of idiots.

One of the most rational documents in all of history…on a ship of fools.

The Constitution itself is quite rational. I'm willing to bet that this so-called Introduction to the Constitution is not. There are plenty of conspiracy theorists who are into political conspiracies. The whole "birther" conspiracy, for instance (although that's actually been debunked thoroughly enough to have fallen by the wayside). Another example would be the notion that county sheriffs are the law (this would be problematic in Alaska, which has never had county government or the equivalent, and Connecticut, which got rid of county government in the 1960s) and the feds have no basis for enforcing federal law--at least one current state governor, Paul LePage of Maine, is known to have bought into that one (his AG has, at least for now, persuaded him otherwise). Then you have the yahoos who think the amendment allowing income tax was not validly adopted (courts have taken a dim view of such arguments), and the maniacs who are in love with their guns. I expect this so-called "Introduction to the Constitution" to be on board with most if not all of these positions.

There are legitimate, fact-based reasons for thinking that the US government is doing things that are constitutionally dubious. But I don't expect there to be more than coincidental overlap with the viewpoints that will be espoused in this seminar.

And while I'm on the subject of political conspiracies, Talking Points Memo reports that a(nother) GOP presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, has come out against vaccine mandates. According to links therein, several other GOP candidates are also on record opposing vaccine mandates, and all of the candidates who have so stated have done so since the Disneyland measles outbreak earlier this year.

So, how about we try to block buy a section of the ship for a skeptics cruise? Seriously, if I was independently wealthy, I would totally do that for the fun of being able to create those easel stand things that promoted lectures like "The truth behind vaccines" to lure them unsuspectingly into lectures that present them with the stuff they so badly do not want to hear. Also I would do subtle things to mess with them like have a meeting sign outside a conference room that had the illuminati eye/pyramid on it and said "steering group meeting". It would be truly joyful.

I'll go. Just as soon as I've figured out how to do that thing the James Bond baddy did when he fiddled the ships coordinates so they didn't know thaty they were in enemy waters. Wonder if the fund would stretch to a stealth submarine?

Of course, Bayer's Imidacloprid is only toxic in bees at level of exposure about 20-fold what could realistically be achieved by use of the compound as an agricultural insecticide. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118748)

But the conspiracy theory types liable to pay for the cruise have probablynever heard of the fundamental principle of toxicology "The dose makes the poison).

# Roger & Heliantus

Oh, of course! How could I be so stupid. Monsanto is in the list as well as Bayer.. Okay, so it is a conspiracy to kill bees not to cover it up? Or is AgCanada and/or the USDA also doing a coverup?

We have been hearing a lot about neonicinoids as a major danger to bee colonies around here but there seem to be other problems. A friend's father lost 50% of his hives two winters ago but that was partly due to a hard winter.

Ooh, I really really hope that the only remedy taken aboard for treating seasickness is homeopathic ... At least there should be a plentiful supply of shaken water on a ship ...
Come to think of it, how would they make a homeopathic seasickness remedy? Just dilute shaken water, as the ship's motion is the cause? Or would they have someone with seasickness heave in a beaker, and dilute that to infinity? At least we can be pretty sure that the stuff will *cause* the symptoms in higher concentrations ...

Anyway, thanks for this hilarious blog entry, and for all the other comments -- nothing can wipe this grin off my face for hours to come!

Many of those conspiracies are mutually contradictory like matter and antimatter. Concentrated contradictory ideas like this may very well react the same way, and the ship will either disappear with a bang, or rip open the space-time continuum and never be seen again (least not this century).

Even if a Go Fund Me campaign covered the cost of the cruise, I’d go bankrupt from the alcohol I would need to consume to get through this fustercluck of nonsense.

Just use a credit card. By the time the bill comes due your liver will have gone to the big body cavity in the sky.

The cruise is less crank caserole, and more crank smorgasbord. In the manner of trade conferences, there are parallel sessions so cruisers will likely follow their own fave CT(s) through the sessions. They might not all get along at dinner either. 'Why are you sheeple worried about Monsanto? Don't you realize GMOs are just a false flag designed to distract you from the alien shape-shifters walking amongst us right now!'

[Yes, Rich Woods, the cruise will offer a session on shape-shifters, by speaker Rosemary Ellen Guiley, identified as a board member "of the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters, a scientific organization to educate, support and research the field of ET and entity contact and abduction experiences."]

And, indeed, the 'star' of the cruise – getting a whopping six sessions, is 'Introduction to the Constitution' presenter Michael Badnarik.

Michael Badnarik is a philosopher, author, and constitutional scholar. He is a political activist and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for President of the United States in 2004. He now devotes his time to "Lighting the fires of Liberty" by lecturing, and teaching an eight-hour class on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. He is also available to speak to community groups on a variety of subjects related to private property and individual rights. He is the teacher you always wish you had. Michael will be available to sell and autograph books, as well as answer questions about the Constitution, and the possible civil war our country now faces.

Fit's right in. Might be a phony, though, if he takes silver. Gold, man, it's gotta be gold.

One of the most rational documents in all of history…

[cough, cough, ahem] slavery [ahem, cough, cough]
Fie! The electoral college makes no rational sense at all!

A chance to attend seminars by a former Libertarian candidate for president? it's tempting to go, just to see if he can answer any of the questions delysid proved so utterly incapable of addressing.

Roger Kulp @ 38 - That link is quite the dive into the deep end of interlocking and cross-pollinating conspiracy theories. It contacts all the other crap and through crank magnetism starts to form a informational black hole. Easy to see how one might immerse oneself and get lost.

Rational Wiki has a thrilling article on the Montauk conspiracy. Best bit:

Nikola Tesla, whose death was faked in a conspiracy, was the chief director of operations at the base (which, if they started in the 80s, would make him 120+).

"By the time the bill comes due your liver will have gone to the big body cavity in the sky."

I'm sure they have liver-detoxifying foot baths.

Erik Lund at 67:

a(nother) GOP presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, has come out against vaccine mandates.

It looks like it is more complicated. Matthew Herper's on the case:

.....This is not usually the decision of the local school district – making it so would be a politically conservative support of local government – but of state law. But all the much-publicized California law to force vaccinations does is remove exemptions that allowed children to attend public school without getting their shots if their parents had a religious or philosophical justification for not vaccinating. Nobody is going around vaccinating children at gunpoint. So that would actually mean that Fiorina is for strengthening vaccine laws, but is cleverly making it seem as if she is against doing so.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/08/14/carly-fiorina-is-a…

on a ship of fools.

"The allegory depicts a vessel without a pilot, populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, and seemingly ignorant of their course."

Actually the fools in Brant's Narrenshiff seem to be enjoying themselves:
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/gutenb/brant/narrens/bilder/0004.jpg
I would sign up for a Ship-of-Fools Cruise.

Come aboard, we’re expecting you

The ominousness of this line was the first thing that I thought of.

Are the people worried about "flouridation" anti-gluten activists or paleo dieters?

The cruise is less crank caserole, and more crank smorgasbord. In the manner of trade conferences,

A Conspiracy Cafetaria.
The list of catered conspiracies -- presented as a range of alternative realities, all equally valid and equally plausible -- It's like, how much more post-modern could this be? and the answer is none. None more post-modern.

"Belief" in these theories does not seem to be the objective. Rather, they are ideas to play with. For entertainment purposes only . With Andy Wakefield reduced to employment as a cruise-ship entertainer.

They left out depleted uranium!

They even left out any mention of Freemasons!

That said, I’ve taken many cruises and have often thought what an attractive “soft” target a ship with 4000 people aboard would be for conspirators.

One might recall that Richard Lester's Juggernaut is the locus classicus for the red wire/blue wire dilemma.

Do they have wifi on board? If so, sign me up! I'll be your spy.

I volunteer as tribute.

That's going to be one busy seven days. I counted 99 different subjects (why wasn't it an even 100? what do two nines mean? numerologist, please!) with the promise of much, much more.

The music should be good: a whole crew of HAARPs, Skull & Bones is undoubtedly Jerry Garcia's Band From Beyond, and I assume the Bohemian Grove is where one goes to sing a Rhapsody.

Are there any side trips offered? Perhaps a three-hour tour?

I wonder if any of these folk have read, "The Marching Morons" and wondered why this ship of woos is set to sail (er, steam)?

#75 [cough, cough, ahem] slavery [ahem, cough, cough]
Fie! The electoral college makes no rational sense at all!

Ah, sadmar, the Constitution holds a special place in my heart so I felt a need to respond. But not me specifically as I am not that bright. Although I knew there were compromises made in the writing/adoption of the document, I could not provide a cogent reply. Therefore, here is one from a JD with a special interest in constitutional law. He graduated from an Ivy League law school so, even though lawyers are worse than scientists in their level of disagreements, I hope you don't proceed to write him off as not knowing what he is talking about.

"1. Slavery was lawful and common throughout the world in the 18th Century. There's nothing inherently *irrational* about slavery. His objection is one based on morality, and thus impertinent to your point.

2. The electoral college is not at all irrational. It, like other aspects of our system (e.g., the Senate), provide a slight countermajoritarian balance so that the least populous states are not ignored and are assured at least a reasonable minimum amount of influence in the political process. Small states would have little incentive to join the Union otherwise."

Feel free to respond but I don't plan to continue on this subject or on going back to the lawyer. He wasn't interested in entering this discussion, and even though he was kind enough to reply to me once, I have no intention of intruding upon him again.

substitute some marijuana, Amanita mushrooms and cane toads for the Xanax

Not sure if Amanitas would work so well as a substitute for Xanax, or as an anxiolytic at all; the effects are quite radically different, or so a friend tells me.

With Andy Wakefield reduced to employment as a cruise-ship entertainer.

Somewhat similar was mentioned upthread. I am sure it has to gall him that this is where he ended up.

But I'd guess the money is a balm to his shattered ego.

Charlotte @69

Or maybe navigate the ship off course into The Bermuda Triangle.

Samar @75
Of course.It's all about selling book$,DVD$,etc,or in Andy's case,booking future speaking engagements.Conspiracy mongers gotta earn a living too,you know.

Of course it's a conspiracy, but on whose part?

Maybe Wakefield, Tenpenny, Bark, Young, etc., wanted a cruise holiday for free.

They conspired for their marks to pay $1279 for an interior room on the "Conspira-Sea Cruise." A normal cruise-goer will pay $579 for the same cruise.

To me, that means a $700 donation straight to the woo-meisters. Conspiracy?

^A ship full of woo-meisters dosed with Amanita Muscaria would be doubly entertaining, though. Or hellish, I suppose.

