Irreverent Skeptics Podcast

http://media.blubrry.com/asgtc/content.blubrry.com/asgtc/Amelia_Earhart-Special_Report.mp3 Amelia Earhart The Lost Evidence – Special Report The photos in question Photo from the National Archives – ONI Undated Blow up of the ONI photo Photo from the Diet Archives (Japan) dated October 1935 http://yamanekobunko.blog52.fc2.com/blog-entry-338.html

http://media.blubrry.com/asgtc/content.blubrry.com/asgtc/Jones_Special_Report_1.mp3 This is the first special report on Alex Jones. In this special report I will be covering 3 recent events – Alex Jones on the Joe Rogan Podcast – 2/1/17 Jones Pizzagate apology – 3/25/17 Jones v. Jones Divorce – Child Custody trial – 4/17 to 4/21

WE’RE ALIVE! And we’ve got a good one! From August 31, 2014… yes, we’re that far behind… Epidemic vs. Pandemic: From Slate.com – The CDC’s official definition of an epidemic is: “The occurrence of more cases of disease than expected in a given area or among a specific group of people over a particular period of time.” Since some diseases become more prevalent or lethal over time, while others become less severe, the CDC must adjust its statistical models to alter the definition of what’s truly more than expected. A pandemic is an epidemic that occurs across several countries and affects a sizable portion of the population in each, although there’s no formal definition of what constitutes “sizable.” According to the CDC, the last influenza pandemic took place in 1968-69, when the Hong Kong flu killed 33,800 Americans between September and March. Ebola / Marburg: Two diseases that are similar, and similarly frightening are Marburg Virus Disease and Ebola Virus Disease. Trust me, you don’t want either of these monsters. Marburg Let’s talk about Marburg first. Marburg is a rare but severe hemorrhagic fever which affects both human and nonhuman primates. Marburg is a genetically unique zoonotic (or, animal-borne) RNA virus of the filovirus family. The Cuevavirus and five species of Ebola virus are the only other known members of the filovirus family. Marburg was first recognized in 1967, when outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (which is now Serbia). Thirty one people fell ill, initially laboratory workers followed by several medical personnel and family member who had cared for them. Seven deaths were reported. The first people infected had been exposed to imported African green monkeys or their tissues while conducting research. One additional case was diagnosed retrospectively. Fatality rates in Marburg range outbreaks range from 24% to 88%   Symptoms: The incubation period (interval from infection to onset of symptoms) varies from 2 to 21 days. Illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache and severe malaise. Muscle aches and pains are a common feature. Severe watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain and cramping, nausea and vomiting can begin on the third day. Diarrhoea can persist for a week. The appearance of patients at this phase has been described as showing “ghost-like” drawn features, deep-set eyes, expressionless faces, and extreme lethargy. In the 1967 European outbreak, non-itchy rash was a feature noted in most patients between 2 and 7 days after onset of symptoms. Many patients develop severe haemorrhagic manifestations between 5 and 7 days, and fatal cases usually have some form of bleeding, often from multiple areas. Fresh blood in vomit and faeces is often accompanied by bleeding from the nose, gums, and vagina. Spontaneous bleeding at venepuncture sites (where intravenous access is obtained to give fluids or obtain blood samples) can be particularly troublesome. During the severe phase of illness, patients have sustained high fever. Involvement of the central nervous system can result in confusion, irritability, and aggression. Orchitis has been reported occasionally in the late phase of disease (15 days). In fatal cases, death occurs most often between 8 and 9 days after symptom onset, usually preceded by severe blood loss and shock. Diagnosis: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA); antigen detection tests; serum neutralization test; reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay; and virus isolation by cell culture. Treatment: Severe cases require intensive supportive care, as patients are frequently in need of intravenous fluids or oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes. There are no specific treatments available for Marburg, although some drug therapies have show promising results in laboratory studies. Outbreaks: 1967 Marburg and Frankfurt, West Germany and Belgrade, Yugoslavia. 7/31 deaths. 1975 Rhodesia and Johannesburg, South Africa. ? deaths. 1980 Kenya. ½ 1987 Kenya. 1/1 1988 Koltsovo, Soviet Union. 1/1 (laboratory accident) 1990 Koltsovo, Soviet Union. 0/1 (laboratory accident) 1998 – 200 Durba and Watsa, Democratic Republic of Congo. A total of 154 cases and 128 deaths of marburg virus infection were recorded during this outbreak. The case fatality was 83%. Two different marburg viruses, MARV and Ravn virus (RAVV), co-circulated and caused disease. It has never been published how many cases and deaths were due to MARV or RAVV infection. 2004 – 2005 Angola. 227/252 2007 Uganda. ? 2008 Uganda & Netherlands. 1/1 2012 Uganda 9/18 Weaponization: The Soviet Union had an extensive offensive and defensive biological weapons program that included MARV. At least three Soviet research institutes had MARV research programs during offensive times: the Virology Center of the Scientific-Research Institute for Microbiology in Zagorsk (today Sergiev Posad), the Scientific-Production Association “Vektor” (today the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology “Vektor”) in Koltsovo, and the Irkutsk Scientific-Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk. As most performed research was highly classified, it remains unclear how successful the MARV program was. However, Soviet defector Ken Alibek claimed that a weapon filled with MARV was tested at the Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental and Production Base in Stepnogorsk, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic(today Kazakhstan), suggesting that the development of a MARV biological weapon had reached advanced stages. Independent confirmation for this claim is lacking. At least one laboratory accident with MARV, resulting in the death of Koltsovo researcher Nikolai Ustinov, occurred during offensive times in the Soviet Union and was first described in detail by Alibek. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, MARV research continued in all three institutes Ebola Arguably nastier than Marburg, Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a severe, often fatal illness, with a case fatality rate of up to 90%. It is one of the world’s most virulent diseases.The infection is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected animals or people. During an outbreak, those at higher risk of infection are health workers, family members and others in close contact with sick people and deceased patients. Ebola outbreaks can devastate families and communities. Ebola first appeared in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks in Nzara, Sudan and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter was a village situated near the Ebola river, from which the disease takes its name. Genus Ebolavirus is 1 of 3 members of the Filoviridae family (filovirus), along with Marburgvirus and Cuevavirus – which regrettably, I have nothing on that for this episode . Genus Ebolavirus comprises 5 distinct species: Bundibugyo ebolavirus Zaire ebolavirus Reston ebolavirus (Named for the strain discovered in Reston, WV. More on that shortly) Sudan ebolavirus Taï Forest ebolavirus Some facts about Ebola Transmission: Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. In Africa, infection has been documented through the handling of infected chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest. Ebola then spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids. Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness. Health-care workers have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed EVD. This has occurred through close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced. Symptoms: EVD is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes. People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory. The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms, is 2 to 21 days. Diagnosis: antibody-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay* antigen detection tests* serum neutralization test* reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reactions assay* electron microscopy virus isolation by cell culture* Treatment?: No licensed vaccine for EVD is available. Several vaccines are being tested, but none are available for clinical use. Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. Patients are frequently dehydrated and require oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes or intravenous fluids. No specific treatment is available. New drug therapies are being evaluated. Outbreaks: 1976 Democratic Republic of Congo. Ebola Zaire – 280/318 (88%) 1976 Sudan. Ebola Sudan – 151/284 (53%) 1977 Democratic Republic of Congo. Ebola Zaire – 1/1 1979 Sudan. Ebola Sudan – 22/34 (65%) 1994 Gabon. Ebola Zaire – 31/52 (65%) 1994 Cote d’Ivoire. Taï Forest – 0/1 1995 Democratic Republic of Congo. Ebola Zaire – 254/315 (81%) 1996 (Jan-Apr) Gabon. Ebola Zaire – 21/31 (68%) 1996 (Jul-Dec) Gabon. Ebola Zaire – 45/65 (75%) 1996 South Africa. Ebola Zaire – 1/1 2000 Uganda. Ebola Sudan – 224/425 (53%) 2001-2002 Gabon. Ebola Zaire – 53/65 (82%) 2001-2002 Congo. Ebola Zaire – 44/59 (75%) 2003 (Jan-Apr) Congo. Ebola Zaire – 128/143 (90%) 2003 (Nov-Dec) Congo. Ebola Zaire – 29/35 (83%) 2004 Sudan. Ebola Sudan – 7/17 (41%) 2005 Congo. Ebola Zaire – 187/264 (71%) 2007 Democratic Republic of Congo. Ebola Zaire – 14/32 (44%) 2007 Uganda. Ebola Bundibugyo – 37/149 (25%) 2008 Democratic Republic of Congo. Ebola Zaire – 14/32 (44%) 2011 Uganda. Ebola Sudan – 1/1 2012 Uganda. Ebola Sudan – 17/24 (71%) 2012 Uganda. Ebola Sudan – 4/7 (57%) 2012 Democratic Republic of Congo – 29/57 (51%) 2014: The ongoing, as of recording this show, outbreak of Ebola in West Africa actually began in December of 2013, but was not detected until 2014. It began in Guinea and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Individual cases related to this outbreak, which not in every case turned out to be positive for Ebola, have landed in Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Spain and the United States (expand on that here). Natural Hosts: Both Marburg and Ebola are harbored in fruit bats. The bats do not show obvious signs of illness. It would appear that different species may harbor it and that their overlapping ranges mean that an overlap of range of the virus exists as well. Weaponization?: Similar to Marburg, Ebola is believed to be a component in the weaponization of infectious diseases since 1992. Sources I found cited Russian weapons development as the suspected source. Because the United States would never do such a horrific thing. Amirite? (enough sarcasm?) Ebola Reston (the potential Hooooly shit): First described in 1990 as a new “strain” of Ebola virus, a result of mutation. It is the single member of the species Reston ebolavirus. It’s named after Reston, Virginia where the virus was first discovered. It was discovered in crab-eating macaques from Hazelton Laboratories in 1989. This drew a lot of media attention due to the proximity of Reston to the Washington, DC metro area, and the lethality of a closely related Ebola virus. Despite it’s status as a level-4 organism, Reston virus is non-pathogenic to humans, though hazardous to monkeys. The perception of its lethality was compounded due to the monkey’s coinfection with Simian hemorrhagic fever virus. (Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC) Goodreads – The Hot Zone Ebola in 2014: Beginning in December 2013 in Guinea, but not detected until March 2014, after which it spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal. The outbreak is caused by the Zaire ebolavirus. As of August 26th, 3,069 suspected cases and 1,552 deaths. Another outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 13 people as of August 26th. It’s believed to be unrelated to the West African outbreak. Influenza 1918: (Read the Wikipedia article.) It’s great. Black Death: History The Black Death had one of the highest body counts of any disease ever known to man. Between 1346 and 1353, it killed between 75 and 200 million people in Eurasia – between 30% and 60% of the region’s populace. At the time, the world’s population was only about 450 million, and the plague far outpaced the global birth rate, reducing the population to around 350 to 375 million. The actual origin of the disease isn’t entirely clear, but most historians think it began in central Asia, travelling along the Silk Road trade route and reaching the Crimea by 1343. From there, it traveled across and around the Mediterranean by way of infected fleas on the rats commonly found on merchant ships. After that, it was spread on land both by rats and by humans, most often by coughing or contact with flea-carrying infected animals. Earlier this year, an article popped up claiming that rats had been “exonerated” for being plague carriers, but it was really just coverage of a press conference about a new documentary about the Black Death; the documentary correctly blamed rats and rat fleas, but the news coverage itself incorrectly believed they were saying the rats weren’t to blame. In his Florentine Chronicle, Baldassarre Bonaiuti talks of what life was like for the average citizen while the plague was at its peak: All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried. At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit. In the morning when a large number of bodies were found in the pit, they took some earth and shoveled it down on top of them; and later others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, just as one makes lasagne with layers of pasta and cheese. It wasn’t just in Europe, either. The plague spread throughout the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran, and Syria. It killed about 40% of Egypt’s population. Only severely isolated locations were really safe. Following the original pandemic, the plague continued to ravage Europe well into the 17th century, at times killing by the tens or hundreds of thousands. A third resurgence started in China in the 19th century, spreading to every inhabited continent. 