The woowoo ship is being filled
A thousand jeers, a thousand fears
A million ways to spend your dime
When we get back, I'll drop a line
- with apologies to The Doors

JP, someone who isn't you tried that!?! I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I've never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

Anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of if you are seeing psychedelic trails then you'd be less concerned with ChemTrails.

However, I think you are on to something with the "hellish" speculation. What if their trip lead to the invention of yet another, even weirder, conspiracy theory?

No, no, no.

Unless of course they provide me with a cut of the profits from all woo sold under same theory.

Or maybe navigate the ship off course into The Bermuda Triangle.

Someone might notice the passage through the Panama Canal.

I don't want to wish norovirus on anyone, but part of me would love to see Robert O Young trying to cure it via "alkalinizing."

I had a case over the Christmas holiday a few years ago. There was a bit of an outbreak at the time, and one of the papers quoted an infectious-disease doc who put it as succinctly and accurately as possible. "It is characterized by the violent expulsion of fluids from the body."

AdamG, this is happening next Tuesday, plus she has a new paper.

Chris, that paper is a crock. I'll be there with references in hand...

– with apologies to The Doors

Consider the kind of believers one would meet on a Crystal Ship cruise. Let us not go there.

AdamG, woot!

JP, someone who isn’t you tried that!?

No, it actually was a friend, back in college; the fly agaric was not terribly hard to come by, considering we lived on the border of a North American rainforest. Not as popular as cubensis, though, and really a rougher ride, as I understand it.

Interestingly, Amanita muscaria and Xanax both act on the GABA system, though, but with very different results.

I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I’ve never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

You never know until you try it, I suppose, but IMHO they're the most interesting of the "recreational" drugs. If the idea of them freaks you out, though, probably best to leave it alone.

{Deisher] has a new paper.
Ah, I see that Dr Deisher has progressed from publishing in mockademic journal-shaped scamjournals from predatory publishers, to "Issues in Law and Medicine"
“Issues in Law and Medicine” [...] on close attention turns out to be a nozzle through which the “National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled Inc” squeezes out an unprocessed stream of anti-abortion, anti-contraception theocratic bullsh1t .
Even the bloggers at 'Rational Catholic' are pointing at her and laughing.

@ jrkrideau:

Some alties say that GMOs kill the bees.

*false flags* are when the ( evil, corrupt, gottverdammte) government uses ops to deliberately create a mass shooting, 'terrorist' attack, bombing strike or other mayhem in order the frighten the sh...people into believing that they need surveillance or suchlike. Then you take their guns and their Freedom.

You need to read more Mikey.
-

Ha ha! Orac!
Divine Travels indeed!**

So a Peruvian Indian dude takes you to visit *muy mysterioso* sites in the Andes! For 2 weeks?

I suppose some people have very bland lives and need faery tales rather than learning and experiencing reality.

I would visit those places to see art, architecture, nature, history, an interesting culture and living people.
-btw- a university friend photographed Inca ruins there so I've seen her visions

** but I got 404s for the price list

A question to anyone:
what do you suppose the presenters are being paid?

I imagine that the room and food are included but beyond that?

Denice,

Maybe they follow, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it?

Seriously though, I would love to go to places like that too.

I looked into volunteer digs and internships years ago but that was still outside my budget so I didn't persue it.

I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I’ve never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

You never know until you try it, I suppose, but IMHO they’re the most interesting of the “recreational” drugs.

Muscimol is a psychedelic now?

They conspired for their marks to pay $1279 for an interior room on the “Conspira-Sea Cruise.” A normal cruise-goer will pay $579 for the same cruise.

And fares for this kind of trip are normally quoted per person, double occupancy, so that's $1400 if you bring the spouse/SO/mistress along, as most would.

Not all of that $1400 goes straight into the woo-meister's pockets. Presumably, Divine Travels gets a cut for marketing and conference logistics. The actual owners of the ship probably get paid for room rental (though this fee is probably less than for comparable facilities on land). Meals are usually included in the cost of the cruise, and the sort of food that woo-prone types like to eat tends to cost more (often, a lot more) than the stuff on your supermarket shelves or offered by typical restaurant supply warehouses. But yes, a big chunk of that is going into the pockets of Wakefield, Tenpenny, et al.

I really really hope that the only remedy taken aboard for treating seasickness is homeopathic

Given that homeopathic remedies are often mostly if not entirely water, taking them in large quantities for some shipboard maladies is actually a medically viable if expensive plan. Dehydration is a major issue with many food-borne illnesses. Of course, it's just as effective and much cheaper to drink water that isn't claimed to have a fraction of a molecule of some specific ingredient. And the people who sell the homeopathic remedies would obviously prefer that the cruise attendees not catch on to this particular conspiracy.

"Someone might notice the passage through the Panama Canal."

Not to worry. They'll dismiss the evidence and insist they're still in the Pacific.

Denice #109,

I obviously don't know how things work in the altie world, but at similar type events and conventions where there is a captive audience of potential customers, the speakers actually pay to appear, as this is considered advertising. To a very motivated and affluent audience.

I imagine the "A" list speakers like Wakefield are being paid, as they are the bait used to attract suckers, but many of the lesser lights on the cruise who have books, services or products to sell may not be paid or are in fact paying to speak. I'm sure they use the seven days of exposure with alt customers to drum up business everywhere: around the pool (oh no! chlorinated water!), etc.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

(In a way, this reminds me of the cruises scientology runs on their rusty barge The Freewinds. Constant pressure to buy, upgrade, donate and spend money on scientology.)

Not a Troll,

JP, someone who isn’t you tried that!?! I understand it has quite powerful effects but I truly would not know. I’ve never felt psychedelics and I would mix well.

I was given some fly agaric mushrooms a few decades ago by some friends who were too afraid to try it themselves - they found them in Thetford Forest in Norfolk UK IIRC. I had a copy of Stafford's 'Psychedelic Encyclopedia' which suggested roasting or otherwise drying to convert the various chemicals to their psychoactive forms, so I stuck them in a low oven until dry. A small amount I smoked, just to see what happened (not a lot), and the rest I made into a tea, which was surprisingly delicious.

I remember a mildly altered state of consciousness, and I even collected my urine to recycle the drug, but lost my nerve, as repeating the mildly altered stated did not seem worth the effort of overcoming my psychological aversion to urine-drinking, and I was afraid of attracting unwelcome herds of reindeer. I concluded that a larger dose might be interesting but lost my interest in such matters and developed a stronger sense of self-preservation before I had the opportunity - dried fly agaric mushrooms are easily available on the internet these days as 'incense' (wink wink).

Andrija Puharich described giving some fly agaric mushrooms to a chap who remembered incarnations as an Egyptian Priest. He went into a parallel reality that sounds like a dissociative belladonna alkaloid or ketamine trip. Puharich also claimed that Uri Geller teleported a car and its occupants several hundred miles so take what he wrote with as large a pinch of salt as you think appropriate.

Muscimol is a psychedelic now?

F*ck if I know, it's not really my bag, but the Gazoogle seems to suggest that is one, although not of the "classic" serotonergic variety. "Psychedelic" doesn't really seem to be a pharmacological category, anyway.

@ Woo Fighter:

Sure.
I notice that Bark's website ( for her offices in Illinois) lists various woo-tinged ( testing, nutrition) and aesthetic services ( mesotherapy, skin care, vibration-based exercise) and products. She caters to a ( probably) well-to-do, worried-well, fearful of aging set,
So do high-end hair salons/ spas.

Muscimol is a psychedelic now?

No first-hand experience, but my second-hand impression is that A. muscaria is more of an inebriant -- a dissociating / euphoric drug.
I was harvesting porcini last August and ran into a colourfully-dressed young man who was wandering around under the same trees, and who turned out to be harvesting the fly agarics. Once we had established that we occupied different, non-competing mycophiliac niches, we had a chat. He preferred it to EtOH because the effects were more dissociating. Personally I stick with the alcohol, it is CULTURAL HERITAGE.

FWIW, fly agaric can be detoxified by simmering in salted water (because the muscimol is water-soluble) -- see the Appendix here:
http://www.davidarora.com/uploads/muscaria_revised.pdf

A cruise! Ahhh – so romantic. And the lysdexic pianist at the all-night bar tinkling the keys late into the night: 'Moo, moo, moo – hic – what a little woo-light can do.'

No first-hand experience, but my second-hand impression is that A. muscaria is more of an inebriant — a dissociating / euphoric drug.

My buddy described the experience as being significantly "speedy," which seems odd, but I suppose, say, alcohol feels pretty stimulating at certain doses also.

I’ve never felt psychedelics hallucinogenics and I would mix well.

Narad, I think I fixed it for you. I'm not exactly sure what Muscimol's classification is. There seem to be raging debates over this in the drug (ab)use forums and in the following paper, I'm not sure exactly what I've learned from it:

http://www.neurosoup.com/entheogens/hallucinogens_Halpern.pdf.

JP, no issues. I am the one who used the term not you. I tend toward the vernacular because it's all I've got, but Narad is cool to call me out when I'm incorrect. Even though impaired one should always try to be the best one can be. And if I miss the mark, I've just learned to accept looking like an a$$ sometimes.

Thanks for the info on the GABA receptors. I was on baclofen for a bit for suspected PLMD after a sleep study showed arousals not tied to breathing events. (My guess is that they were caused by silent reflux but they don't test for that around here so they picked up on a few leg movements to treat.) It was an interesting experience on Baclofen, and in getting off of it, but at the time I found it interesting reading about it as a GABA-B agonist. Hard to find anything on the internet not related to alcoholism treatment though.

Anyway, yeah, I'm the type who doesn't like to lose control of my own mind/body so all of the psychotropics are generally out. I don't know if this impacts the experience with hallucinogens / dissociatives / psychedelics or not but I've never been willing to take that chance.

I've certainly have had plenty of chances. One of my Job Corps Centermates went to jail for a year for selling LSD. However, it took them years to catch her. I hope she is well; over the years I lost touch with her. But last I knew she was married to a physician and living a normal life.

Speaking of which, Krebiozen, your comment had me laughing out loud. And, I think that you've confirmed that I made the right decision in avoiding them.

^ Interesting. The strikethrough of the word "psychedelics" in my first (italicized) sentence failed. Not sure why and too tired to research. I hope it makes sense.

I wanna go for the forbidden archeology. Also Vrill. And Nibiru / Planet X.

Interesting. The strikethrough of the word “psychedelics” in my first (italicized) sentence failed. Not sure why and too tired to research. I hope it makes sense.

Round about these parts, ya gotta use the "del" tag.

Thanks for the info on the GABA receptors. I was on baclofen for a bit for suspected PLMD after a sleep study showed arousals not tied to breathing events. (My guess is that they were caused by silent reflux but they don’t test for that around here so they picked up on a few leg movements to treat.) It was an interesting experience on Baclofen, and in getting off of it, but at the time I found it interesting reading about it as a GABA-B agonist. Hard to find anything on the internet not related to alcoholism treatment though.

Yeah, I've heard the withdrawals can be both awful and interminable. Similarly, regular use of benzos (like Xanax) can cause similar dependence with (possible life-threatening) withdrawal upon cessation. I haven't been offered even a small script for a benzodiazepene by my current psychiatrist, despite anxiety levels which were formerly through the roof (now slightly better), but I suspect this is a good thing, even though/because I would really like them a lot, I think. A high (200 mg) dose of sertraline is supposed to be a pretty effective anxiolytic in the long run, in any case.

I suspect there is some sort of genetic ineffectiveness to the GABAnergic system that I've inherited from my dad's side of the family; interestingly, everyone whom I've surveyed on that side of the family expressed a strong preference for alcohol over, say, marijuana. Indeed, the proclivity has in several instances been a problem.

Woo – nothing valid or new
Come aboard, we’re infecting you!
And WOO, snake oil merchants’ sweetest reward
Let it flow, like homeopathy turds, floating back to you!

“Psychedelic” doesn’t really seem to be a pharmacological category, anyway.

Oh, come on.

It was an interesting experience on Baclofen, and in getting off of it, but at the time I found it interesting reading about it as a GABA-B agonist. Hard to find anything on the internet not related to alcoholism treatment though.

Leon Gussow is always worth checking out. The two final items here I've found to be quite interesting.

Puharich also claimed that Uri Geller teleported a car and its occupants several hundred miles so take what he wrote with as large a pinch of salt as you think appropriate.

"Ling-Ling was on close terms with Tim at the time, but disavowed any intent to perpetuate the relationship when I inquired. Her reason for being at Millbrook, aside from screwing around and getting stoned, was to advance the cause of a tiny device, contents unknown, which, when attached to any bone of the head, would unfailingly permit the deaf, even those devoid from birth of any auditory nerve, to hear with perfect clarity. This miracle was said by her to have been invented by Puharich and was in his possession."

testing, testing: if you put your passwords between two del tags it will show on screen as blocks

@NaT:

I tend toward the vernacular because it’s all I’ve got, but Narad is cool to call me out when I’m incorrect.

I wasn't, and I apologize for giving you that idea. It was just idle riffing while I was catching up with the thread.

I had to restrain myself from a dive into the GABA binding sites as a way to repress the existence of my need to do the freaking dishes. It's a subject that I was quite interested in for a while, and following things down remains a temptation.

I had to restrain myself from a dive into the GABA binding sites as a way to repress the existence of my need to do the freaking dishes. It’s a subject that I was quite interested in for a while, and following things down remains a temptation.

There have been times in my life - and this is one - when I have considered whether just throwing the dishes out and getting new ones would be the wiser course of action, especially considering they are all mismatched things I've picked up at yard sales, etc.

My friend Sarah used to have a sign above her sink that read "Мыть или не мыть? Это не вопрос! Мыть, и сразу!" Which is to say: "To wash or not to wash? There's no question! Wash, and right away!" (The words for "to wash" and "to be" rhyme in Russian.)

This would be a good approach to take myself, but it doesn't help that I have a chronic sink-being-clogged problem.

Which is to say: “To wash or not to wash? There’s no question! Wash, and right away!” (The words for “to wash” and “to be” rhyme in Russian.)

Per the usual. (It's a longer story, but... utensils.)

If we're going to GoFund somebody, maybe Banachek can reprise his Project Alpha role.

But I’d guess the money is a balm to his shattered ego.

I can also imagine that a sufficiently deep contempt for the audience who has paid one to entertain them goes a long way towards maintaining one's amour-propre.

“To wash or not to wash? There’s no question!"
My Russian colleague Galina sent me a birthday card with the message "To beer or not to beer? That is a silly question."

@ Narad, #133
Is there still anyone remembering the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers?

re dishes and sinks:( although cooking is not my be-all and end- all cause in life)

I never leave dirty dishes in the sink**. That is forbidden.

HOWEVER I have solved the nagging dilemma of either having accumulations or being engaged in perpetual washing-
by only washing the 'serious' dishes/ utensils - i.e. those you absolutely need to cook and serve particular foods.

Everything else is disposable: paper plates, plastic containers from other products, etc. If a pot or pot is too hard to maintain, it is tossed . I also use frozen foods often.

** it's messy plus the cat likes the sink too much.

Whether or not speakers/celebrities taking part in cruises get well-compensated, there are definite hazards to the job.

We have touched on the mysterious disappearance angle, but this is a very real phenomenon on cruise ships.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2040248/Why-165-people-gone-m…

Cruise ships also break down and/or are halted by bad weather. The Ohio State football coach found this out when he got stuck on a ship with a horde of fanatical football fans:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/02/urban-meyer-cruise-ship-2500-ohio-state…

Just imagine poor Andy Wakefield, marooned on the Ruby Princess while the crew frantically works to restart the engines and keep a bunch of conspiracy-theorizing woo-sters from going into full-blown panic...

# 91 Not a Troll
Those of us who are not US citizens have tendency to contrast the revolutionaries' Declaration of Independence with its ringing words We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness with the US Constitution which seems to have omitted this concept

# 107 Denice Walter
Oh clearly my suspicious mind could not handle something that simple. :( False flags showed up when I was reading the Hornblower novels as a teenager. I thought it had to be something much more nefarious.

What me paranoid?

@ jrkrideau:

Oh it's simple alright- created by the simple minded for simpletons. No wonder they've found each other.

Oddly enough, today Mikey ( Natural News) recounts and interprets his vivid dream about a false flag attack,

What a psychologist might interpret instead is that Mike makes up elaborate stories presented as somehow prophetic in order to push his agenda of frightening and then, controlling, how other people think to his own benefit.

"Some alties say that GMOs kill the bees."

No, but GMO agriculture practices are contributing to the bees' decline. The bees depend on various 'weeds' being part of their habitat. They don't do well with only large areas of monocropped plants. IIRC, it has nothing to do with the GMO crops themselves, but the Roundup-resistant crops let the farms dump the glysophate more indiscriminately, killing off more non-crop plants over a wider area.

But, again IIRC, that's only one part of the larger picture of bee habitat disappearing. Land is being cleared for other uses, and folks other than GMO farms are using more herbicides.

And the habitat problem is separate from the issues with neonicotinoids. The independent research published so far suggests a strong link between neonicotinoids and Bee Colony Collapse, and Bayer did suck the FDA into approving them by use of a commisioned study that proved to be, uhh, riigged.

Conspiracy theories articulate discontents about real things via metaphoric projection onto other things. Sometimes, they just make stuff up, but other times they twist real problems to meet their fantasy melodramas. Just because a conspiracy theoriat rants about something, that doesn't mean it's not an actual and important issue. The conspiracy fan is likely to have some facts wrong, but others right. And the conclusions drawn are likely wacko, since again, e.g. the CTs aren't really interested in the bees, but in how the bees can serve as a symbol for Something Else.

Fwiw, the leading bee scientist in the U.S., Marla Spivak, has only advocated restrictions on neonicotinoids, not a ban. Among other things, within market realities, she doesn't expect farmers to go without insecticides, and she worries that replacements for neonicotinoids could be even more toxic to the bees. But as 'the dose makes the poison' she does think the present doses of neonicotinoids are way too high: “Do we have to use them on everything all the time?”

@ sadmar:

You're right- I should have been more clear.

Unfortunately, I've heard that pesticides are the problem ( therefore, " Go organic!") GMOs contribute ( therefore, " Go organic!) and hey, EM radiation and cell phone towers are RUINING everything ( therefore, " Go back to the 19th century"). I'm not joking.

@hdb #84

Any sort of Concept Cafetaria is mutil-session seminar format is quintessentially modern, not pomo. The thing is, WE may recognize the menu of this event as filled with incommensurable alternate realtiies, but the hosts and attendees don't necessarily see it that way. To the contrary, since the schedule includes several sessions where all the speakers appear together, the organizers appear to think all these folks can talk to one another, and appear to modeling some kind of unified movement against 'them', and nothing could be more modern than that.

What is unquestionably pomo is that this occurring on a sea cruise with a name so silly it could be from The Onion. Whether anyone involved has an "objective belief" in any of these theories is irrelevant. As part of a getaway-vacation-package, 'play with' and 'entertainment' values may not be the ONLY purposes present, but they dominate and dwarf any pragmatic agendas.

And, since pomo culture rules, Andy Wakefield being employed as a cruise-ship entertainer, isn't being "reduced", it's moving up the ladder from making YouTube videos., validating his status as the C-list entertainer he's always been.

In among all the lunacies is "Cointel Pro", which was actually real. It was the FBI's name for a project to infiltrate and disrupt left-wing political groups in the late 60s and early 70s, and was a major subject of the Church committee investigations later in the 1970s if I recall.

In 1971 a group of Philadelphia peace activistst broke into an FBI field office in Media, PA, and stole al lthe files in the dead of night. They sent all the hinky stuff to newspapers, and cointelpro was discovered a little while later by an investigative reporter going through the trove of documents. It proved to be very exstensive, and utterly extra-legal. The peace activists were never caught, and no one breathed a word about it until one of the conspirators spilled the beans over 40 years after the fact! There's an excellent NYT video about it all.

Just imagine poor Andy Wakefield, marooned on the Ruby Princess while the crew frantically works to restart the engines and keep a bunch of conspiracy-theorizing woo-sters from going into full-blown panic.

I've been imagining them ending up stranded on a desert isle ... either due to rough weather setting in or the other passengers, tired of being lectured about evil vaccines and other woo, tossing them overboard.

They'd finally be free of the tyranny of Big Pharma and similar evil entities and able to put their "natural living" and, for some, libertarian beliefs to the test.

Sort of a Gilligan's Island meets Lord of the Flies meets Survivor type of thing.

I'm sure much hilarity would ensue.

@ Denice #143

Oh, I know you're not joking, and it can get worse than what you mentioned.

That's one reason the movement-woo anti-s upset me so much: they such up all the oxygen in the room around real issues, and send critiques that need to be made off in the wrong direction. I'm convinced GMO foods are safe to eat. I'm also pretty well convinced that Monsanto develops and deploys their safe and potentially beneficial products in ways that cause great economic and cultural harm to indigenous people, and push Big Agra deeper into land-use practices that have negative long-term consequences for both the ecology and the agricultural economy – which have nothing to do with GMos per se; the new tech just adds more grease to the skids already in place.