10 million people died in India alone. Cause and Symptoms Healers at the time had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. The disease spread and killed too quickly for any real reliable treatment information to spread – if any was even found at all, which is unlikely. Jews faced widespread persecution, often being accused of poisoning wells to cause the plague (hence the fallacy of that name). Some 210 Jewish communities were utterly destroyed. Lepers and other people with skin diseases – even things as simple as acne – were also blamed for the plague, and thus singled out and exterminated. Europeans also blamed astrological forces and earthquakes. The Black Death is actually several different kinds of plague wrapped up in a nice little bundle of doom carried by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic plague were among the most common varieties. To make things worse, the poor bastards who got infected with one form quite often wound up with the rest as well. Bubonic plague Bubonic plague causes buboes – that is, a swollen lymph node. They look a bit like huge blisters, usually appearing under the armpit, in the groin, or on the neck. Doctors at the time of the Black Death often thought that the buboes should be burst open to leech the plague from the body, but modern medicine considers this treatment useless at best and harmful at worst (since the wound would be at high risk of infection). But the buboes weren’t the end of the fun. Gangrene of the extremities (toes, fingers, lips, and the tip of the nose) was common, as were chills, a general sense of being ill, high fevers, extreme fatigue, muscle cramps, seizures, heavy and continuous vomiting of blood, aching limbs, coughing, gastrointestinal problems, delirium, coma, and – best of all! – extreme pain caused by decay or decomposition of the skin while the person is still alive. The mortality rate for bubonic plague, left totally untreated, is between 40 and 60%. Pneumonic plague As I mentioned before, in some cases, the plague could also be spread through coughing. In Popular Science’s article clearing up the confusion about rats being cleared of blame, they explain how: In some people, bubonic plague spreads to the lungs, although it isn’t known whether this is because they are more susceptible to lung infections or because certain Yersinia strains are better equipped to infiltrate the lungs. Either way, this is a secondary pneumonic plague infection. If a person with secondary pneumonic plague sneezes or coughs on someone else, that someone else may get a primary pneumonic plague infection. Pneumonic plague is much more virulent and rare than bubonic plague, and also much more severe. It can result from the inhalation of aerosolized plague bacteria, or when septicemic plague spreads into the lungs from the bloodstream. There have even been cases of pneumonic plague resulting from the dissection or handling of contaminated animal tissue. The most obvious symptom is a severe, often bloody cough. This is accompanied by fever, headache, weakness, rapidly developing pneumonia, shortness of breath, and chest pain. Infected people can suffer respiratory failure and shock, and death can occur as soon as within 36 hours. Left untreated, the mortality rate is almost 100%. Septicemic plague Septicemic plague occurs when an existing primary bubonic plague infection spreads from the lymph system into the circulatory system. And holy shit is it ever bad news. One of the nastiest symptoms of septicemic plague is the terrifyingly named disseminated intravascular coagulation, which is a widespread activation of the clotting cascade that causes blood clots to form in the small blood vessels throughout the body. Bad news. This causes serious problems with blood flow, ultimately leading to multiple organ damage or failure. What’s more, because so much clotting is going on, the regular clotting process faces a shortage of platelets and clotting factors, leading to severe bleeding from wounds – like, say, a lanced bubo. (Ironically enough, draining the lymph nodes actually is recommended as part of the treatment of septicemic plague.) Other symptoms include things like abdominal pain; bleeding under the skin; bleeding from the mouth, nose, and rectum; diarrhea; fever; chills; low blood pressure; nausea; organ failure; vomiting; shock; gangrene; and difficulty breathing. But here’s the kicker – sometimes it will kill you before you show any symptoms at all. Thankfully, septicemic plague is also the rarest form of the plague. It only occurs in a small minority of cases of infection with Yersinia pestis. Effects on society The Black Death essentially marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. So many people died that European society was devastated and had to rebuild itself almost from the ground up, taking well over a century for the population to fully recover. Their whole way of life changed. Political, social, and economic systems collapsed under widespread unrest, and huge swaths of the population just stopped engaging in society altogether to reduce the risk of being exposed to infection. The church lost much of influence as people began to distrust its promises of God’s mercy, healing, and so on, and it didn’t help that monks and priests (who often tended to the dead) were especially hard-hit by the disease. Imagine seeing 30-60% of the people you know die after showing the symptoms I mentioned. Imagine the kind of impact that would have on your outlook for the future. People suddenly realizing that humanity could be on the verge of being wiped out at any time kind of gave them a new perspective on things. Steven West of the Philosophize This! podcast summarizes the whole situation quite well: … [T]hen the faithful law of supply and demand started to take over. Peasants became increasingly more valuable as more and more of them died. The supply of peasants couldn’t keep up with the demand of work that needed to get done to feed society. When a company today can’t get enough people to willingly do a job for a certain salary, they are forced to raise the salary, and that is exactly what happened in Western Europe during the fall of the Middle Ages. Though it was completely illegal, the desperate times allowed for peasants to shop around with other land owners to try to make a better wage. These subjugated people were finally seeing what it was like to be a free citizen with a skill set that people valued. What started as merely a pandemic disease that led to a population crisis, quickly turned into an economic crisis as well, because the owners of these fields couldn’t afford to pay for the rising cost of their workforce. This threatened a complete collapse of the Agriculture of the region, so what the governments did to try to combat this was impose a wage freeze. This wage freeze in coalition with several other small regulations and the massive tax increase on citizens to fight the 100 years war with France led to peasants banding together and attempting to overthrow their governments. So what started as a population crisis, quickly turned into an economic crisis that then turned into a political crisis. … This crisis heralded the beginning of the Renaissance – the rebirth of European society as something new and previously unknown. Status in the modern world So what about now? Surely we’ve got this beaten by now, right? Well… do you own a cat? Does it ever bring you dead mice? I sure hope that you handle them with gloves, and that you keep an eye out for symptoms in your pussy. Because the plague is not dead. Not in any way, shape, or form. Yes, in this advanced modern world, Yersinia pestis is still very much active. Plague outbreaks are nowhere near as large or as frequent as they used to be, but they definitely still happen. Since 2002, the World Health Organisation has reported seven plague outbreaks, though some may go unreported because they often happen in remote areas. Between 1998 and 2009, nearly 24,000 cases were reported, including about 2,000 deaths, in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Eastern Europe. 98 percent of the world’s cases occur in Africa. Every year, between 4000 and 5000 people still come down with the septicemic plague. Wikipedia notes: On July 10, 2014, in an online news story article, by Keith Coffman of Reuters, featured on the MSN U.S. News website, it was stated that a Colorado man, whose condition the report said was not known, had been diagnosed with the pneumonic plague. The man was found to have the disease after the family dog died unexpectedly and a necropsy conducted on it revealed it had died from the disease. As of July 18, 2014, three more cases were reported in Colorado. However, the outbreak appears to be over, according to state officials. Plague has been active in black-tailed prairie dog populations for the past 40–50 years. In the United States outbreaks only occur in the western States and they are devastating, with mortality rates near 100% because the animals have no immunity to the plague. Survivors are the ones that happened not to become infected and colonies that recover from a plague outbreak remain at risk. Currently, 5 to 15 people in the United States are estimated to catch the disease each year—typically in western states. And there’s good news! One case of a drug-resistant form of Yersinia pestis was found in Madagascar in 1995. Experts believe that, should another drug-resistant form evolve somewhere more populated, we could face yet another pandemic – and I can only imagine what that would be like in today’s world, as connected and global as we are. The death toll could reach the billions. Treatment Bubonic and pneumonic plague are both very aggressive infections requiring early treatment. Antibiotics must be given within 24 hours of first symptoms to reduce the risk of death. Several classes of antibiotics are effective in treating plague. Mortality associated with treated cases of bubonic plague is about 1–15%. Be sure to have a will prepared. Honorable(?) Mentions Bird Flu: Avian flu is carried in many wild birds and doesn’t tend to make the host ill. Some domesticated birds (chickens, ducks, pet birds, pet cats, etc) are susceptible to avian flu and can be lethal to them. People can contract some strains of avian flu and since 2004, 638 cases of human infection of a strain of avian flu, H5N1 it’s called,  have been reported with 379 deaths. That’s 59% mortality rate. So thankfully it’s not very readily spread in human populations. HIV / AIDS (1981 and probably longer):This will have its own show one day and this is its teaser. Everyone is aware, to some extent, of HIV/AIDS. So a very brief summary here. On June 5, 1981, The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention published a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report describing cases of a rare lung infection, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, in five young, previously healthy, gay men in Los Angeles. All the men have other unusual infections as well, indicating that their immune systems are not working; two have already died by the time the report is published. This edition of the MMWR marks the first official reporting of what will become known as the AIDS epidemic. Fast forward to 2014 and we know SO much more about it. About its origin, its epidemiology, treatment, and more. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 36 million people have died since the first reported cases in ‘81. Currently 35.2 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Stay tuned for WAY more info on this in a future episode. The Common Cold: ATCHOO!! There are many different viruses that can cause cold symptoms, but about half the time a cold is caused by a class of viruses call rhinoviruses. It gets into the cells lining your nose and starts reproducing. It is not a result specifically of cold weather, but cold weather does tend to cause people to congregate together indoors more, which makes transmission of the virus easier. 1633-1634 Smallpox Epidemic in New England: This smallpox epidemic hit the Massachusetts colony in 1633, affecting settlers and Native Americans. The casualties included 20 settlers from the Mayflower and their only physician Dr. Samuel Fuller… who probably tried to bleed the smallpox out, I imagine. Also 15 children died as well as untold numbers of Native Americans who were wholly unfamiliar with the disease. 1977 Mexican Hot Sauce Botulism Outbreak: In 1977, 59 people fell ill due to a botulism outbreak. It began when a Mexican restaurant in Pontiac served hot sauce made out of improperly home-canned jalapeño peppers. The first cases of type B botulism were reported to state health officials three days later, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and what is today called the Michigan Department of Community Health. Ultimately, 58 Michiganders and one person visiting from Ohio were sickened, some very seriously. No one died. Trini and Carmen’s restaurant had previously used fresh peppers, but switched to canned ones March 28. The vegetables were canned in the fall of 1976, in anticipation of an expected shortage of jalapeños that winter. The outbreak was the second one in the U.S. that year caused by incorrectly canned jalapeños. Symptoms included constipation, double vision, sensitivity to light, speech problems, nausea and vomiting, stomach pains, diarrhea, headaches, dizziness and general weakness. Oakland County officials closed the eatery March 31 and seized 147 jars of peppers. The American Journal of Epidemiology later reported that the canner used proper jars, lids and rings, but didn’t reboil some jars after filling them: “After a number of days, some of the jars began to explode on their shelves. … The jars that did not explode were kept.” The largest previous botulism outbreak was in Michigan in 1921, when three people died and 29 people got sick with type A botulism after eating commercially-canned spinach, according to the CDC. 2010 – 2014 Whooping Cough Epidemic: Pertussis, commonly called whooping cough is a highly contagious bacterial disease caused by Bordetella pertussis. Symptoms are initially mild, and then develop into severe coughing fits, which produce the namesake high-pitched “whoop” sound in infected babies and children when they inhale air after coughing. You can thank anti-vaxxer shitbirds for the reemergence of Pertussis and 9,447 cases reported in 2010 resulting in 10 deaths. 42,277 in reported cases in 2012 including 20 pertussis-related deaths. 