Alas, there's so much noise about 'GMO POISON!' the legitimate critiques barely get heard, and the discourse has become so polarized that anyone who says anything critical about Monsanto or the land use issues exacerbated by GMO development and production automatically gets lumped in with the crazies and dismissed...

One source of potential strife on the Conspira-Sea Cruise looms on the seminar calendar for January 26.

There's a scheduled discussion on autism and what causes it (the choices are vaccines and GMOs), with panel discussion leaders Andy Wakefield, Sherry Tenpenny and Jeffery Smith (the GMO-phobe). What happens when the first two jump on vaccines and Smith insists it's the GMOs? Will a food fight break out as audience members join the fray?*

*I've learned not to underestimate the potential for violence at actual professional conferences. I was at one just last month and an audience member repeatedly interrupted the speaker with disagreements on the topic at hand. The speaker finally had enough, got down off the podium, into the heckler's face and a shouting match ensued (the moderator finally pulled the speaker away). It was the most entertaining moment of the entire conference. If I'd been faster I could have had a cellphone video which surely would've gone viral on YouTube.

@ Dangerous Bacon:

I'd love to see that video!

-btw- there seems to be yet another causative factor being hooted ( most recently at the Autism One's 'recovery panel') amongst the TMs : antibiotics caused their child's autism- one of them - the so-called *Prof*, Zoey O'Toole, claims that her son had no vaccines.

NaT #91:

The coughs and "Fie"! we're meant to indicate a lighthearted, comic, theatrical jibe. I also intended a joke, by citing the more trivial Electoral College issue directly while 'repressing' the slavery question 'off mic'. In short, I was just having a bit of fun, and meant no all-encompassing dis on the Constitution, just "don't go too far overboard there, OK?"

But since you've brought your Ivy League JD (Junior D-bag?) into the mix, I shall feel free to respond, though I'm chill with you staying out of it, and would advise you NOT to solicit further opinion form this lawyer.

1. Slavery was lawful and common throughout the world in the 18th Century. There’s nothing inherently *irrational* about slavery. His objection is one based on morality, and thus impertinent to your point.

If this fool didn't come with Ivy League authority, I might consider it beneath me to rebut someone who attempts to puff up an air or erudition in a condescending put-down, but misusing 'impertinent' instead of 'irrelevant.' But...
1. Argumentum ad populum. Authoritarian theocracy: common in the 18th century = RATIONAL!
2. Defining rationality as exclusive of anything that could come under the heading of morality just auto-Godwin's itself.
3. Putz has no clue what my objection to slavery is based on. Talk about Dunning-Kruger.

2. The electoral college is not at all irrational. It, like other aspects of our system (e.g., the Senate), provide a slight countermajoritarian balance so that the least populous states are not ignored and are assured at least a reasonable minimum amount of influence in the political process. Small states would have little incentive to join the Union otherwise.

Cute tense confusion: I wasn't aware The U.S is encouraging small territories to become states these days. Oh, he meant 'would have had little incentive. Well, besides being false (military protection, interstate trade, etc etc. weren't "little": see 'War of 1812'), his lead sentence says – minus the double negative – claims the Electoral College IS rational. Which:
1. Takes him out of the Constitution as written by the framers, which did not allow for a popular vote for President.
2. Ignores the fact that at present, the counter-majoritarian effect of the EC is anything but slight, and the influence of small states is so far above a 'reasonable minimum' that Congress is a bad joke in terms of democratic representation. (Oh yeah, "slight balance" = grammar fail #3).
_______

For a contrarian take on the view of the Constitution as 'great document of liberty!', check out Charles Beard.

Suzanne @58 that was my first thought, too - how sorry I felt for the average Joes whose long-saved-for splurge of a cruise happened to coincide with the boat full of lunatics. Though if the loons are in seminars the whole time, then there are fewer folks using the usual amenities like deck chairs and swimming pools, so it might be a win!

re: Norovirus, I wouldn't wish that misery on anyone. Well, OK, maybe Wakefield.

If rumors of plots to infect everyone on the cruise with measles, ebola, Salmonella, or a new GMO microbe, that would start a conspiracy panic and most conspirators would be too paranoid to want to go on the cruise!

This is beginning to sound like what is taught in emergency planning classes as the 'Zombies on Air Force One' scenario.

Someone has to write a scenario for a disaster exercise and starts with terrorists on a cruise boat. But that won't exercise all of the target capabilities so they add a disease outbreak. Then a busload of Girls Scouts, then zombies, then Air Force One, etc.

On the other hand, bad things often come in multiples (think Fukushima). I met an employee of the county health department for Ferguson, MO at a conference. While the riots were going on they had a major food-poisoning outbreak and all of their servers crashed.

And, indeed, the ‘star’ of the cruise – getting a whopping six sessions, is ‘Introduction to the Constitution’ presenter Michael Badnarik.

I've noticed that the people who refer to the Constitution and the Bible the most often are usually the ones who have read neither.

@Narad,

I'm sorry my reply was delayed. I was traveling earlier in the week and now back home there is much to catch up on, including sleep. But at least I came home to a clean sink. Yay!

I appreciate the explanation. No apology is necessary. The psychiatrist I correspond with refers to emails and blog comments as projective tests. I don't know how clinically he takes that but in my layman's mind it means to me that these are communication mediums that are highly subject to misinterpretation, especially of tone, and that the interpretation is greatly influenced by what is going on in our own heads.

Thanks so much for the link to The Poison Review. Interesting articles, and the link lists are fantastic!

That incident they describe in Syracuse is macabre. I didn't know about it until you directed me there (I don't watch news on TV so I'm often miss large chunks of semi-local & local news) and I hope there are no more close calls like that one.

@ sadmar,

I'm not interested in continuing to discuss the points of the Constitution as I stated. However, regarding your comments:

1. I thought you were being cute in your first comment, but you are correct, at no point did I think you were just kidding. The fact you replied with arguments and I link to an argument appears to support this.

2. I didn't contact a lawyer with a specialty in constitutional law in defense of me in my assertion that the Constitution is one of the most rational documents. I am able to defend myself; I don't need a lawyer to do so (unless in a professional capacity). I contacted this particular lawyer so he could defend the Constitution on the points you raised to question the rationality of it.

3. I didn't name / title drop for any other reason than to avoid the Dunning-Kruger card being played here because it doesn't apply (unless you're someone trained on the US Constitution and then I would be wrong). Well, I failed epically on this task because you didn't merely insinuate it, you flat out laid the card on the table.

4. I also failed to recognize that my straightforwardness, ok bluntness, would offend you in addition to the word "impertinent". He wasn't saying you were insulting my arguement, he was using it according to its legal definition.

5. I think he missed the word "had" in the small states sentence also but I didn't insert [sic] in it because I thought it was self-evident that he meant when the document was adopted.

6. Your personal attack on him was uncalled for.

Closing thought: The Constitution is rational enough to include a means to change it if you consider any part of it irrational. So if you're an American and you want to change something in it, you are free to apply yourself to that end.

HTH HAND [hat tip to Narad]

.....where are a large crew of pirates when you need them?

Ummm, would you believe on a cruise?

Haha, my god, they seem to never realized that half their conspiracies contradict each other, especially in medical one. If chemtrail, haarp, fluoride, tv, ads and media are all a mind control device, how come the illuminati are so bad at it? The world is a freaking chaos and would the new world order focus on the loon first?

Seriously, I doubt the company putting those cruise together believe in them. There so much themed cruise, they saw a niche that was not covered, a niche of people that would not go on a history (real history) cruise. All the new age spiritual people needed to be covered, and that market niche was open, so in a way, marketing wise, it's brillant. Those Loons are getting conned lol. That's just speculation, but I feel that the cruise would have been named something like "the Truth Cruise" not conspira-sea, that sounds and look ridiculous, something Jimmy Kimmel or John Oliver would have come up.

While there's been speculation here on how much Woo Boat speakers will make from the Conspira-Sea cruise, the amount surely will pale in comparison to what big-time woo docs are hauling in.

For instance, there's the host of the upcoming Dr. Roizen's Integrative and Preventive Medicine Show in Las Vegas (a conference featuring various types of woo, sponsored by Cleveland Clinic). Michael Roizen (the chief "wellness officer for CC), who already has quite the financial woo empire built up, turns out to be one of five Ohio docs who collected more than $1 million last year from medical device and/or drug makers (Roizen's reported take was $1.7 million in 2014 from this one source alone).

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/08/16/industry-ties-…
http://medcitynews.com/2011/11/cleveland-clinics-michael-roizen-his-man…

Even Mercola might be jealous. And it beats having to mingle with conspiracy loonies on a boat in return for chump change.

One is temped to start a crowd funding campaign to hire a submarine to torpedo the ship.

Torpedoes are old hat; these days, there's something called a cruise missile. Better to send in a Marx Bros-look-alike team with hidden cameras and mics. It would be pure gold.

I think everyone should read the paper Chris links to @ 101.It's a winner as far as sheer antivax paranoia,poor grasp of science,and novel ways of trying to connect vaccines to autism

What known biologic processes could explain this apparent causal relationship between fetal manufactured vaccines and ASD prevalence? We suggest that the contaminating fetal cellular debris and DNA fragments as well as HERVK retroviral fragments may lead to autoimmune attack and/or insertional mutagenesis in children.This paper
focuses on the potential for insertional mutagenesis.

Snipped

Furthermore, increased DNA uptake after LPS activation suggests that systemic inflammation or immune responses could increase the susceptibility for exogenous DNA uptake. Vaccines that are manufactured using human fetal cell lines
are contaminated by exogenous DNA and retroviral fragments,and vaccines elicit systemic inflammation and immune activation, a combination that may be particularly
amenable to insertional mutagenesis in vaccine recipients.

Oh, how I suddenly wish the Bermuda Triangle was really real! I picture five Grumman Avengers diving down out of the clouds and raking them stem to stern with bombs and machine guns.

sadmar, the Electoral College makes lot of sense if you think of it as a way to enhance the voting power of slave states. The infamous "three-fifths of a person" rule was actually a compromise to keep the major slaveholding states from filling up the census rolls with too many nonvoting slaves in order to have more seats in Congress. The other side of the coin is that Electoral College votes follow the total number of Senate and House seats a state has (This you know.), making it more difficult to overwhelm the more thinly populated slave states than a popular vote would.
Not for nothing, I recommend that all my fellow USAnians check out the National Popular Vote Compact, and if your state hasn't signed on, urge your legislators to enact the National Popular Vote Act.
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/index.php

Oh joy! The Aluminati are back!
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2015/08/04/another-frontiers-in-journ…
In which our friend Tomljenovic takes advantage of the multilevel-marketing aspect of the Frontiers business model to instigate a Research Topic, then to recruit, edit and peer-review submissions from her fellow True Believers Gherardi and Exley.

The title of Exley's contribution indicates its level of objectivity:
"Why Industry Propaganda and Political Interference Cannot Disguise the Inevitable Role Played by Human Exposure to Aluminum in Neurodegenerative Diseases, Including Alzheimer’s Disease".

The other two contributions to this Research Topic are from Pogue and Lukiw, who are new to me.

Candice H. Brown Elliott,
Please, oh please, don't invoke "The Marching Morons". Its biology is pathetically bad, on a par with 1930s eugenics. Larry Niven and Isaac Asimov co-wrote an essay, "On the Marching Morons", that takes it apart in detail. Unfortunately, the link to the only online posting has gone 404, so here is the link to a blog post on the subject by PZ Myers: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/08/there-are-no-marching-mor….
Also, here's a link to the Biology in Science Fiction blog post about it: http://blog.sciencefictionbiology.com/2007/05/marching-morons-and-inher….
I can't say how much I loathe this story, along with its companions, "The Little Black Bag" and the last section of "Search the Sky". They all are entertaining and well-written, but they are oh, so wrong in a seriously bad way.

Mein Herr Professor Doktor: "Oh joy! The Aluminati are back!"
I'm glad I'm not the only one warning about the danger of the Aluminati. They are so insidious, putting their siding on houses, getting us cooking in their pots, wrapping our food and our heads in their foil, replacing our good all-American steel in the bodies of our all-American pickup trucks, and extending their perfidious control over our minds by inserting their toxin into our vaccines. If you think Monsanto is evil, you haven't looked into Alcoa deeply enough. I only pray it's not too late.

Shirley you mean "Al-Coa".

herr doktor,

That's a crafty way of using the multilevel-marketing model, and even craftier of you to perceive that analogy..
____

Old Rockin' Dave,

The PZ Myers piece reminded me of something. Have grown up so poor I lived in a shoebox in the street that I have been told that poverty such as that doesn't exist in America, I can say that people may find it surprising where some of the most vicious elitist prejudice I've experienced has come from. But, more to your point, it doesn't do anyone any favors to assume they are morons and treat them as such.

If I had that many dollars looking for places to live (I don't), I'd be tempted by this strictly for the humour value. I'm actually quite fascinated by "conspiracy theorising" as a manifestation of popular paranoias and fringe moral panics.

I am slightly disappoint, though; I don't see anything that blatantly screams "THE JOOZ DIDDIT." What's a telephone game (the collective noun) of conspiracy theorists without an invocation of Rothschild or two? (Which brings me back to my first point...lu hayiti Rothschild...)

Did someone here already use the term "Conspiracon"? Imagine the money to be made by inviting all the fuster-heads to one annual event of events. Talk about missing the proverbial boat! First Prize would naturally go to the best conspiracy theory to explain the increasing incidence of conspiracy theories as a cover-up for something (anything) more sinister.

Need an iceberg, anyone ?

There's legitimate things in there, like MK ultra, which was a ridiculous waste of money to see if things like psychics were able to control people and other paranormal was real, it turns out no lol, no results. But on those kind of conspiracy circles it did, work! They will talk about it as if it was successful and created supersoldier and telepathic spies and what not. And contelipro would be use as a example to what is happening to them , they believe they are watched since they have THE Tuth. And since those were real "conspiracies " it will also be used as proof. Since those were real ( but they were discovered pretty fast and did not include half the planet, but chuute don't tell them that) every conspiracies they now come up with is real. That's always like that. I talked to a lot of believers and they always bring a legitimate thing, to prove their point, but they failed to ee how in fact it mostly disprove it.

I can only imagine the intense waves of paranoia among passengers aboard that ship. No pun intended... :p

NaT:

FWIW, I didn't take offense at you. I'm a 'Not a Troll' fan. I also like straightforward and even blunt ;-). While it's not cool if the thing put bluntly is somehow 'wrong'/unfair/upsetting/whatever, I'd rather get that honest and up-front than veiled in a cloak of feigned gentility. Having grown up in a shoebox on the street :-), I'd guess you too have experienced the hard fist that lurks behind 'country club' manners.

Club med sucks!
Authority sucks!
I hate golf!

Yes, we should leave the Constitution alone on RI, though I can guess the take on it offered during the Woo-Cruise would have us shuddering in harmony. (See following comment)

I confess: I do get bent out of shape have by a certain type of Ivy League snob (not that your lawyer necessarily is one – I ass-u-me'd) – having spent 10+ years amongst a college faculty dominated by same. Actually, I'm pretty OK with pretentious folks who live up to their pretentions, but... well this particular pompous cadre of colleagues said some of the dumbest shit... And they were masters of that never-straightforward fist-behind-politesse thing, too.

Anyway, re-reading #150 I see my language appeared to be ad hominem not just at the attorney, but at you for querying him and passing on his comments. But, per #156-2, I didn't have a problem with you seeking support from someone qualified in the field – it just makes sense. Nor do I think you should be reluctant to post such a response. I do sincerely apologize for my words that suggested otherwise.

I did go ad hominem on the attorney, and while that was kinda figurative, it was wrong in this context. I'm in no position to judge the lawyer on the basis of one brief comment. I should have directed my reply to the comment not the person. The comment was facile, condescending and clueless – presuming to 'know' my "objection is one based on morality" simply from the word "slavery" bracketed by juvenile coughing SFX. Perhaps, in another context – say, something other than quickly-fired-off web one-liners – I might find this fellow quite astute. Or not. But lacking more info, I shouldn't be presumptuous either, eh? Mea culpa.

I did some Google checked on Michael Badnarik, he of the 'U. S. Constitution class' on the Woo Boat. Turns out his 'constitutional scholarship' concludes that the "secret" of that document is the 'sovereign citizen' thing: the assertion that the government actually has no power to compel you to get a drivers license, settle up parking tickets, pay taxes... Oh, and for the "teaser" excerpt of his new book on his website, he's pulled a passage that specifically mentions medical 'freedom':

Does the FDA really have the authority to prevent you from drinking raw milk? Does the federal government really have the power to force you into healthcare insurance that you don't want and can't afford? Are you really going to stand there and submit to mandatory injections or passively accept the universal RFID chip under your skin? If so... close {this] book now... You are already a slave, and you shouldn't get caught reading objectionable literature such as this.

So he'll no doubt be telling the woo-cruisers that if they just say "I will not comply", they can get around all those nasty unconstitutional laws and regulations impinging on their free exercise of woofulness.

A few more choice Badnarik quotes:

• I am opposed to any individual taxes until we eliminate all of the unconstitutional agencies, and I suspect we wouldn't need a tax after that.
• Gun control means being able to hit your target. If I have a 'hot button' issue, this is definitely it.... if you try to confiscate my guns, I will feel compelled to give them to you, one bullet at a time.
• If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will be like. I'm quite sure that I will never experience that war - because dissidents are always the first to be eliminated.
• Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" ..fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
• If [Franklin D. Roosevelt] were alive today I would assassinate that S.O.B myself...

Even a lot of the far-fringey anti-government libertarians think Badnarik is a dangerous kook.

In a possible case of dupe-magnetism, the cruisers who choose his sessions will be shucking out an extra $150 (or 4 ounces of .999 fine silver) apiece for the pleasure of hearing the man himself deliver a 'class' that is available on video in it's entirety for free on YouTube and archive.org. I suppose the in-person appearance could generate $150 worth of entertainment value if anti-vaxers start whining about SB277, Badnarik chides them for turning over their kids' education to the nazi-nanny state instead of home-schooling, setting off a donnybrooke with an angry posse of Thinking Moms, who get so upset they rush the dais, and he pulls his Smith and Wesson...

I was gonna write 'but I don't think that will happen', but on second thought, with the potential volatility of this mixture of hole-istic characters, I'm not making any predictions one way or another. But if I was Andy Wakefield, not only would I be lamenting having fallen into such outre company, I'd be scouting spots to get clear of potential crossfire from the moment I got on board, and packing a kevlar vest, just in case.

You guys have me laughing esp since Ian, #157.

At any rate, I believe that I can add to the general temper of merriment by offering a tasty bonbon which may contain an inner filling that inadvertently reveals a common altie MO:

"The real reason Donald Trump is so popular: He's the surrogate mouthpiece for the things most Americans deeply believe ( but are afraid to say)"- Mikey, Natural News, today.

And like the Donald, Mikey too is your "warrior" ( his word, not mine) poised to intrepidly battle corruption, malfeasance and other horrors perpetrated by government/ industry/ media/ those-people-you-don't-like-who-live-down-the-street.

Seriously: he and the other idiot ( PRN) have just announced in the past few days that they are now monitoring governmental crimes ( either through a new website focused upon acronymed agencies or new faux radio programming, respectively).These additions follow their "investigations" of corporate sculduggery ( pharma cons) and endless reports about how the mainstream media has been RONG so many times it's ridiculous!
Hey, if you don't like the news, write your own!

They know their audiences well enough- despite their own florid lack of interpersonal subtlety- to realise that there is a large group of people who ARE suspicious, angry and seething with venom for those who enjoy a modicum of intelligence, success or recognition. They tap into this vitriol easily because they share many of those characteristics themselves.

I venture that both of these prevaricators imagined themselves to be intellectually superior to the average, about to conquer the world of science and journalism until they were refused entry to either a decent university ( Null) or higher levels of education ( Adams) so they're still angry at authorities and experts since those days. Their bio material continuously rants about their own excellence and accomplishments since childhood as compensation.

Probably Andy, many anti-vaxxers and cruise ship presenters fit into this model as well. they're about to reveal the Truth about those corrupt b@stards who lord it over everyone and who have kept them out of the limelight (or journals or meaningful positions.)
HOWEVER what they reveal instead is primarily about their own inner workings and *betes noires*

sadmar,

Best not to be a NaT fan. That way I won't let you down someday. ;-)

No worries. Most things on the internet blow past me with real life being the actual challenge. And even though I defended the lawyer on a personal basis, I probably didn't need to. I am positive he's comfortable with debates of all kinds. However, I did find it interesting that you took what he wrote as condescending. To me, he just writes like a lawyer would. They write funny; more so than medical professionals.

I agree with you on treatment of the Constitution on this ship which is part of the reason I made my fools statement. Makes me cringe and he is just another charlatan playing to his audience.

I did see the extra fee but figured it was because it was 6 sessions long. The humor here is if they allow questions afterward, and it is anything like the lawyer-type seminars I've been to, he is going to earn it. Everyone and their brother is going to be telling him their story in great detail trying to get free legal advice out of him. That part would be fun to watch.