28,639 cases in 2013 with increased rates of adolescents 13-15 years of age. And so far in 2014 17,325 cases of pertussis have been reported to CDC with 3 deaths resulting. Epidemics and Pandemics in pop culture: Outbreak (loosely based on ebola) The “Bring Out Your Dead” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail The Andromeda Strain (book & film) Contagion 28 Days Later & 28 Weeks Later The Happening (JO – I liked it and here’s why) Blindness (Book & Film) Right At Your Door (Film … kiiinda fits?) WUTs Creationism coming to Ohio classrooms? Not without a court fight Ohio’s current science standards spell out how evolution should be taught in schools… but do not address how religious views on the origins of the earth and of people should be handled. That’s left to districts, although courts have set limits. Now, muddled language in House Bill 597 – a proposal to kill the multi-state Common Core and other state education standards – aims to let schools mix religious views with scientific ones, according to the bill’s sponsors. … Bill sponsors also want different political views on scientific issues, like global warming, to be required to be taught. Language in the bill is unclear. Along with killing the Common Core and other standards adopted by the state in recent years, the bill proposes new standards in their place. The proposed science standards would “prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another.” … State Rep. Andy Thompson, a Marietta Republican who co-sponsored the bill, told The Plain Dealer this week that the language allows districts to teach faith-based beliefs as part of science classes. He said specifically that it would allow Intelligent Design – a creationist view that life and the world are too complex to have been arisen by chance and must have been created by a supernatural force. “It gives some flexibility to districts to pursue what they think is most appropriate to their students,” Thompson said. “We want to have the ability to share perspectives that differ. Teaching one thing to the exclusion of anything else limits the discussion.” Thompson also told the Columbus Dispatch that students should hear about Intelligent Design along with evolution. “I think it would be good for them to consider the perspectives of people of faith,” the Dispatch reported. “That’s legitimate.” Oh, yay! Intelligent design again! Because we definitely didn’t see how horribly this went over in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case nine years ago, where the Dubya-appointed Republican federal judge wrote a scathing opinion against the school district and the “breathtaking inanity” of their decision to promote ID, which was nothing more than “cloaking religious beliefs in scientific-sounding language.” And this “we should teach different perspectives” nonsense has no place in science class. It’s like saying, “yes, science tells us that gravity attracts massive objects to each other, but I choose to believe that it’s really the earth giving us a big hug.” Also, can I tell you how much it infuriates me that legislators are explicitly saying that scientific facts are open to religious or political interpretation? Here’s the deal: reality does not care at all how you feel about it. Reality just does what it does. Here’s the actual new text from the science standards [emphasis added]: The standards in science shall be based in core existing disciplines of biology, chemistry, and physics; incorporate grade-level mathematics and be referenced to the mathematics standards; focus on academic and scientific knowledge rather than scientific processes; and prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another. As a side note, language nearly identical to the last clause is also being proposed with regards to social studies classes. Five bucks says that this is just opening the door for allowing the teaching that America is a Christian nation. Feedback We finally got our first feedback. From a comment on Erno’s trailer video: From Aussie King(?): “Hope to see the same legal action that happened against Westboro Church against u all”. Me too. They won, fucknugget. “think it won’t happen? Think again, we love our veterans and nobody I’ve met will defend ur disgusting attitude.” We never said a single fucking negative thing about veterans you illiterate unclefucker. “I don’t even need to watch this piece of crap like 39 other ppl didn’t”. And yet this mouth breather thinks he’s making a rational comment about what he didn’t watch… “just came to to say fk u and have fun being a loser, maybe one day one of those lesbian feminazi’s u hang with will actually have sex with u like u’ve been trying to for so long, i doubt it tho.”   Links and Attributions Black Death (Wikipedia) WHO – Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases Slate – Outbreaks vs. Epidemics Yersinia pestis (Wikipedia) New Evidence Exonerates Rats as Bearers of Black Death No, Rats Are Not Exonerated From The Black Death Philosophize This! Podcast – Episode 22 – Blast off to the Renaissance! Bubo (Wikipedia) Bubonic plague (Wikipedia) Pneumonic plague (Wikipedia) Septicemic plague (Wikipedia) Disseminated intravascular coagulation (Wikipedia) Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani (Wikipedia) Baldassarre Bonaiuti (Wikipedia) WHO Marburg virus disease WHO Marburg virus fact sheet Wikipedia – Marburg Virus CDC – Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever WHO – Ebola virus disease WHO – Ebola virus disease facts sheet CDC – Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever Wikipedia – Ebola virus disease Science News – Airborne transmission of Ebola unlikely, monkey study shows Wikipedia – Reston virus Wikipedia – 2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak BBC – Ebola ‘spreading too fast’ BBC – Nigeria placed on red alert over Ebola death. http://allafrica.com/stories/201407310920.html http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28485041 http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/27/this-is-now-the-deadliest-ebola-outbreak-on-record-and-its-getting-worse/?tid=hp_mm&hpid=z4 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/12/priest-ebola-dies/13939545/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/12/health/ebola-outbreak/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-08-11/ebola-drug-supply-is-exhausted-after-doses-sent-to-africa http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/11/health/ebola-patient-zero/index.html?sr=tw081114ebolaoutbreaktoddler12pVODtopLink Ann Coulter says Ebola-infected missionary is “idiotic and narcissistic” for helping (possibly sensationalized title, will read to be certain) CDC – Avian Flu facts Wikipedia – Global Spread of H5N1 AIDS.org Global AIDS Review AIDS.org – A Timeline of AIDS How Stuff Works – What causes the common cold? Commoncold.org Massachusetts smallpox epidemic, 1633 Massachusetts smallpox epidemic CDC – Pertussis Wikipedia – Pertussis West African 2014 Ebola Outbreak

From August 10, 2014. This was a doozy. Full show notes after the cut. First, the “humanity ain’t so bad” segment. Because without the occasional good news about the world, Jon will just wish for humanity to flush itself down a toilet. Six year-old boy drives on Bronx River Parkway. This kid did what kids do, I guess, and slipped away in that 20 seconds that the parents or guardians turned their attention to something else. The boy drove his electric four wheeler onto the parkway about a mile from where he started. That’s impressive. So three motorists surrounded the boy and led him to the side of the road so that he wouldn’t be struck by any motorists who couldn’t see him. Perth, Australia commuters tilt subway train to free man’s stuck foot. My Buddy Brayden: 7-Year-Old Raises $48K For Sick Friend’s Surgery When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. When Canadian 7-year-old Quinn Callender, of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, decided to launch a lemonade stand and a crowdfunding campaign to help his friend Brayden Grozdanich get an expensive surgery, he never could have expected the overwhelming response he received. Grozdanich, who has cerebral palsy, has been undergoing painful physiotherapy to help him walk, but he now needs surgery to allow him to walk without braces, a surgery only available in New Jersey, his father told the CBC. That’s when Callender stepped in. With the help of his parents, social media and a little water, lemon and sugar, ‘My Buddy Brayden’ was launched. On Sunday, the two boys manned the lemonade stand outside a local grocery store, and needless to say the refreshing drink (and the cause) was a hit. As of Monday, the campaign has already surpassed its $20,000 goal and raised over $48,000. Pseudo-medical devices [MM] Magnet Therapy Products include magnetic bracelets and jewelry; magnetic straps for wrists, ankles, knees, and back; shoe insoles; mattresses; magnetic blankets (blankets with magnets woven into the material); magnetic creams; magnetic supplements; plasters/patches and water that has been “magnetized”. Most of the time, there is no involvement by a physician or any kind of expert, so there’s no way to check to make sure that you’re “using it right.” The American Cancer Society has an extensive page about magnet therapy. Quoting from them: Many claims about magnetic therapy are based on the fact that some cells and tissues in the human body give off electromagnetic impulses. Some practitioners think the presence of illness or injury disrupts these fields. Magnets produce energy fields of different strengths, which proponents believe can penetrate the human body, correcting disturbances and restoring health to the afflicted systems, organs, and cells. Proponents claim magnetic therapy can relieve pain caused by arthritis, headaches, migraine headaches, and stress, and can also heal broken bones, improve circulation, reverse degenerative diseases, and cure cancer. They also claim that placing magnets over areas of pain or disease strengthens the body’s healing ability. Some believe that magnetic fields increase blood flow, alter nerve impulses, increase the flow of oxygen to cells, decrease fatty deposits on artery walls, and realign thought patterns to improve emotional well-being. Proponents of magnetic therapy assert that magnetic fields produced from the negative pole of the magnet have healing powers. Negative magnetic fields are thought to stimulate metabolism, increase the amount of oxygen available to cells, and create a less acidic environment within the body. Because many people who use magnets believe cancer cells cannot thrive when acid is low, they claim that the effects of negative magnetic fields can halt or reverse the spread of tumors by decreasing acidity. For the same reasons, they believe that negative magnetic fields speed the healing of cuts, broken bones, and infections, and that they counter the effects of toxic chemicals, addictive drugs, and other harmful substances. A 16th century physician, Paracelsus, thought that because magnets attract iron they might attract and eliminate diseases from the body. In the Middle Ages, doctors used magnets to treat gout, arthritis, poisoning, and baldness. The modern version of magnet therapy reportedly began in the 1970s, when researcher Albert Roy Davis, PhD, noticed that positive and negative magnetic charges had different effects on human biological systems. He claimed that magnets could kill cancer cells in animals and could also cure arthritis pain, glaucoma, infertility, and other conditions. Magnetic therapy has become a large industry in the United States and Europe and has been used widely in Japan and China for many years. Most of the success stories have come from a few isolated sources that have not provided proof that the treatment actually works. One small but well-publicized 1997 randomized clinical trial conducted at the Baylor College of Medicine reported that small magnets reduced pain in people who had recovered from polio. However, several problems in the study’s methods were observed (for example, the patients in the two groups differed in ways that might influence their susceptibility to placebo effects). In addition, the study only looked at very short-term results and was intended to be a pilot study. Pilot studies are done only to decide whether it is worthwhile to do larger studies. To date, large studies have not been done. To test the claim of improved blood flow, one study compared magnets and otherwise identical nonmagnetic disks on the arms of healthy volunteers. The researchers measured blood flow and found no difference between the real and fake magnets. Clinical trials of static magnets for pain relief have generally had mixed results. One review noted that about half the studies found that magnets improved pain, and the other half did not. However, it has been difficult to conduct studies that can account for the placebo effect when using magnets. Patients are generally able to tell whether their bracelet or patch is magnetic, as real magnets attract metal objects like paper clips. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has also reviewed the data and stated that scientific evidence does not support use of magnets for pain relief. Studies of electromagnets, which have stronger magnetic fields, appear to be more promising. [The ACS is] not aware of any published clinical studies involving magnets as an anti-cancer treatment and know of only one study specifically involving cancer survivors. Researchers from the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing placed either magnets or nonmagnetic (placebo) objects at six acupressure points of breast cancer survivors suffering from hot flashes. The magnets were no more effective in reducing hot flash severity and turned out to be less effective than the fake magnets in decreasing hot-flash frequency, bother, interference with daily activities, and overall quality of life. The FDA has not approved the marketing of magnets with claims of health benefits. In fact, the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission have taken action against several makers and sellers of magnets because they were making health claims that had not been proven. Per Wikipedia: Several studies have been conducted in recent years to investigate what role, if any, static magnetic fields may play in health and healing. Unbiased studies of magnetic therapy are problematic, since magnetisation can be easily detected, for instance, by the attraction forces on ferrous (iron-containing) objects; because of this, effective blinding of studies (where neither patients nor assessors know who is receiving treatment versus placebo) is difficult. Incomplete or insufficient blinding tends to exaggerate treatment effects, particularly where any such effects are small. Health claims regarding longevity and cancer treatment are implausible and unsupported by any research. More mundane health claims, most commonly about anecdotal pain relief, also lack any credible proposed mechanism and clinical research is not promising. The most common suggested mechanism is that magnets might improve blood flow in underlying tissues. But the field of magnet therapy devices is far too weak and falls off in strength with the square of the distance, making it totally unable to affect hemoglobin or other parts of the blood, muscle tissue, bones, blood vessels, or organs. A 1991 study on humans using static field strengths up to 1T found no effect on local blood flow. Which is a damn good thing. Most magnetic therapy devices use ferrite magnets instead, which have a field strength of about 0.35T. For comparison, the magnetic field in the Earth’s outer core is calculated to be about 0.0025T, which is 50 times as strong as the field at the surface; your typical neodymium-iron-boron magnet has a field strength of about 1.25T; and an MRI magnet’s field is typically 1.5T to 3T. So if these therapies actually worked to affect your blood or bones or organs or whatever… an MRI would probably destroy you. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There may be some light at the end of the magnetic tunnel after all. The American Cancer Society says: Principles of magnetism have been applied very successfully in conventional medicine to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which uses magnetic fields to produce detailed pictures of the body without the use of x-rays. Researchers are working on additional medical uses based on magnetism, such as attaching anti-cancer drugs to the surface of microscopic magnetic particles that can be guided to a tumor by strong magnets outside the body. Another possibility is particles that generate enough heat to kill cancer cells in the presence of some kinds of magnetic field. So while current magnet therapies are clearly bunk, there is some hope for getting real medical use out of magnets eventually. “Power Balance” and similar ‘devices’ Power Balance is a brand of hologram bracelets once claimed by its manufacturers and vendors to “use holographic technology” to “resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body”, and increase sporting ability. They initially denied that they made any medical or scientific claims about their products, and numerous independent studies of the device found it to be ineffective for enhancing athletic performance. Some nuts over at the David Icke forum discussed this back in 2010. They said such hilarious things as: It contains sacred geometry.. So there is definitely something to it.. [responding to an actual skeptic saying they were making unprovable nonsense claims about energy fields:] Energy fields are not unproveable nonsense , you are way behind the times. [followed by a link to a reiki practitioner’s website] Here’s what the company itself claims (or claimed, back in 2010): What is Power Balance? Power Balance is Performance Technology designed to work with your body’s natural energy field. Founded by athletes, Power Balance is a favorite among elite athletes for whom balance, strength and flexibility are important. How Does the Hologram Work? Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body The company has been the focus of significant criticism, particularly for false advertising. It has been described in the press as “like the tooth fairy” and a “very successful marketing scam”. In November 2010, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Complaints Resolution Panel ordered them to drop “false and misleading” claims that the wearers would experience “up to a 500% increase in strength, power and flexibility”, and ordered the claims removed from the company’s website and a retraction posted within two weeks. The next month, after an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ruling, the Australian distributor of Power Balance was forced to recognize and retract their medical claims. They were required to make the following statement on their website admitting they “engaged in misleading conduct”: “In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility. We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974. If you feel you have been misled by our promotions, we wish to unreservedly apologize and offer a full refund.” The ruling required that they: publish, at their own expense, corrective advertisements, cease to claim that the products will improve the user’s balance, strength and flexibility; or are “designed to work with the body’s natural energy field”; nor, in conjunction with the Products, make claims that “Power Balance is Performance Technology” or use the phrase “Performance Technology”, cease to manufacture or import products containing the words “Performance Technology”, black out the words “Performance Technology” on their packaging, replace their promotional and marketing material, and offer full refunds, plus postage. In December 2010 Italy’s Antitrust Authority fined Power Balance 300,000 euros (and another company 50,000 euros) for not having scientific proof of the claims made. In September 2010, the Dutch Advertising Code Commission ruled that the distributor of Power Balance in the Netherlands “claims on its website that the use of the Power Balance Bracelet improves balance, strength and agility. These allegations are not backed with any single (scientific) evidence. The plaintiff believes that this method of advertising is in conflict with the Dutch Advertising Code (NRC) as the link between wearing the bracelet and the health of the wearer has not been determined in any way.” The effect was pretty weak, though – they just “recommend[ed the] advertiser not to advertise in such a way anymore.” In January 2011, a suit was filed against the company for fraud, false advertising, unfair competition and unjust enrichment. Power Balance agreed in September 2011 to settle the class action lawsuit. The settlement terms entitled Power Balance purchasers to a full $30 refund plus $5 shipping. A hearing to finalize the agreement was canceled after Power Balance filed for Chapter 11 protection. By the end of 2011 the company was reported to be on the edge of going out of business having paid out $57m to settle lawsuits, in the course of which company executives acknowledged that their claims to improve strength and balance were bogus. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and subsequently failed altogether, but the brand has been transferred to a new company, Power Balance Technologies. The science: In December 2009, an informal double-blind test was performed on the Australian television program Today Tonight, led by Richard Saunders from the Australian Skeptics. The results showed strong evidence that any effect of the holograms is too small to measure against the placebo effect. In 2010, researchers commissioned by the BBC also found that the bands were placebos. In 2011, researchers from RMIT’s School of Health Sciences reported the results of an independent, randomized and controlled trial with double blind design. To no skeptic’s surprise, they found no difference in balance between people using a real holographic wristband and those wearing a placebo. A 2012 Skeptical Inquirer study showed that in a double-blind test of performance on an obstacle course, sixteen volunteers showed a difference in performance no greater than chance. In 2013, a group of Vanguard University students skeptical of the claims conducted a test which showed “no significant difference between the real wristband and the fake”. To sum this all up, there really is nothing going on here. All the testing found them to be placebos, and even the people behind the company admitted it was nonsense. Talk about the trickery involved in the balance/strength testing also the “charged with negative ions” shit. I’ve had to have that discussion before. (Ooh, sciency words! It must be true!) Imitations have flooded the market. All you need to do is Google ‘power balance imitation’ and you’ll find hundreds. One of the more hilarious ones is basically a USB cable with a male and a female end that plugs into itself to close around your wrist. That’s technology, folks! Placebo Bands: Travis Roy of Granite State Skeptics and The Skeptic Zone Podcast has teamed up with Christopher Brown of the Meet The Skeptics Podcast to bring Placebo Bands to North America! $4 will get you a product made in exactly the same way as a $40 Power Balance bracelet, even made in the same factory. US: http://www.placebobandstore.com/ Canada: https://sites.google.com/site/placebobandscanada/home Absolutely no medical claims are made… they’re just a way to make a skeptical statement. One of the funniest pieces of coverage I’ve seen on Power Balance bands comes a couple of posts on Nathan Lee’s blog. Go check them out. Fake powerband scam? Power balance is Snake oil in bracelet form. How to spot a fake power balance bracelet Dr. Albert Abrams Albert Abrams (1863–1924) was an American doctor, well known during his life for inventing machines which he claimed could diagnose and cure almost any disease. These claims were challenged from the outset. Towards the end of his life, and again shortly after his death, his claims were conclusively demonstrated to be both false and intentionally deceptive. Abrams promoted an idea that electrons were the basic element of all life. He called this ERA, for Electronic Reactions of Abrams, and introduced a number of different machines which he claimed were based on these principles. The machines: The Dynomizer looked something like a radio, and Abrams claimed it could diagnose any known disease from a single drop of blood or alternatively the subject’s handwriting. He performed diagnoses on dried blood samples sent to him on pieces of paper in envelopes through the mail. Apparently Abrams even claimed he could conduct medical practice over the telephone with his machines,[11] and that he could determine personality characteristics. The Dynomizer was big business; by 1918, courses in spondylotherapy and ERA cost $200 (about the same purchasing power as $2,800 in 2008); equipment was leased at about $200 with a monthly $5 charge thereafter. The lessee had to sign a contract stating the device would never be opened.[12] Abrams explained that this would disrupt their delicate adjustment, but the rule also served to prevent the Abrams devices from being examined. He then widened his claims to treating the diagnosed diseases. Abrams came up with new and even more impressive gadgets, the “Oscilloclast”[13] and the “Radioclast”,[14] which came with tables of frequencies that were designed to “attack” specific diseases. Clients were told cures required repeated treatments. Dynomizer operators tended to give alarming diagnoses, involving combinations of such maladies as cancer, diabetes and syphilis. Abrams often included a disease called “bovine syphilis,” unknown to other medical practitioners. He claimed the Oscilloclast was capable of defeating most of these diseases, most of the time. By 1921, there were claimed to be 3,500 practitioners using ERA technology. Conventional medical practitioners were extremely suspicious.[15] A public uproar: In 1923, an elderly man who was diagnosed in the Mayo Clinic with inoperable stomach cancer went to an ERA practitioner, who declared him “completely cured” after treatments. The man died a month later and a public uproar followed. Investigation: The dispute between Abrams and his followers and the American Medical Association (AMA) was intensified. Defenders included American radical author Upton Sinclair[16] and the famously credulous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Resolution of the dispute through the intervention of a scientifically respected third party was pursued. Scientific American magazine decided to investigate Dr. Abrams’ claims. Scientific American was interested in the matter as readers were writing letters to the editor saying that Abrams’ revolutionary machines were one of the greatest inventions of the century and so needed to be discussed in the pages of the magazine. Scientific American assembled a team of investigators who worked with a senior Abrams associate given the pseudonym “Doctor X”. The investigators developed a series of tests and the magazine asked readers to suggest their own tests. The investigators asked Doctor X to identify six vials containing unknown pathogens. It seems likely that Doctor X honestly believed in his Abrams machines; in fact, he allowed the Scientific American investigators to observe his procedure. Doctor X got the contents of all six vials completely wrong. He examined the vials and pointed out that they had labels in red ink, which produced vibrations that confounded the instruments. The investigators gave him the vials again with less offensive labels, and he got the contents wrong again. The results were published in Scientific American.[17] and led to a predictable debate in the letters pages between advocates and critics. The investigators continued their work. Abrams offered to “cooperate” with the investigators, but always failed to do so on various pretexts.[18] Abrams never actually participated in the investigation, and in ERA publications asserted he was a victim of unjust persecution.[19] Vibrators used as a cure for “Female Hysteria” I’m not sure that the science is in on this one. I might need to research it … extensively. To do this properly we will need a large subject group. If you wish to volunteer contact feedback@irreverentskeptics,com. Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the 19th century. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms, including faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and “a tendency to cause trouble”. In extreme cases, the woman would be forced into the asylum and undergo surgical hysterectomy. But ironically, women’s sexual pleasure was the furthest thing from the minds of the male doctors who invented vibrators almost two centuries ago. They were interested in a labor-saving device to spare their hands the fatigue they developed giving handjobs to a steady stream of 19th century ladies who suffered from “hysteria,” a vaguely defined ailment easily recognizable today as sexual frustration. Therein hangs a strange tale that provides quirky insights into both the history of sex toys, and cultural notions about women’s sexuality. Foot Operated Breast Enlarger Pump So this product from 1976 was a system where one would place essentially vacuum suction cups over their breasts and use a foot pump to “enlarge” the breasts. It had three different sizes, all large. four million people bought this device. FOUR MILLION. Using an online calculator to figure the difference, today that device would cost $41.99, approximately. So the total spent in today’s dollars on this device? Over $167 million!! That’s a lot of tit pump money.. That was the low end cost. There was a program which included a book, some kind of herbal rub(?) idk. That was valued at $79.95 + $7.95 shipping & handling. I might need to switch businesses. According to the US Food & Drug Administration: “ For decades, million of dollars have been spent on devices, creams and lotions advertised as breast developers. All wasted. There is no device or system of exercise that will increase the size of the breasts. At best, devices promoted as breast developers merely strengthen and develop the muscles that support the breasts, and exercising these muscles will not appreciably increase breast size.” Bloodletting Devices This might not quite qualify as quackery since at the time, no one really knew any better. That said, when medical science was still centered on the Four Humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, bloodletting was a popular way to treat all manner of maladies. Purging, starving, vomiting or bloodletting were the cures of the day. There were a number of devices used to draw blood. A spring loaded lancet, which pretty much looks like an earlier version of a modern lancet. The modern ones are still spring loaded even. They’re used for pricking the skin for testing blood sugar, for instance. The more ancient version we’re talking about here though? It would drive the lancet into a vein! LE FUCK. There were non-spring loaded versions of the lancet. Some were just forced into the flesh manually, while others were tapped with a hammer or similar tool. Now here’s the juicy one. The Scarificator. It was a vogue 18th Century device. The device is cocked and the trigger released spring-driven rotary blades which caused many shallow cuts. The article I read about it said that is seemed the more merciful of the devices listed, but I don’t know. It looks pretty fucking brutal to me. I’m betting there’s a similar device in use today for bdsm parties… 0_o Theodoric of York – Medieval Barber bit on SNL. WUTs JZ Knight, of Ramtha channeling fame goes on racist, anti-gay rant. Sues over the video being leaked. Maybe it’s time to reevaluate the tradition of putting a baby’s penis in a grownup’s mouth. Since 2006, 16 babies contracted herpes from the ritual, Metzitzah b’peh, which is sucking the blood from a baby’s penis immediately following circumcision. Video of Rabbi explaining the importance of a metzitzah b’peh. [mm] But Jon, babydicksucking is a time-tested and respected practice. Shouldn’t we just take the advice of so many people online and stop being such strident anti-Semites? After all, you can only possibly object to a grown man putting an infant’s penis in his mouth and sucking on it because you hate Jews. There is no other possible rational explanation. You’re just being intolerant! [mm] Well, nobody wants to be a 40-week-old virgin… Listener Feedback From James P. Dear Irreverent Skeptics Have you heard of the Podcast “The Higherside Chats“. It is a conspiracy podcast, it very bad, almost as good as “Coast to Coast Am” Links and Attributions Museum of Quackery Female Hysteria Gordon Freeman Calls Coast to Coast AM

On April 5, 2015, I (Mike McElroy) and Jon Ownbey sat down to watch the 2012 Christian comedy Brother White, from David A. R. White, the producer of the simply awful God’s Not Dead. As we watched, we riffed on what we were seeing, not unlike a completely unprepared and unprofessional version of RiffTrax. As of September 13, 2015, the movie is still available on Netflix. If you want to subject yourself to a truly horrible film and even worse commentary, get the film loaded up, pause it right at the beginning, and give our snarkiness a listen!