There’s legitimate things in there, like MK ultra, which was a ridiculous waste of money to see if things like psychics were able to control people and other paranormal was real, it turns out no lol, no results.

No, MKUltra did not use psychics and other paranormal means, they used good ol' drugs and psychological methods, and they did get results. Not necessarily the results they wanted, but there were results aplenty.

I can't argue the 'waste of money', but not all projects work out the way you plan.

“The real reason Donald Trump is so popular: He’s the surrogate mouthpiece for the things most Americans deeply believe ( but are afraid to say)”- Mikey, Natural News, today.

Trump's main message is "Sociopathy and narcissism are the best kinds of personality to have; also vote for me because I have lots of money and came by it through my lack of scruples." Mixed in with racism and sexism.
Perhaps Mikey is right, perhaps more than a obstreperous minority of Republican supporters do feel the same way.

May a hedgehog nest in your underwear drawer, Narad! I just blew off a perfectly good hour at The Poison Review.

Fascinating stuff.

Anyway, a certain surgeon researcher named David Gorski (well known to our blinkenlights host) has a very thorough analysis of Deisher's latest oeuvre:

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/aborted-fetal-tissue-and-vaccines-…

No, MKUltra did not use psychics and other paranormal means, they used good ol’ drugs and psychological methods, and they did get results.

Something something Frank Olson something.

Frederick seems to have been thinking of Rima "Great Culling" Laibow's hubby's Stargate Project.

Herr doktor, what you say is true.

I imagine that our woo-meisters have even more in common with Trump:
they all worship celebrity and would do anything publicly in order to be famous/ stay famous.
Also they have poor taste, bad judgment and more money than most people.

# 182 herr doktor bimler

Sociopathy and narcissism are the best kinds of personality to have; also vote for me because I have lots of money and came by it through my lack of scruples.” Mixed in with racism and sexism.

This sounds like a winning combination among a lot of tea-party Republicans.

I would refer you to the Robert Ford, the former major of Toronto. He makes Trump almost respectable and he got elected. Due to ill-health he did not run for re-election as mayor but was returned as a councillor.

Mind, to give him his due, I don't remember any,accusations of real racism against Rob. Perhaps a couple of slurs and so on but not real racism.

One, if not the only, reason that Darn Old Chump is so popular can be found in this article:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-…. If you don't have time to read it, the URL should give you the short answer. Or to put it in the words of H. L. Mencken, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Mind, to give him his due, I don’t remember any,accusations of real racism against Rob.

He appears to have been admirably unprejudiced about the skin colour or ethnic background of his drug suppliers.

hdb:

Sociopathy and narcissism are the best kinds of personality to have. Also vote for me because I inherited money, and despite bad investments and bankruptcies, have been able to fool the rubes into thinking I'm way more wealthy than I am, and have profited mightily by a lack of scruples, which have actually bit me in the ass financially, but exponentially increased my celebrity.

FTFY. ;-)

I wonder if the JREF can schedule their TAM for the same cruise.

"Offering a target-rich environment" would be a good draw.

Nah... the TAMers would never go for it. The conditions would be too dangerous what with all the unvaccinated and unmedicated lunatics aboard... but, it would be glorious.

FTFY. ?

Is it just me, or have the non-BMP/surrogate-pair emoticons* been on the rise lately? I know that the SB "IT" monkeys have been rewarded for cartooning up the joint by installing the freaking slow, utterly bourgeois Emoji plugin** for those who are now... cripes, I have no idea. There are perfectly serviceable emoticons built-in (e.g., ;-)),*** if one "needs" to resort to them.

But I'm curious how and why – in a practical sense, not versus the standard**** "vocabulary" – they're being injected. Is this something that, say, mobile devices are presenting as a default input method nowadays?

* No, marketing as "different" from emoticons does not persuade me. There is no meaningful advance over crap like ":comp:" (h[]tp://www.sherlockforum.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/comp26.gif).
** This is why we (tinw) can't have nice things. Like preview.
*** I'll see whether <code> works here for ;-) .
**** I'm aware of the origins/storage history.

^ Wait, the plugin overrides ;-)? Is one reduced to the noncanonical ;)?

Let's see: ;)

^^ Nope, it's that bad.

Narad, yes, you found out the proper way through your power of logic and reason what I stumbled upon earlier up thread when I was totally blind-sided by the fact that this site changed my subtle inflection to a winking smiley face commonly used by tweens for texting.

I wasn't happy.

+100 for preview. Can we get that?

^ Wait, the plugin overrides ; - )? Is one reduced to the noncanonical ; )?

Yeah, it's obnoxious. I have been known to use an emoticon on rare occasions, but the annoying cartoon things look horrendous, and not only that, but I personally feel that they're not, semantically speaking, even the same thing as actual emoticons.

(I have a friend who works in the German department and uses smileys very liberally in his emails, etc. It's actually sort of adorable coming from a 40-something year old German (by way of Singapore) man.)

I have a friend who works in the German department and uses smileys very liberally in his emails, etc.

I think he is safe until he starts using Comic Sans font - then the hammer will come down on him.

Oh, wait. I am unsure of this in academia. I am speaking of the corporate world.

re #192: Let's drag out the old standby &zwnj;: ;‌-)

Yup. By the way, ;‌-) is coded as ;&zwnj;-).

I typed 'semicolon' - 'hyphen' - 'close parenthesis'. I would prefer it to be rendered as those characters, not as an icon. Not only are the icons too cutesy, unless I enlarge my screen like 400%, I can't see the wink vs. the normal smiley eye.

I would prefer not to use emoticons at all, but it seems I do need to, and my attempts at light-hearted funning tend not to read properly in text forums, especially here.

Testing:
‌-)

Testing #2:

;‌-)

Re. Sadmar @ 178, "....Sovereign Citizens...": A particular type of right-wing ideology that denies the validity of government above the level of counties, and whose adherents are known to drive with hand-lettered license plates (because "state gov is not legitimate"), and shoot the cops who pull them over for it.

Their tendency to shoot cops has made Sovereign Citizens a high priority for FBI & other LE agencies to keep an eye on, so the presence of one of their leaders on this cruise will virtually ensure the presence of at least two undercover ("u/c") officers or agents. That should be good for some extra paranoia on the part of the other attendees.

I was going to suggest that someone might want to do some "street theater" by getting together with a few friends and dressing up as "men in black" or whatever, and standing around the boarding area for the cruise, talking into their wristwatches and so on, as the passengers arrive. But if there are Sovereign Citizens in the mix, then there will be real u/c around to watch 'em, and skeptics w/ humorous intent might want to avoid stirring that particular pot.

What I wouldn't give to read the daily reports on the behaviors of these persons-of-interest and those who hang out with them!

---

Re. Chris @ 19: alcohol hand-sanitizer before entering cruise ship eating areas: That's a good start, but alcohol-based preparations are known to not kill C.Diff. But C.Diff or not C.Diff (that is the question;-), with all the Norovirus going around, you couldn't pay me to get on a cruise ship, even if all the passengers and crew had to line up at a sink and wash their hands with strong soap & water before each meal.

---

Re. psychedelic mushrooms: The Amanitas appear to be deliriant rather than psychedelic. Psilocybe species are psychedelic, per the active ingredient, psilocybin. Psilocybe mushrooms are sacred to adherents of certain native Mesoamerican traditions, who believe that they provide a means of direct contact between individuals and the deity.

When Swiss psychopharmacologist Albert Hofmann first synthesized psilocybin based on a sample of the mushrooms collected by (R. Gordon Wasson, if memory serves), he gave some of the synthetic psilocybin to an elderly shaman, who told him, "yes, you have brought the spirit of the mushroom into your pink pill." Nice example of how science and an ancient religious tradition were able to cooperate in a spirit of mutual respect. Today's adherents of herbal medicine would do well to welcome Big Pharma to seek out whatever active compounds might exist in their herbs (pharmacognosy), but they don't, and we have much to say about that in these pages.

One of the more recent (in the last decade) FDA-approved human subject research protocols for psychedelics is: 30 milligrams of psilocybin, lie on a couch listening to classical (or other instrumental) music over good stereo headphones while wearing dark eyeshades, with a psychiatrist standing by for supervision and intervention if needed. This appears to produce profoundly meaningful experiences that are typically described in religious terms. It would be interesting to see how that translates for atheists (seriously).

In an unsupervised setting, lower doses are useful as an aid to creativity and deep reflection on any subject of interest. That would mean approx. 1 gram of dried psilocybe mushrooms. OTOH spending a day deeply engaged in thought, is quite "psychedelic" in and of itself, without need of mushrooms or various compounds.

---

Interrobang @ 172: I was wondering why the promoters of this thing hadn't said "Teh Jewish Conspiracy" in so many words, but maybe they're hinting at it with a wink-nudge or a dog whistle that only other anti-Semites can hear?

---

Lastly an optimistic speculation:

At one point in his career, psychiatrist Milton Erickson was in charge of a hospital psychiatric ward, where two of the patients each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. One day Erickson arranged for these two patients to meet. The patients spent the day arguing with each other over which one of them was the real Jesus Christ. The next day each of them approached Erickson to say that they'd finally realized, for the first time, that they were crazy.

So the moral of that story is, perhaps when the Conspira Sea Cruize returns home, a decent number of the passengers, having encountered others quite like themselves in most ways, will also recognize that in the end they were crazy. One can hope.

sample of the mushrooms collected by (R. Gordon Wasson, if memory serves)

The mycophilia / mycophagia circles I mix with have been abuzz with recent realisations that Gordon Wasson simply made up a lot of his ancient shamanic mushroom traditions, and there is no ethnological value in his books. At least the realisations were recent to me.

In other woo-centric news.. conspiracies with no boats involved

- Jake ( Autism Investigated, today), to the delight of his commenters, writes about our most benevolent and sagacious host:
" Anybody who thinks that G----- and others like him in social and news media are not intentionally distorting facts to help the CDC cover up facts about vaccine risks is simply a fool."

- Mikey ( Natural News, today) has discovered that he is indeed prescient because his vivid dream, as described a few days ago, just CAME TRUE** even the ( magical) number showed up*** in events that transpired in reality
He's a prophet who profits from his proffering.

- Commenters on Dachel's post ( AoA) about Silberman's new book are not exactly thrilled with its subject matter or its author .I'm sure that Dan will be especially miffed as it reflects upon the subject matter of his book.

Thus, minions, if we give them enough time, I'm confident that they'll find a way to implicate ALL of us into these dreadful plots, subterfuges, cover-ups and malfeasance in the service of Whomever

Ah yes, the world is a bizarre place to those amongst us who are not blessed with a capacity for self-criticism.