http://media.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/content.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/29_-_Lake_Monsters_July_19_2014_.mp3 From July 19, 2014. We talk about lake monsters, octopodes, plesiosaurs, and all manner of nonsense. As a bonus, we talk about stupid politicians who think that AIDS is caused by sperm chemicals and who think women are magical rape detectors. Full show notes below the fold. We got lake monsters up in this bitch! Loch Ness (Nessie) – Probably the most well known lake monster. So I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time on this one. A lake monster that possibly exists in Loch Ness, which is a lake in the highlands of Scotland. Possibly sighted as early as the year 565, and as recently as 2014. Numerous photos and videos as well as firsthand accounts of sightings have surfaced, yet no amount of searching has turned up any solid evidence of its existence. *discuss* Mokele mbembe (moe-kaylee em-bem-bay) which in the Lingala language means “one who stops the flow of rivers” … or uses too damn much toilet paper, amirite? This legendary water-dwelling creature of the Congo River basin is sometimes described as living, and sometimes as a spirit. Some cryptozoologists claim it is a sauropod. Legends of the creature have been passed around for over 200 years, yet no conclusive evidence of its existence has been discovered yet. Here’s some footage of what looks like a boat to me. CHAMPY? – Possibly first reported as early as 1609 by French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec and who the lake is named after. While battling Iroquois on the lake’s shore, he purportedly spotted the monster in the water. The Pittsburgh Republican dated July 24, 1819, in an article titled “Cape Ann Serpent on Lake Champlain,”  reported the account of Captain Crum sighting an enormous serpentine monster. In 1883, Sheriff Nathan H. Mooney claimed that he had seen a “..gigantic water serpent about 50 yards away” from a spot on the shore. He claimed that he was close enough to see “round white spots inside its mouth” and that “the creature appeared to be about 25 to 30 feet in length. This report led to a many eyewitnesses coming forward to tell stories of their own sightings. Champy became so popular that P.T. Barnum, in the late 1800s, put a reward of $50,000 up for a carcass of Champy. In 1977, Sandra Mansi took a photograph that appears to show something sticking out of the lake. And if that’s not proof, I don’t know what is. A video was taken in 2005 which shows what pareidolia would tell you is possibly a head and neck of … wait for it… a plesiosaur-like animal. Tahoe Tessie (clever name, you twits) another serpent-like creature described as being between 10 and 80 feet long, having a large smooth body (even though it appears reptilian), and coloration ranging from jet black to turquoise. First sighted in the 1950s by two off-duty police officers on the lake who claimed to see a black hump rise from the water and keep pace with their speed boat which was supposedly traveling over 60mph. Sighted as recently as 2006, wherein a family on vacation near the lake reported seeing a large, black, scale lacking creature appearing similar to a sturgeon with an upturned white nose. However the creature moved up-and-down like a mammal instead of side-to-side like a reptile. (wat) Ogopogo or Naitaka is the name given to a cryptid lake monster reported to live in Okanagan Lake, in British Columbia, Canada. Reportedly it has been seen by First Nations (I’m not sure what that means) people since the 19th Century. Most commonly described as a 40 to 50-foot-long sea serpent. Sighted in 1926 at an Okanagan Mission beach by about thirty cars of people who all claimed to have seen the same thing. In 1968 Art Folden filmed what is claimed to be footage of the creature, showing a large wake moving across the water. In 2011, a mobile phone video captured two dark shapes in the water. Again, that just reeks of credibility. /s Selma is a lake monster said to live in the lake Seljordsvatnet in Seljord, Telemark, Norway. According to most who have seen the supposed creature, Selma closely resembles other reported lake monsters, such as Nessie, Champy, and Ogopogo. The first eyewitness accounts date back to the 18th century. The Swedish explorer and cryptozoologist Jan Ove Sundberg has been trying to capture Selma for a number of years, but has not succeeded. Selma was possibly recorded in video by a Norwegian girl, who was visiting the lake with her parents. Locals think the video looks reliable, and the phenomenon is real. The Oklahoma Octopus (facepalms ensue) a mysterious creature generally said to inhabit three lakes in Oklahoma (Lake Thunderbird, Lake Oolagah and Lake Tenkiller) where it attacks and kills unsuspecting swimmers. According to legend and rumor, this freshwater demon measures the size of a horse and resembles an octopus, with long tentacles and leathery, reddish-brown skin. Skeptics question how an octopus — an ocean creature — could survive in freshwater lakes, but it is easy to believe that such a creature would be a fearsome predator. The Giant Pacific Octopus, for example, has tentacles that each boast the strength of a 200-pound man and a powerful beak that it uses to kill prey. “Although no physical evidence exists in the case of the Oklahoma Octopus, many point to the high mortality rate and large number of unexplained drownings in the Oklahoma lakes as a clear sign of its presence.” WUTs Pastor And Author of Book ‘Freedom from Homosexuality’ Arrested For Molesting Teenage Boy Father walks in on son being molested, beats the ever loving shit out of molestor Glenn Beck defends book that claims whites were the ‘worst victims’ of American slavery Here’s what the story says: The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State has criticized Heritage Academy, a charter school in Arizona, for using Cleon Skousen’s The 5000 Year Leap in a 12th-grade history class. The group said that the book promotes “Christian nation propaganda” as well as claims slavery was beneficial to African Americans. Beck, who has promoted The 5000 Year Leap, insisted there was nothing wrong with the book. He said he was “doubling down” on his support for it. Co-host Steve Burguiere remarked that critics had never “produced one sentence from that book that was controversial.” I’ve got an issue with a lot of the reporting on this. This book does not say the things they’re claiming it does – but another by the same author does. The actual book is Skousen’s 1982 history “textbook” called The Making of America, which characterized African-American children as “pickaninnies” and described American slave owners as the “worst victims” of the slavery system. In this book he quoted several pages of historian Fred Albert Shannon’s incredibly racist 1934 book Economic History of the People of the United States, saying that they “tell the story of slavery in America.” Here are a few excerpts: Newly sold slaves “usually a cheerful lot” The tendency was to sell families as units, if for no other reason [than] to keep the slaves contented. The gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains. At the other extreme, when the Central of Georgia railroad company in 1858 equipped a Negro sleeping car to assist in the slave trade it set a standard not always maintained in a later generation. When on the block, the slave was as likely to hinder as to help in his sale. Some, out of a vain conceit in bringing a high price, would boast of their physical prowess, in which case an unwary purchaser would likely be cheated. Others would malinger, because of a grudge against owners or traders or in order to bring a low price and be put at less tiring labor. Dealers, also, adopted the tricks of horse traders to make their merchants more attractive — the greasiest Negro was generally considered the healthiest. Slaves hampered efficiency of white labor In the management of slave labor the gang system predominated. The great majority of owners, having at the most only one or two families of Negroes, had to work alongside their slaves and set the pace for them. Slavery did not make white labor unrespectable, but merely inefficient. The slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken. If the owner got ahead of the gang they all would shirk behind his back. White schoolchildren would “envy the freedom” of “colored playmates” Slave food, even if monotonous, was plentiful. Corn bread and bacon were the mainstays, with plenty of fruit and vegetables in season. In hog-killing time, countenances were unusually greasy. Clothing also was on the par with that of the poorer white people and no less adequate in proportion to the climate than that of Northern laborers. If [negro children] ran naked it was generally from choice, and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school they were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates. The color line began to appear at about that time. Southern life a “nightmare” of fear — for white people The constant fear of slave rebellion made life in the South a nightmare, especially in regions where conspiracies were of frequent occurrence. The extermination of white civilization in Santo Domingo was followed in the nineteenth century by several other bloody outbursts in the West Indies, which never failed to cause ominous forebodings in America. Skousen put this after the quoted section: The 5000 Year Leap is crazy enough on its own. It tries to claim that the ancient Israelites had a president, two vice presidents, a senate of 70 members, a congress of elected representatives, and a number of other factors which it claims they shared with Anglo Saxon common law – and it says that this Israelite system was what the founders based our government on. In reality, Anglo-Saxon common law really came about largely as a result of interaction between Germanic peoples and the Roman empire… and Moses wasn’t even a fucking real person. Todd Akin: ‘I should have said legitimate case of rape’ In an impressive display of tone-deafness, Former Missouri congressman Todd Akin totally misunderstood the outrage at his statements back in 2012 about pregnancy and rape. Akin said: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Not realizing that women’s bodies are not, in fact, magical rape detectors, Akin seems to think that the problem was just the wording of what he said, as opposed to the pants-on-head stupidity of his scientific ignorance and callousness. He claims that liberal media outlets distorted the meaning of his words… but seeing how he was making an argument that pregnancy is rare after rape because a woman’s body can “shut down” a pregnancy in case of rape, it’s kind of hard to find any other meaning in what he said. MN Republican bases economic agenda on theory that sperm enzymes in anus causes AIDS The last couple of weeks introduced us to Minnesota Republican congressional candidate Bob Frey, and the world joined together as one to slap its collective forehead with the heel of its collective hand. Why, you ask? Well… this guy believes that AIDS is caused when the enzyme that sperm uses to enter an egg causes tearing in the rectum. According to the Raw Story: … his opposition to the “gay agenda” was about the “financial impact of that agenda.” “It’s more about sodomy than about pigeonholing a lifestyle,” he explained. “When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg.” But Frey said that it was a different story when the “sperm is deposited anally” because “it’s the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail.” “That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome,” he opined. MN Repub candidate with weird ideas about AIDS also thinks dinosaurs ‘lived with man’ I wish I could say that was the craziest thing Bob Frey believed, but he also believes dinosaurs and people lived together and that giants were once real. Once again, the Raw Story is on the case: According to audio from Frye’s [sic] testimony to the state Senate Education Committee in January 2004, Frye [sic] opposed the inclusion of the theory of evolution in the standard curriculum. He illustrated his position in part by bringing what was described as a “large plastic femur” with him. … Frey testified at the time that, while proponents of evolution argued “that humans probably evolved from bacteria that lived more than four billion years ago, that’s not what we find in the fossil record. There’s this 16-foot tall giant was found with numerous others around the world. Dinosaurs have always lived with man. Is the rock wrong or is the theory wrong? I suggest to you that the theory is wrong.” After clarifying to the committee that he had brought a replica and not an actual dinosaur bone, Frey said he had 25 hours’ worth of material covering, among other things, the repercussions of teaching the “known fraud” of evolution. “Numerous of them have found up in Wisconsin, Texas, Egypt, Turkey, around the world,” Frye [sic] said of the “bone.” “The Bible says, ‘There were giants in the land in those days,’ in the early days. This shows that things are winding down, not winding up.” As a side note: annoyingly, various sites had him named as “Frye” instead of “Frey”. “Frey” is correct. Arizona congressional candidate leads protest against a bus full of kids… who were going to a YMCA camp From the Maddow blog: Adam Kwasman, a Republican state representative and congressional candidate in Arizona, apparently thought it’d be a good idea to lead a protest near Tucson yesterday against a bus full of children. The kids, the GOP candidate assumed, were undocumented minors on their way to a housing facility, and as the bus approached, Kwasman tweeted, “Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law.” He even boasted to a local reporter that he was “able to see some of the children” and “the fear on their faces.” But to quote Arizona 12 News: There was no fear on their faces. Those weren’t the migrant children in the school bus. Those were children from the Marana school district. They were heading to the YMCA’s Triangle Y Camp, not far from the Rite of Passage shelter for the migrants, at the base of Mt. Lemmon. 12 News reporter Will Pitts, who was at the protest scene, says he saw the children laughing and taking pictures of the media. Kwasman soon after deleted his tweet – though it was too late – and later admitted he had no idea what he was talking about. When a local reporter asked, “Do you know that was a bus with YMCA kids?” Kwasman replied, “They were sad, too. OK I apologize. I didn’t know.” Philadelphia mosque leaders try to cut off man’s hand -police Links and attributions Wikipedia: Loch Ness Monster Legend of Nessie Wikipedia: Mokele-mbembe Wikipedia: Champy

http://media.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/content.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/28-George_Orwell_s_1984_and_other_dystopian_stories_July_12_2014_.mp3 From July 12, 2014. We talk about 1984 and a bunch of other dystopian novels. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. More episodes are coming! GET READY!