** except he got a few minor details wrong like the religion involved, the country involved, his own actions in the dream, false flags etc .
Mike, people can go back and check your predicitons.
*** if you look hard enough and twist the news enough

Congrats to Orac for being recognized (once again) by Jake.

But did we ever congratulate our fearless leader on achieving a #4 ranking in Sharyl Atkisson's list of Top Ten Astroturfers?

https://sharylattkisson.com/top-10-astroturfers/

True, he has to share honors at the #4 spot with other "science" blogs (the "scare quotes" are Atkisson's).

This list of Top Ten Astroturfers (signifying secret payouts by Big Whatever to manipulate the minds of readers for nefarious purposes) has to be bona fide, since it stems from a poll of 169 Twitter respondents, and all Twitterians who follow Atkisson undoubtedly have the facts to back up their suspicions. Along with science/skeptic bloggers, there's a wide slice of major mainstream media on the list, along with Mother Jones (which as we know has long been in thrall to major corporations).

DB@204 -- The idea of Mother Jones being in the thrall of major corporations reminds me of this recent Onion article on Bernie Sanders:

"Tanned, exquisitely coiffed Bernie Sanders tells supporters corporations actually have a lot to offer"

http://www.theonion.com/article/tanned-exquisitely-coiffed-bernie-sande…

Surely if your own personal Belief System shows up in that list of lunacy then it must make you question its truth? Or is that too hopeful and people attending will actually think, "Well, all those fools believe in the lizard people but I know that's just a conspiracy started by Big Pharma to conceal the actual truth about how vaccines are being used to cull the population!"?

I really like the idea of a parallel skeptic cruise and was going to suggest the same thing. Apart from the potential head-messing fun anyone trying to counter this misinformation deserves a luxury holiday.

Oh Dangerous One:

That list includes WAY too many items to be a 'top 10', wouldn't you say?
But she didn't want to leave anyone out.

@ Cate K:

As someone who used to attend various new age events and woo-meisterly presentations, I must say that it's hard work to suppress laughter and automatic eye-rolling- it can be exhausting if the idiot goes on for hours. And they do.

Incredibly, the woo/ altie in charge usually reels off lunacy at such a quick pace that I wouldn'[t recommend a week long excursion.

Alex:

So, how about we try to block buy a section of the ship for a skeptics cruise? Seriously, if I was independently wealthy, I would totally do that for the fun of being able to create those easel stand things that promoted lectures like “The truth behind vaccines” to lure them unsuspectingly into lectures that present them with the stuff they so badly do not want to hear.

You don't have to be independently wealthy to do that. You just have to be able to sell enough people on the idea to get the trip funded. ;-) The price would be the cost of a cabin on board plus enough to cover the expenses of any guests that you book. It really is just like any other convention.

The tricky part to doing it at the same time as this would be a) making sure there is enough space on the same cruise and b) finding out about their event far enough in advance to be able to book the same cruise. ;-)

So, if there are any travel agents among the group, you could totally arrange something like that.

I'll give Jake Crosby this: I can actually read at his website without wanting to claw my eyes out from the poor visual design and navigation that you find at Age of Autism, Natural News and a few others I've had the misfortune to land on. (I know, emoticons here, but those can be avoided. Besides, this is a pleasant site to view and it has the best site search relevancy of any I've ever used ).

To Denice, and others, who visit these awful websites I applaud your fortitude in subjecting yourself to that visual abuse in order to update everyone here.

Also, did I miss something in Mike Adams dream where he writes it was a Christian campus but happened at a Hindu shrine?

For the rest of the article, the machinations he uses to match his dream to the event reminds me of a special on the History or Discovery channel (?) on the prophecies of Nostradamus and what twisted logic needed to be applied to pull any relationships out of them.

But did we ever congratulate our fearless leader on achieving a #4 ranking in Sharyl Atkisson’s list of Top Ten Astroturfers?

On 8 we find the Huffington Post, which strikes me as a bit ironic, considering how our beloved host considers it.

Poor Laura Eisenhower is President Eisenhower's great granddaughter. It's really sad to see how people like this "Dr. Dream the Holistic Healer" feed her delusions instead of helping her. http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/07/644-laura-magdalene-eisenhowe…

Really, you can't make this stuff up.

@Not a troll, you did read correctly about Mike Adams.

He also solved the Chinese explosion: http://www.naturalnews.com/050816_Tianjin_explosion_space-based_weapons…

Wow, Eisenhower and her flying monkeys have really infested the comments section of that post.

(Completely OT, a few years ago I had to review resumes for an internship from two applicants named Eisenhauer and Nimtz. I wanted to hire both just for the enjoyment I'd get out of introducing them at meetings).

"Mikey ( Natural News, today) has discovered that he is indeed prescient because his vivid dream, as described a few days ago, just CAME TRUE** even the ( magical) number showed up*** in events that transpired in reality"

I once dreamed that 2+2=5. Upon awakening I found that my computer had crashed. Coincidence?

"I really like the idea of a parallel skeptic cruise and was going to suggest the same thing."

That would almost certainly require sailing on an ocean with a non-Euclidean geometry.

Sadmar@ 200

Lose the hyphen.
; ) = ;)

@ Not a Troll:

Thank you for your kind words.

To be perfectly honest, I am sometimes extremely entertained by their idiocy and obviously mercenary activities.

Many of the sites are indeed ugly. I think Jake's isn't quite as bad because there is so little material on it,

Although there is certainly *visual* madness, let's not forget the terrible auditory manoeuverings resident at sites like NN ( Mike also produces music videos and lessons in various woo) , PRN ( the daily crapfest is, after all, radio), AoA/ TMR include video as well. Sometimes difficulties in verbal thought are more apparent in the spoken word than in the written one

About my own welfare despite immersion in woo-ful propaganda:
no one should worry, I am breathtakingly immune to its deleterious effects. I believe that I inherited the capacity to discern and be resilient against BS, advertising and mindless brainwashing because I am descended from a long line of business folk who managed to survive despite their exposure to prodigious amounts of similar tripe over the past ( at least) century or so,

As my late father would frequently say gleefully:
" Oh look, at this incredible line of crap they're trying to push onto people!"

“I really like the idea of a parallel skeptic cruise and was going to suggest the same thing.”
That would almost certainly require sailing on an ocean with a non-Euclidean geometry.

Reimannian geometry -- there are no parallel lines to cruise along.

Yeah, it’s obnoxious. I have been known to use an emoticon on rare occasions, but the annoying cartoon things look horrendous

This wasn't my point; the new appearances are non-BMP code points. They don't render at all for me – all I see is a box with the six-digit Unicode hex in it. On the other hand, when Orac uses an emoticon, it's actually rendered as a GIF (these have also recently been restyled from large and yellow to petite and orange).

I don't particularly mind simple graphical, rather than text, emoticons at this point (so long as they're not animated); overuse is simply a reflection of the level of thought put into the comment by its author.

(I have a friend who works in the German department and uses smileys very liberally in his emails, etc. It’s actually sort of adorable coming from a 40-something year old German (by way of Singapore) man.)

In fact, the first instance of this phenomenon that I noticed was from a German commenter, which is why I was curious about how they were being injected, given that it seemed to be inconsistent.

It instead seems to be a (still weirdly inconsistent) case of the IT version of Intelligent Design, or something. Perhaps Orac's seeing some sort of graphical dashboard when replying that has buttons to insert the GIFs. I can't sift the HTML for the instantiations right at the moment.

DRLP [sic]: Don't expect that your emoticons are going to successfully appear for all readers in the post–Emoji plugin era.

Narad,

I mostly don't know what you are talking about with the non-BMP code but I can say that all of the images are .pngs for me.

I don't know if this helps but I found that the smileys and frowns (including Oracs) img srcs are hitting http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/wp-includes/images/...... while the winkeys are img class "emoji" and their src is hitting http://s.w.org/images/......

Herr doktor bimler @ 202:

Re. charges that Wasson made up most/all of it: Most interesting! How did that come to light, and where can I find out more? It's not in the Wikipedia article yet, but if it turns out to be correct, it should be included. Damn!, that is highly disappointing.

Two items related to Wasson remain fact as far as I know: that Wasson provided samples of mushrooms to Hofmann, and that Hofmann successfully synthesized psilocybin. But if Wasson didn't get his mushrooms from a native practitioner, who else could have told him which ones were the correct species? So it's reasonable to infer that he did have some assistance from local peoples, and then he embellished the stories and then made up other stories.

Hofmann worked for Big Pharma: Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, lately renamed Novartis (running away from their history?;-) Psilocybin was produced by Sandoz under the trade name Indocybin, and Sandoz LSD was more famously known by the trade name Delysid. Sandoz freely gave out samples of both of these to psychiatrists, hoping they would find clinical uses. At the time (1950s - mid 1960s), there was much excitement about psychedelics contributing to the emerging paradigm that mental illnesses were reducible to neurochemistry, and then later, that creativity and religious inspiration could be studied in a similar way.

If it turns out to be true that Wasson fabricated a bunch of his material, he ends up in the same category as Carlos Castaneda: what they wrote would have been good fiction (or perhaps great fiction in some circles), but by claiming it was fact, they disgraced themselves as frauds.

As far as I know, Hofmann was scrupulously honest, as was Sasha Shulgin (developer of well over a hundred new psychedelics and entactogens; I knew him when he was alive, he was world-class brilliant), and Humphrey Osmond (Canadian psychiatrist who launched Aldous Huxley on his first voyage with mescaline, which became the subject of _The Doors of Perception_), and Huxley himself was a leading mind of the 20th century. These guys were oldschool intellectuals and true Renaissance minds, with legitimate educations and achievements, and broad background in the sciences and humanities.

I have to wonder why it is that Wasson, Castaneda, and others, went way overboard. Probably some combination of quasi-religious zealotry and desire for worldly benefits such as fame and status. These outcomes, and their contrast to the works of Hofmann, Shulgin, and others, point to the need for serious caution, self-skepticism, and checks & balances, among everyone who has a legitimate academic or clinical interest in psychedelics, whether from the perspective of cog sci & psychology, psychiatry, comparative religion, the arts & literature, or other.

(I used to think these compounds should be reclassified to FDA Schedule III, but lately I've been more inclined to believe that Schedule II would be appropriate by way of reducing the risk of quacks getting involved. Credit to Orac & others here for pointing out the pervasive opportunism of quackery time and time again. The generalization applies, don't leave tempting things around where quacks might get at them. Schedule II should be a reasonable way to minimize that risk.)

Re Wasson: that's quite...interesting. He was one of the first people to call out Castaneda, according to Wikipedia. And now he appears to himself be a fraud.

You guys should send me and Mr Woo. The wife of a True Believer would never be suspected... ;-)

Since there are mycophiles here:

Can you name this mycophile?