http://media.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/content.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/27_-_Social_Justice_Warriors_Unite_June_28_2014_.mp3 From June 28, 2014. We talk about the difference between social justice activists and “social justice warriors” – the people who make being outraged a hobby. We find points of agreement and disagreement. We make dick jokes. This was a mostly free-form discussion, so… enjoy!  

http://media.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/content.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/26_-_What_the_F_K_are_we_Talking_About_June_22_2014_.mp3 From last June! We’re so timely!! Here are the show notes… WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE TALKING ABOUT Intro: Welcome to the Irreverent Skeptics Podcast. I’m your host, Jon Ownbey. Joining me today, on June 22, 2014, are Mike Bohler, Michael McElroy, and Brandi Mattison. Today we’ll be talking about whatever the hell we want. What’s that, little baby man? You wanted a structured discussion of a specific topic? Tough shit! We won’t be part of your system, man. Main Topic: Potpourri! McElroy: Lawrence Livermore/MIT researchers develop a substance as low-density as Aerogel but 10,000 times stiffer. Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and MIT have developed a new method for creating extremely-low-density metamaterials with unbelievable structural integrity. (A metamaterial is a manufactured material that exhibits properties not often found in nature, generally based on the physical structure of the thing the material is used for as opposed to the chemical composition of the material itself.) As an example, per Wikipedia: Aerogel is a synthetic porous ultralight material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas. The result is a solid with extremely low density and low thermal conductivity. Wikipedia has a photo of a 2.5 kilogram brick being supported by just 2 grams of Aerogel. Now imagine a material with the same weight and density as aerogel – which itself is only about 1.6 times as dense as air – but the new material is 10,000 times stiffer. The researchers, who published their findings in a June 20 article in Science, used micro-scale manufacturing techniques to create complex 3D architectures layer-by-layer (like a 3D printer) that would have otherwise been impossible to make. “These lightweight materials can withstand a load of at least 160,000 times their own weight,” said LLNL Engineer Xiaoyu “Rayne” Zheng, lead author of the Science article. “The key to this ultrahigh stiffness is that all the micro-structural elements in this material are designed to be over constrained and do not bend under applied load.” According to the team’s findings, because the properties of the metamaterial depend on the physical architecture of the substance and not the type of substance used, they can get similar results from a variety of different substances, including polymers, metals, and ceramics. They built their structure by using a micro-mirror display chip to build the 3D structures layer-by-layer. The chip has an array of microscopic, individually controlled mirrors that reflect light onto the photosensitive feedstock, setting it in place on a variety of different kinds of structural lattices they designed. MIT professor Nicholas Fang, one of the project’s key collaborators, said that because of the way this technique works, it’s possible to “print a stiff and resilient material using a desktop machine,” and that it lets them “rapidly make many sample pieces and see how they behave mechanically.” They say that these and other similar materials could someday be used to develop parts and components for aircraft, automobiles and space vehicles. TL;DR we can do magic now. Bears & Bigfoots! (a.k.a. Jon’s goin a-campin) Bear spray, bells, whistles, guns, or … ? Play dead or run like hell? Bear cans and camp invasion. Everyone makes fun of Jon’s fear of bears… ‘squatch sightings and blurry cameras. How to attract/repel a sasquatch Bohler: Those Crazy Illuminati Believers. Attacks on the Enlightenment (Science – Reason) The International Communist conspiracy. Batshit crazy religious types. God and Jesus is God of the Universe – Satan (Lucifer) God of our planet. Joshua Abraham WUTs: Ebola Outbreak ‘Tip of the Iceberg’, Experts Say Damn nature, you scary! Flying Spaghetti Monster, Meet Onionhead From The Friendly Atheist: Onionhead is the fictional mascot for the Harnessing Happiness Foundation. According to this totally-not-a-cult’s website: Onionhead is this incredibly pure, wise and adorable character [actually, he’s a creepy anthropomorphic onion with arms and legs] who teaches us how to name it — claim it — tame it — aim it. Onion spelled backwards is ‘no-i-no’. He wants everyone to know how they feel and then know what to do with those feelings. He helps us direct our emotions in a truthful and compassionate way [in a video where he constantly peels off layers of his own flesh]. Which in turn assists us to communicate more appropriately and peacefully. In turn, we then approach life from a place of our wellness rather than a place of our wounds. (On a side note, despite saying ‘he’ repeatedly in this intro, they claim that Onionhead has no gender.) But… as Hemant points out: Onionhead is now at the center of a lawsuit. Employees of United Health Programs of America Inc. are suing their employers because, they say, they were forced to take part in religious activities related to Onionhead: According to the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s] suit, United Health Programs of America, Inc., and its parent company, Cost Containment Group, Inc., which provide customer service on behalf of various insurance providers, coerced employees to participate in ongoing religious activities since 2007. These activities included group prayers, candle burning, and discussions of spiritual texts. The religious practices are part of a belief system that the defendants’ family member created, called “Onionhead.” Employees were told wear Onionhead buttons, pull Onionhead cards to place near their work stations and keep only dim lighting in the workplace. None of these practices was work-related. When employees opposed taking part in these religious activities or did not participate fully, they were terminated. For fuck’s sake, seriously? An onion-mascot-related religion? I wonder… when an onion-themed cult commits mass suicide, do they still use Flavor-Aid or do they guzzle poisoned onion juice? The Bible’s Answer to the Problem of Sexism This one’s a doozy. “Love Is An Orientation” is the blog of the president of the Marin Foundation, self-described as “a public charity working to build bridges between the LGBT community and conservatives”. Recently there was a two–part guest post on the blog called “The Bible’s Answer to the Problem of Sexism” that made it abundantly clear that the author, Jason Bilbrey, Director of Pastoral Care at The Marin Foundation, has no idea what the problem of sexism is itself, let alone how fundamentally stupid and wrong the bible gets things in what he claims is its answer to the problem. In discussing the treatment of women in the bible, Bilbrey brings up Deuteronomy 22:28-29, which is one of the more infamous passages from the book of laws supposedly dictated for the Israelites by God to Moses. Quote: If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. There are two ways to look at this, as far as I’m concerned. The first way, oddly enough, is the way Bilbrey – a Christian himself – decided to run with in his post: which is that what we see here is a law given to people who lived in a culture where women were treated as property and valued only for their virginity. I say it’s odd Bilbrey looked at it this way because this is the view I take of the text as well. Bilbrey sees this as God giving a rule about something that he doesn’t approve of, but working within the context of the culture. (More on that later.) The second way to look at the passage is how I would’ve expected him to look at it: as divine instructions given by a morally perfect God to teach his chosen people how to live sanctified, holy lives. [note: all emphasis in the quoted passages is original.] Bilbrey says: There’s so much going on in this text, it’s hard to know where to start. If this reads like tacit approval of rape to you, I won’t argue. The powerlessness of the woman being molested is compounded by her powerless in the economic transaction to follow. One day she is the property of her father, and the next she is violently possessed and purchased by another man. Her value is in her virginity, which literally has a price: fifty shekels of silver. Of course, the woman isn’t paid any of it (as if she were the owner of her own body), and must live the rest of her life married to her rapist. This scenario is so bleak it’s easy to miss what the purpose of this law is, which is (and stay with me here) to protect women. … In a society where women are possessions, they can be thrown away when they lose their value. [In 2 Samuel 13,] Tamar losing her virginity outside this system of property transaction places her in a position of incredible economic vulnerability. And the story unfortunately verifies that risk, ending with Amnon’s refusal to marry her, and Tamar living the rest of her life “a desolate woman.” Let me simplify it for you, Jason, because it really isn’t hard to know where to start. This law is not tacit approval of rape; it’s outright approval of rape. When you write laws, and you want to ban something, you ban it. If you want to ban rape, you don’t write a law that says (about a woman’s virginity) essentially “you break it, you buy it.” This isn’t a law against rape. This is a regulation of a practice that you expect to occur in your society. This is just like the bible’s take on slavery – God never says “don’t own people”, but he does tell you who to buy, how long you can keep them, how to mark them as your property, and so on. So this is problematic for Bilbrey regardless of which of the two ways I talked about you use to approach the passage. The first way – the one that puts the law into its cultural context – gives us no reason whatsoever to regard the text as valuable. Any attempt to defend it would be as repugnant as trying to defend laws about returning escaped slaves to their masters, just because slavery was a fact of the culture at the time. If this is God telling the Israelites that he disapproves of rape, he has a funny way of doing it. If this is God saying that he values women as more than a sexual commodity, he has completely fucking failed! The other way – the one that puts the law into its theological context – is even worse for a believer. God loses the excuse of “working within a cultural context”, since he’s supposedly making laws that will last forever. So why is it so hard for a morally perfect being to not be such a total fuckup? The eternal, timeless, perfectly good God somehow can’t just say “don’t rape people”? Keeping the Sabbath – apparently that’s important enough for God’s Top 10, but violent sexual assault never even gets its own “thou shalt not” so much as a “thou shalt have an empty wallet if you do.” And apparently, women being property is part of God’s eternal law! But it gets worse for Bilbrey. He continues: … If much of the Old Testament worked within this system of oppression to advocate for women, the New Testament works to dismantle the system entirely. Yes, he is literally saying that by financially harming someone who takes a woman’s virginity, that’s “advocating for women.” The implication is that it’s sufficient to punish a rapist after the fact, and do nothing to prevent rape in the first place. What’s more, apparently “advocating for women” means giving reparations to her father/owner instead of doing anything to help her. Moreover, in part 2, he says: The same laws that […] were designed to protect women also propagated the system under which they experienced social vulnerability. Is this what God wanted? Is God negligent of women throughout centuries of patriarchy? If it’s not what he wanted, what the fuck was stopping him from getting what he wanted – other than his own legislative incompetence? I don’t see any other all-powerful deities writing laws here. (And Jason: the answer to your second rhetorical question is yes, the bible shows God being negligent of women throughout centuries of patriarchy!) Remember how he promised that “the New Testament works to dismantle the system entirely?” Well… he claimed he’d show this in part 2. Instead, we get shit like this: Here’s the difficult truth: God loves subservience. We might assume Jesus came to subvert any notion of authority or submissiveness, especially in male-female relationships, but it’s not true. Oh, okay. So the male-female hierarchy still exists under Jesus. He goes on: The answer to sexism, according to Jesus, is not that women should be as powerful men, but that men should be as powerless as women. The kingdom of God Jesus taught and modeled is about the first being last and the last being first. Ah, I see! Beyond trying to kill off any ideas of self-empowerment we might have, he’s cherry-picking the gospels and ignoring the rest of the New Testament. Because the NT isn’t nearly so progressive and equalizing as he wants us to ignorantly believe it is. Ephesians 5:24, for example, totally disagrees: Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. The cherry-picking continues: For millennia, men have pointed to the creation narrative in Genesis when claiming their right to a position of authority over women. But the irony is Jesus identifies more with Eve than Adam. Again, if you ignore the 23 books of the New Testament that aren’t the gospels, you might possibly maybe think Jesus identified with Eve. Except that in 1 Corinthians 15:45, Jesus is referred to as the “last Adam.” So there’s that. The deception continues: Those seating themselves at the head of the table of Christian fellowship are in for a surprise. Christ is seated at the foot. Yes, Jesus teaches equality. However, let’s not mistake equality with an absence of hierarchy. Jesus loves hierarchy. It’s not systemic hierarchy, where men are more important than women. It’s individualized hierarchy, where the other person is more important than you–whoever they are, whoever you are. Really? While Ephesians 5:21 does almost support his viewpoint here by talking about “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God,” 5:22 immediately commands wives to “submit [them]selves unto [their] own husbands, as unto the Lord.” And husbands are never told to submit to their wives – only to “love their wives as their own bodies” (5:28).  Also, I cited Ephesians 5:24 earlier. Let me give you the verse that precedes it: For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. Whoops! So much for your totally non-biblical quasi-egalitarianism. Bilbrey goes on: Let’s be blunt here for a minute. I’m a man. I’m a person in power, more or less. And I’m extolling the virtue of humility. If you have alarm bells going off inside your head, I don’t blame you. People like me have been saying stuff like this for years as a way of manipulating others and securing authority for themselves. Pastors especially. In the end, if the answer to sexism is mutual submission, it must be voiced and adopted by men first. What does submission in love look like, not in one man’s relationship to one woman (within a opposite-sex marriage, say) but on a societal level–in all men’s relationship to (yes) all women? Even when he’s talking about reforming society to overcome sexism, he’s still thinking from a worldview where men must take charge. Why not move forward together, rather than think our gender somehow confers us with natural leadership skills? This is like some fucked-up kind of chivalry going on here. Love isn’t about submitting yourself to someone. It’s about giving yourself to someone. The two ideas are remarkably different. (Unless you’re into BDSM, maybe…) The bigger picture here is that this is a common bullshit tactic I see from Christians who hold the Bible in high regard. They know that this book is supposed to be a fantastic guide to life, full of magic sprinkles and unicorn farts, but then they actually read the fucking thing and discover that – surprise! – an ancient tribe of barbaric warrior nomads had some kind of backwards ideas. So to salvage the book they respect so much, they insist that the book must actually be right, and it’s just their interpretation that needs to change. Except that half of the time the interpretation that they come up with isn’t all that fucking helpful! “Well, yeah, women were purchaseable objects whose only value was based on whether or not their hymen was intact… but God let rapists buy their victims from their families as a way of honoring the victim!” Are you fucking kidding me with this shit? Your brain has to be doing somersaults in your skull from all this cognitive dissonance. “The bible is always right, so if I find something bad, I just don’t understand it right!” No. Fuck you. The book is terrible. Links and Attributions: Lawrence Livermore, MIT researchers develop new ultralight, ultrastiff 3D printed materials Wikipedia: Aerogel Flying Spaghetti Monster, Meet Onionhead The Bible’s Answer to the Problem of Sexism (Part 1) The Bible’s Answer to the Problem of Sexism (Part 2) Ephesians 5:15-28 (KJV)   http://media.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/content.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/26_-_What_the_F_K_are_we_Talking_About_June_22_2014_.mp3

http://media.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/content.blubrry.com/irreverent_skeptics/39_-_Those_Darned_Atheists_.mp3 Hallelujah! LLAP.  

BLERG I M DED Originally broadcast June 14, 2014, here’s our conversation about colony collapse disorder – what’s up with that? Mind Your Own Bees-ness Intro: Welcome to the Irreverent Skeptics Podcast. I’m your host, Rico Suave. Joining me today, on June 14, 2014, are Mike Bohler and Michael McElroy. Today we’ll be talking about beeeeeeeeeees, so don’t forget your bug spray and protective gear! Or maybe we won’t need it after all, since bees are apparently dropping like flies. [Pause for laughter.] But first, I’m going to drop a rant-bomb on you about the latest shitty headlines from the news. Jon’s News Headlines Review – or, hey world, go fuck yourself: YouTube refuses Egypt’s request to remove footage of Tahrir Square sexual assault. Chinese Hackers Are Practicing How To Blow Up US Pipelines And Shut Down Power Plants 4 in 10 Teens Admit Texting While Driving Police investigate attack on 10 year old girl as hate crime Amazon warehouses under scrutiny after worker deaths Muslims Take Seven Hostages And Cook Them Alive Until Their Bodies Become Charred Tacoma mom locked kids in room full of urine, feces. Beheading of elderly US man, killing of wife baffles gated community California declares whooping cough epidemic Police: Waffle House employee shoots, kills customer Man burns daughter to death in suspected honor killing School shootings! Police shootings! Catastrophic Iraq war failures! Politicians being assholes about POWs! Dem Beez: [Mike] From Wikipedia: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture (beekeeping), and were known by various names (disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease), the syndrome was renamed colony collapse disorder in late 2006 in conjunction with a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honeybee colonies in North America. European beekeepers observed similar phenomena in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, and initial reports have also come in from Switzerland and Germany, albeit to a lesser degree while the Northern Ireland Assembly received reports of a decline greater than 50%. But who cares, right? Bees are assholes. I’m allergic to bees; if they sting me, I swell up like a goddamn balloon. Good riddance! Well, not really… Wikipedia continues: Colony collapse is significant economically because many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by European honey bees. According to the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the worth of global crops with honeybee’s pollination was estimated to be close to $200 billion in 2005. Shortages of bees in the US have increased the cost to farmers renting them for pollination services by up to 20%. And the USDA Agricultural Research Service says: Bee pollination is responsible for more than $15 billion in increased crop value each year. About one mouthful in three in our diet directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination. Commercial production of many specialty crops like almonds and other tree nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables are dependent on pollinated by honey bees. These are the foods that give our diet diversity, flavor, and nutrition. Honey bees are not native to the New World; they came from Europe with the first settlers. There are native pollinators in the United States, but honey bees are more prolific and easier to manage on a commercial level for pollination of a wide variety of crops. … Annual losses from the winter of 2006-2011 averaged about 33 percent each year, with a third of these losses attributed to CCD by beekeepers. The winter of 2011-2012 was an exception, when total losses dropped to 22 percent. … If losses continue at the 33 percent level, it could threaten the economic viability of the bee pollination industry. Honey bees would not disappear entirely, but the cost of honey bee pollination services would rise, and those increased costs would ultimately be passed on to consumers through higher food costs. So clearly we’ve got a serious problem here. Wikipedia lists 118 crop plants that are pollinated at least in part by bees. I found a page on beekeeping from the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. According to the school: The following midwestern crops must be pollinated by bees to produce fruit or seed: Alfalfa, apples, apricots, blackberries, blueberries, cantaloupes, cherries, clovers, cranberries, cucumbers, muskmelons, nectarines, peaches, pears, persimmons, plums and prunes, pumpkins, raspberries, squashes, sunflowers, trefoils, and watermelons. The following crops set fruit or seed without insect visits but yields and quality may be improved by honey bees: Eggplants, grapes, Lespedeza (which is a genus of about 40 plants often used as forage crops in the southern US), lima beans, okra, pepper plants, soybeans, and strawberries. And finally, honey bees visit several important crops but do not improve their yields of fruit or seed. These include the following: Field beans, peas, string or snap beans, and sweet corn. So what’s behind all of this? Well… nobody’s really sure. Wikipedia again: The mechanisms of CCD and the reasons for its increasing prevalence remain unclear, but many possible causes have been proposed: pesticides, primarily neonicotinoids; infections with Varroa and Acarapis mites; malnutrition; various pathogens; genetic factors; immunodeficiencies; loss of habitat; changing beekeeping practices; or a combination of factors. To give you an idea of how many different plausible factors might be involved here, let me quote a brief snippet from the abstract of the study Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study, published in PLOS One in August 2009: We initiated a descriptive epizootiological study in order to better characterize CCD and compare risk factor exposure between populations afflicted by and not afflicted by CCD. Of 61 quantified variables (including adult bee physiology, pathogen loads, and pesticide levels), no single measure emerged as a most-likely cause of CCD. Bees in CCD colonies had higher pathogen loads and were co-infected with a greater number of pathogens than control populations, suggesting either an increased exposure to pathogens or a reduced resistance of bees toward pathogens. Levels of [a synthetic chemical] used by beekeepers to control the parasitic mite Varroa destructor were higher in [unaffected] control colonies than CCD-affected colonies. So the study investigated 61 potential causes, but the conclusion seems odd to me as a non-scientist: This is the first comprehensive survey of CCD-affected bee populations that suggests CCD involves an interaction between pathogens and other stress factors. We present evidence that this condition is contagious or the result of exposure to a common risk factor. Potentially important areas for future hypothesis-driven research, including the possible legacy effect of mite parasitism and the role of honey bee resistance to pesticides, are highlighted. Here’s why I find this odd: if you do a study of 61 quantified variables and find no single measure that seems to be the most likely cause, how do you conclude that there’s a common risk factor or some sort of contagion going on? It seems to me that “there’s probably a common risk factor” is just another way of saying “we don’t think it’s random, but beyond that, we have no clue what’s going on.” Not to mention, if you go into a study with 61 variables, there’s a huge risk of going on a fishing expedition and just looking for the one variable that seems to show statistically significant differences between the control and affected colonies. It’s something you see pseudoscientists do a lot, especially with alternative medicine: do a study of a population of people with a variety of maladies, find one problem that seems to get better more often than the others, then attribute the improvement to your woo-du-jour. So while I’m glad to see this study withholding any solid conclusions, the implication of a contagious cause seems shaky to me. What’s more, as part of the 2008 farm bill, the US Department of Agriculture formed a steering committee on the subject of CCD. In 2012, the committee released its fourth annual Colony Collapse Disorder Progress Report, which noted: Although a number of factors continue to be associated with CCD, including parasites and pathogens, poor nutrition, pesticides, bee management practices, habitat fragmentation, and agricultural practices, no single factor or pattern of factors has been proven to be “the cause” of CCD. The report represents the work of a large number of scientists from 8 Federal agencies, 2 State departments of agriculture, 22 universities, and several private research efforts, so there’s a good chance that this is one of the most comprehensive reports on the subject to date – and even they don’t know what the root cause is. In all my research on the subject, it seems to me that we’re likely dealing with a wide variety of problems that are all getting the CCD label. I’m not sure what the average layperson can do about it; if anything, it seems like this is something that agricultural industries are going to have to figure out for themselves. Of course, so far we’ve only considered sane causes that have some scientific support. What does the pseudoscience community have to say? Well, according to them, CCD is caused by all sorts of nefariousness: Electromagnetic radiation, especially from cell phones: From Natural Health Strategies (a lovely Orwellian name): Researchers at Panjab University in northern India wanted to test the theory that radiation from cellphones and other electronic gadgets may play a part, at least, in the mysterious disappearance of honeybees that has puzzled scientists for several years. … The researchers put two cellphones each in two hives for three months. The phones were turned on–thus the honeybees exposed to the electromagnetic radiation from the phones–two days out of each week, twice on each of those days. Each exposure period lasted 15 minutes, and was timed to coincide with the bees’ peak period of activity, at 11 a.m. and again at 3 p.m. The experiment took place from February to April, and covered two brood cycles. Remember, these honeybees were not exposed to daily radiation, as was misreported by CNN. The cell phones were turned on only twice a week, for 2 fifteen-minute periods per each of those days, for a total of one hour’s exposure per week. A third hive had two dummy cellphones, thus no radiation from them, and a fourth had neither real nor dummy cellphones. These were the two control hives. The results are stunning, especially if you haven’t put much credence in the possible connection between Colony Collapse Disorder and cell phone radiation. The study looked at both biological and behavioral differences between the bees which were exposed to radiation and those which were not exposed. The biological aspects measured were brood area (this refers to the space within the hive occupied by eggs, larva, and pupae) and the egg laying rate of the queen. Behavioral aspects measured included colony growth (total quantity of bees, quantity of honey stores, and quantity of pollen stores in the hives) and foraging habits (efficiency and rate of activity, as well as rate of return to the hive). There was a dramatic decrease in the number of bees returning to the hive exposed to cell phone radiation. By the end of the three months that the experiment lasted, “there was neither honey, nor pollen or brood and bees in the colony. “The present study therefore suggests that colony collapse does occur as a result of exposure to cellphone radiations,” the researchers concluded. Wait, we’re supposed to take this seriously? First of all, cell phones are exposed to more EM radiation than they emit, just by virtue of existing in the modern world. Second of all, unless you had the hives in faraday cages, they were constantly receiving EM radiation – period. You didn’t have a control hive! Third of all, cell phones emit non-ionizing radiation only. Unless the phones are somehow heating up the hives, they aren’t to blame. Finally… EACH GROUP HAD A POPULATION SIZE OF ONE, AND YOU’RE DRAWING CONCLUSIONS FROM THIS?! HAARP: HYPERSTEALTH!!!.com claimed in 2007 that HAARP transmissions could be jamming bees’ homing ability. “[HAARP] transitioned to full power and military use just prior to the summer of 2006 with an increase in output from 9.6 kilowatts to 3.6 megawatts. The corresponding timing and range with the Colony Collapse Disorder suggests recent transmissions from the array could be the most likely cause of the bee problem.” Just… no. Like I said in the introduction to the subject, such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture It was only the name Colony Collapse Disorder that came around in late 2006, when it started happening more often. And HAARP was actually shut down for most of 2013, but CCD didn’t go away. Besides, HAARP is going to be shut down permanently later this year. GMOs/high-fructose corn syrup: From NaturalNews (I’m not going to link to them): … one area that has been largely overlooked is the role high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) plays in killing off bees, as the vast majority of it comes from genetically-modified (GM), pesticide treated corn crops. Richard A. Callahan from the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health examined the effects of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide, on bee colonies as part of a recent review. Part of this research involved using HFCS that had been derived from corn crops treated with imidacloprid, for which the pesticide