A 20th-century American avant-garde 'master' he made virtually no money from his celebrated creative works – living in poverty until the late 1950s – at which time he co-founded the New York Mycological Society, and began to generate a modest income by supplying (edible) mushrooms to elite New York restaurants. The income was enhanced when he appeared on an Italian '21'-type guiz show as a mushroom expert.

Each week, [he] answered, with deadly accuracy, increasingly obscure questions about mushrooms. On his final appearance, he was asked to list “the twenty-four kinds of white-spore mushrooms listed in Atkinson.” [He] named them all, in alphabetical order, and won eight thousand dollars.

I haven't checked the Goofle but I'm guessing Cage.

Y'all won't be laughing anymore when we induce our somnolent solfeggio kitty signal onto the otherwise discordant, apathetic and chaos inducing drull of your typical world-encompassing Haarpagram.

http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/catPurrNoiseGenerator.php

======================

There is a strange, artificial signal permeating all of us. It seems to whisper 'sleep' insomuch as it sometimes doesn't:

If one happened to live near high-tension transmission lines and, for some reason, took a 9-inch hoop degaussing coil and hooked it up to an input on an old Denon amp, he would hear a pleasant 60 cycle hum.

If he took a second coil and placed it in series and antiparallel* to the first, his hum is cancelled and this strange, airy, quavering tone is left. The tone is often punctuated with sounds of old tarbell cassette transfere, to cicadas, to that special Jody Foster 'Contact' sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vFwTJ44lFw

Curious... Why would somebody abuse a consumer electronic component like that?? That's beside the point. People do. Anyways, the sounds turn out to be PLC (powerline carrier communication) and a 2kh tone as part of 'fault detection'.

I've run into the sound off and on without ever realizing what it was; I'd always attributed the somewhat soothing, shifting tone to parasitic oscillations. But could it be used for mind control? I suppose, given the lack of deguassing ring detectors, that they could take over the world somehow.

What I find really, really interesting is that most anything on Ambient Sleeping Pill goes perfectly with it; Pleasing harmonic symbiosis and punctus contra punctum all potted together into one masterpiece of serinderpitudinal symphony. How did that happen??
http://ambientsleepingpill.com/

*that is to say, at right angles to each other. Interestingly, the coil only picks up the hum when horizontal. Even the single coil 'nulls out' along any axis except obvious transformers; I take it there is some interplay between the house wiring and the transmission lines. One flipped opposite polarity cancels, as expected.

The non-colocated, opposite polarity arrangement gives surprising amplification and fidelity to a cellphone playing music inside one of the hoops.

"But could it be used for mind control?"

It's certainly controlling your mind.

Come on, rs; Can't you feel it??

Do you know what Bobby Ray Innman was doing before he was runnin' the microelectronics and the computer tech corporation? A CIA director. It's public knowledge.

Do you run out of Kleenex, paper towels, and toilet paper at the same time? You know it's true!

Puzzlin' Evidence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdCfYHNctsc

I see that nobody is on board to talk about Orgone Energy, so another topic neglected. I see the woo pitchers have taken a page out of the book of the $cientologists, who own their own cruise ship (the Freewinds, a 50 year old rust bucket they've owned for 30 years, but they use slave labor to keep it looking presentable), which they use to deliver "high level courses" and since they have so few members now, apparently also rent out for other "seminars." http://tonyortega.org/2015/08/31/home-sweet-freewinds-we-get-a-rare-loo… The good thing about the ship format from their point of the view is that they can squeeze the rubes for money, and they have nowhere to run away to, they are trapped on board the boat.

"Still, if there are any intrepid souls willing to do this, maybe a Go Fund Me page would be able to provide the travel and cruise expenses. I’m sure there’d be blogging material for many weeks. Heck, there might even be enough material for a book!"

Challenge accepted: http://www.gofundme.com/ss29jrfk

I'm planning a very non-confrontational approach, so please don't expect shouting and "gotcha!" questions. I have interviewed people with very strange ideas before, and vastly prefer establishing a good relationship. I would appreciate your assistance, even if it's just spreading the link, and your thoughts.

Bump... Go, Colin, go!

This is what happens when snow falls on conspiracy nuts

gregladen — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 15:51:28 +0000

This is what happens when snow falls on conspiracy nuts

First, the conspiracy:

Then, the embarrassment:

And in case you are not freaked out enough ...

gregladen Thu, 01/30/2014 - 10:51

Aircraft contrails can cause precipitation by "seeding" clouds

gregladen — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:30:10 +0000

Aircraft contrails can cause precipitation by "seeding" clouds

A repost:

In a paper that is about to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, researchers Andrew Heymsfield, Patrick Kennedy, Steve Massie, Crl Schmitt, Zhien Wang, Samuel Haimov and Art Rangno make the claim that "The production of holes and channels in altocumulus clouds by two commercial turboprop aircraft is documented for the first time. ... Holes and channels in supercooled altocumulus clouds can be the result of homogeneous ice nucleation induced by turboprop and jet aircraft at temperatures warmer than previously accepted for commercial aviation influences on clouds."

In short, it is possible that when an air plane flies through a cloud that is just floating there minding its own business, the plane can cause the cloud to start precipitating, letting out rain or snow. The conditions have to be just right, so it does not happen often, but it can happen. So this is, perhaps, one of those interesting physical phenomena that is theoretically possible but pragmatically insignificant that can be the seed of argument and confusion, which is probably (I'm guessing here) why this study was done: I imagine a bunch of meteorologists sitting around arguing over whether or not such a thing can happen, and finally one of the goes, "OK, yooz guys stay here on the ground, and us guyz, we'll fly through the cloud, and you watch and see what happens, K?" ... And then they do it and get a paper out of it.

Well, to be more exact, the observation was made by accident, then further investigated. According to one report (source:

In 2007 Andrew Heymsfield ... was a on a research flight west of Denver International Airport when he and his team flew right below a big [cloud that had been flown through by an airplane]. When they went back and looked at footage from a ground-looking camera on the plane, they found the area directly beneath the hole had been coated in two inches of fresh snow.

source

Here's the science behind the story. Water vapor is a more or less invisible component of the atmosphere (it does affect optical conditions of the air, but it is not something we see and point to). Under certain conditions having to do with how much vapor there is, air pressure, and temperature, some of that vapor can condense into very tiny droplets of water or ice. Clouds. When an aircaft passes through the atmosphere, it can affect conditions in number of ways. It can add water vapor, it can cause a vortex which, by definition, has a pressure gradient with a low pressure center, it can add heat (especially a jet engine) and it can cause air that varies smoothly across three-dimensional space to get mixed up, so, for instance, colder dryer air and warmer moister air can mix to cause a new set of conditions to emerge micro-locally.

Sometimes, an air craft will fly through a cloud in such a way that the conditions that cause cloud formation ... the transformation of water gas (vapor) into tiny flying bits of water-solid (water droplets or ice crystals) get altered locally. This can cause a "hole-punch" or "punch-hole" cloud. This is a big hole where the cloud that used to be there isn't any more. I'm not sure why this vernacular term is constructed as it is .... it should be "hole-punch non-cloud," but whatever. Here is a nice YouTube video showing some excellent examples of holes-punched-in-clouds:

Eeek, that video was removed and all the other hole-punch cloud videos on YouTube are from ChemTrail conspiracy nuts, so I'll let you go find them on your own!

Well, just as a cloud can locally go away because of the effects of an aircraft flying through it, a cloud can go from not precipitating to precipitating. Indeed, in the example cited above, the hole punch cloud seems to have represented a place where condensed H₂O fell out of the sky as precip (snow, in this case). The findings of the paper coming out indicate that this happens at an altitude lower than the level at which contrails are generally formed. I get the impression that this surprised meteorologists. Apparently it was assumed that because we see contrails at high altitudes, that aircraft were having more of an effect at those altitudes than at lower altitudes. Thus, the discovery of an interesting and rather dramatic effect at a lower altitude is a bit of a shock. Perhaps more of a giggle than a shock, but something new and interesting, anyway.

The specific mechanism that appears to happen in the case of the present study is that water droplets aloft as cloud are converted by the effects of the aircraft into ice. This happens when the water is very close to be converted to ice anyway, as super-cooled water droplets (way below freezing but still liquid). Then the aircraft comes along, and primarily through the effects of the vortex, ice crystals are formed. Heat added by an aircraft is probably antithetical to the process, so this effect may be more likely to occur with turboprop planes than with jets. (Turboprops also fly at a lower altitude than jets, where this phenomenon is more likely to occur.)

The ice crystals are caused by swirling air at the propeller tips of turbo props' props at warmer temperatures (just below freezing) or by similar pressure changes over wing surfaces at colder temperatures (below about negative 20 degrees C). Essentially, the very local lowering of pressure chills the already super-cooled water to -37 degrees C or lower. That freezes the droplets.

The ice crystals become a surface on which neighboring super cooled water droplets can glom, and they then become part of the condensed ice. And snow is born. Well, it's a little more complicated than that, actually. What happens is the liquid and ice together at the same temperature cause a disequilibrium, causing the liquid to evaporate back into vapor and then re-condense on the ice crystals. Yes, dear reader, meteorology can be nearly as spooky as quantum physics.

In any event, the snow then falls to earth. If it melts on the way down, that's rain. (That's true of much rain, by the way. Those whopping big and freezing cold drops of water from a thunderstorm started out as globs of ice at high altitude.)

Some small version of this effect probably occurs fairy often, but it is when the effect continues after the aircraft has passed through that it is notable. The exhaust trail of the aircraft may spread over time, the evaporation/condensation process can propagate itself, ice-9 like (as in Cat's Cradle), across a large area, or heat caused by the growth of ice crystals causing a local thermal rise, thus mixing layers and causing more condensation of supercooled liquid droplets.

Sometimes the "hole" in the clouds is a big blobby thing, and that's the "hole-punch" or "punch-hole." Sometimes the "hole" is long and thin, and that's called a "canal."

The conditions for this effect to occur are somewhat rare. What is needed is a midlevel liquid-layer topped stratiform cloud. That gives the right combination of super-cooled droplets, pressure, etc. for the aircraft to "seed" the cloud. The authors note that about 7.8% of the earth's surface is covered by this sort of cloud, on average.

You can get a preliminary copy of the paper here, and there's a press release here.

Heymsfield, A., Kennedy, P., Massie, S., Schmitt, C., Wang, Z., Haimov, S., & Rangno, A. (2008). Aircraft-Induced Hole Punch and Canal Clouds: Inadvertent Cloud Seeding Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, preprint (2009) DOI: 10.1175/2009BAMS2905.1

gregladen Fri, 11/16/2012 - 10:30