ended up getting into the end product. So this actually has nothing to do with GMOs or HFCS, but rather just imidacloprid, which could be used on ANY crop. Mike Bohler’s Photo’s of a Collapsed Hive. collapsed hive 1 collapsed hive 2 collapsed hive 3 collapsed hive 4   WUTs: Tony Perkins Says Gay Rights Advocates Want Anti-Christian Holocaust, Will ‘Start Rolling Out The Boxcars’ From Right Wing Watch: After Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission unanimously upheld a judge’s finding that a baker unlawfully discriminated against gay customers, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins invited the baker’s attorney, Nicolle Martin of Alliance Defending Freedom, to discuss the case yesterday on his show “Washington Watch.” Perkins reacted to the discrimination case by offering a comparison to the Holocaust: “I’m beginning to think, are re-education camps next? When are they going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians?” “I guarantee that we are going to continue to see the witch hunt,” the lawyer said. Well, at least it’s a good sign that he’s “beginning to think.” Keep it up, Tony, you’ll catch up to the other preschoolers soon enough. Found on Hemant Mehta’s Friendly Atheist blog: Gibbering creationist dumbass Callie Joubert recently wrote a paper that was published (unsurprisingly) in Ken Ham’s Answers Research Journal. It’s one of the most fantastic examples of pseudo-intellectualism I’ve seen in a while. In the paper, he appears to be arguing that our mind isn’t a product of our brain, but… well, I’ll let Joubert speak for himself. Now if a person is not a brain, and a brain is not the thing that perceives, thinks, interprets, feels, desires, decides, and so on, which is what I will argue, then it has serious implications for what Christians are teaching about the person and brain in the light of Scripture. … Thesis 2: “The mind is what the brain does, and the brain is a causal machine… The ‘user illusion,’ nevertheless, is that a decision is created independently of neuronal causes, by one’s very own ‘act of will'[…]” If I reach for a broom to pick it up, then one of the things I do is just that: I decided to reach for the broom and pick it up. But if that is something I do, then it follows that it is something I know that I do. If you ask me why I am doing what I have just done, I will immediately be able to tell you. However, by lifting up the broom, which is what I do, I made a whole lot of things to happen which are not in any sense things that I do, but which I am nevertheless the cause of: I would have made air-particles to move; I may have freed an ant heap from the pressure that had been upon it by the broom; I may also have caused a shadow to move from one place to another. Now, if these are merely things that I made to happen, as distinguished from what I do, then I may know nothing about them. But, and this is the crucial point, it is not to say that if I am unaware of making things to happen in my brain (or body) when I think a thought, experience an emotion, or will an act that I am not the cause of the events happening within it[.] Thesis 2 is therefore incorrect. The paper goes on from there. Definitely check out Hemant’s blog for a link to the paper; it’s worth a laugh. The best response I saw to this came from a comment by the user Psychotic Atheist: When our tooth hurts we point to the tooth not to the brain, proving the source of the pain is not our brain. I’m the one moving the broom, not some stinking brain. I don’t hypothesize there is a dog, I see there is a dog. Therefore the brain does not use metaphorical hypotheses in perception. You can’t point to representation occurring in the brain (there are no paintings or maps in the brain) therefore the brain does not represent what it perceives. When I see a dog, I see it directly. I do not see a representation of a dog. A painter who retains the images of dogs in his brain to paint later, proves that the brain does not represent things. Painters paint with paint, the brain cannot paint, ergo no representation occurs, because no paints! (and also of interest, apparently; there are no brushes in the brain). Brains cannot intend or generate meaning. Therefore they cannot use symbols. Since brains cannot learn, they cannot analyse or decipher. This is evident by referencing common English speech tradition. We say a person knows things, we don’t say their brain does. QED. Bonus points: Brains are gooey and bloody, not full of books or records! When I remember a dog, there is no dog in my brain, the dog is sat by the fire! I cannot see into my skull, so even if there were a dog there, I couldn’t see it! Not being able to see inside the skull (8), means we can’t retrieve information from the brain, nor store information in it. Since the brain regenerates every few years it becomes a different brain. But this does not absolve people of moral responsibility. So we aren’t brains. …. Conclusion. We are not brains. The brain allows us to perceive, think, know, understand, decide, feel…but because we’re not aware of it, it’s not us. In other words… because this guy has never thought about thinking, that means he isn’t his brain. But here he is trying to think about thinking, so… wut? (The best part is that he uses the phrase “commonsensically speaking” in the paper and it still passed peer review. Those creationists… so rigorous.) Links and Attributions: Wikipedia: Colony Collapse Disorder Wikipedia: List of crop plants pollinated by bees POLLINATION BY HONEY BEES (College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) USDA Agricultural Research Service: Honey Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder PLOS One: Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study USDA Agricultural Research Service: 2012 Colony Collapse Disorder Progress Report

Here are the notes from this show, originally broadcast May 17, 2014. They’re lengthy, so I’m just going to dump them all, raw and uncut. Enjoy! (Also, note that the Dark Dungeons movie is out now! You can get it for $5, and the bonus features for another $2.50.) Poor ol’ Satan… Hello and welcome to the Irreverent Skeptics podcast! I’m your host, Jon Ownbey, and joining me today in the unending fight against the forces of darkness are Erno Marttila, Michael McElroy, Mike Bohler, and Dumbass! And special guest – The Astronomer Royal of Karl Mamer’s “The Conspiracy Skeptic” Podcast and the brains and brawn of the “Exposing PseudoAstronomy” podcast, Stuart Robbins! Today, we’re going to talk about the Satanic Panic – that period during the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s when the devil was always lurking just around the corner. If the Religious Right is to be believed (and if not them, who can you trust?), diabolical influences were everywhere in pop culture – from music and movies to games and toys. Where did it all start? What were some of their wildest claims? Is it still going on today? Let’s dip our toes into the lake of fire, pinch our noses to keep out the smell of burning brimstone, and take a journey through hell to find out the truth. In the Beginning – Allegations in the Satanic Panic 1987, Broxtowe, UK. Children were removed from their families in Nottingham and were subsequently charged with multi-generational child sexual abuse and neglect. A 600-page report on the incident concluded that there was no evidence of satanic ritual abuse. 1989, Oude Pekela, the Netherlands. A conservative magazine published allegations by a group of parents who claimed that their children had witnessed satanic ritual abuse over a period of about 17 months in ‘87-’88. 1990, South Africa. Gert van Rooyen and his accomplice were accused of murdering several young girls. They ultimately committed suicide while on the run from the police. Later a son of the accused was accused of murdering a Zimbabwean girl in 1991. The son claimed that his father’s victims were involved in international child pornography rings, slavery and Satanism rituals. No evidence was ever found to substantiate the claims. 1990, Rochdale, UK. Twenty children were removed from their homes by social services who alleged the existence of satanic ritual abuse after discovering ‘satanic indicators’, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. 1990-1991, Orkney, UK. Nine children suspected of being sexually abused by their families and an alleged child abuse ring were removed by social services. The parents approached the media and the case made national and international news. In April 1991, a sheriff ruled that the evidence was seriously flawed and the children were returned home. 1991, Perth, Australia. Scott Gozenton, a self-professed Satanist, was linked to organized child sexual abuse. His lawyer claimed that 13 Satanic covens existed in the area, holding bizarre orgies involving children, and that Gozenton had been followed and threatened by “coven” members throughout the court proceedings after his arrest. MM 1998, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Six adults who were arrested and charged with prostituting their own children and the production of child pornography, were reported to have been involved in satanic rituals. MM 1999, New South Wales, Australia. Two journalists from the Sun-Herald claimed to have seen evidence of ritual abuse of children. In interviews with six mothers of children who had disclosed experiences of organized Satanic ritual abuse. The stories were corroborating, although they had never met one another, and the children were able to draw representations of “satanic” ritual sites, similar to sites uncovered by police on the coast. JO 2001, Melbourne, Australia. Diocese of the Catholic Church acknowledged allegations that a Melbourne priest took part in Satanic ritual abuse in which a number of deaths occurred in the 60s as “substantially true” and paid compensation to a surviving victim. JO 2002, Pescara, Italy. Four people were arrested for “satanism and paedophilia”. Reportedly the group may have abused dozens of children in rituals involving stolen corpses from ceremonies. (presumably funerals?) JO 2003, Lewis, Scotland. Three children’s allegations resulted in the arrest of eight people for sexual abuse occurring between 1990 and 2000. A 2005 investigation by the Social Work Inspection Agency found extensive evidence of sexual, physical and emotional abuse and neglect. Police investigation resulted in allegations of an island-wide “Satanic paedophile ring”, though charges were dropped nine months later following an inconclusive investigation. MM 2007, Dublin, Ireland. A jury at Dublin Country Coroner’s court ruled that an infant found stabbed to death over three decades ago was the daughter of Cynthia Owen, who claimed a rather extensive story of ritual satanic sexual abuse involving her family. Allegations included an older brother, father and mother all offending parties in the abuse of her and her other siblings. This one has a longer and more detailed story that was interesting to read, but alas, we shall move on. MM 2007, Rignano Flaminio, Italy. Six people were arrested for sexually abusing fifteen children and filming the children engaged in sexual acts with satanic overtones. EM I’ll just add something from Sweden here.. Excellent MM I’ve got one from 2014. Famous Cases in the United States … (‘Murica!) Kern County child abuse cases: These started the day care sexual abuse hysteria of the 1980s in Kern County, California.The cases involved claims of pedophile-sex-ring-performed Satanic ritual abuse, with as many as 60 children testifying they had been abused. At least 36 people were convicted and most of them spent years imprisoned. Thirty-four convictions were overturned on appeal. The district attorney responsible for the convictions was Ed Jagels, who was sued by at least one of those whose conviction was overturned,and who remained in office until 2009.Two convicts died in prison, unable to clear their names. McMartin Pre-school trial Background The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. When the trial ended in 1990 it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history. The Claims In 1983, Judy Johnson, mother of one of the students, complained to the police that her son had been sodomized by her estranged husband and by McMartin teacher Ray Buckey. Buckey was the grandson of school founder Virginia McMartin and son of administrator Peggy McMartin Buckey. Johnson’s belief that her son had been abused began when her son had painful bowel movements. Johnson also made several more accusations, including that people at the daycare had sexual encounters with animals, that “Peggy drilled a child under the arms” and “Ray flew in the air.” Ray Buckey was questioned, but was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence. It was alleged that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air balloon, and were taken through underground tunnels. When shown a series of photographs by Danny Davis (the McMartins’ lawyer), one child identified actor Chuck Norris as one of the abusers. There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their unsuspecting parents. Some interviewed children talked of a game called “Naked Movie Star” suggesting they were forcibly photographed nude. During the trial, testimony from the children stated that the naked movie star game was actually a rhyming taunt used to tease other children—”What you say is what you are, you’re a naked movie star,”—and had nothing to do with having naked pictures taken. The Interviews Several hundred children were interviewed by the Children’s Institute International, a Los Angeles abuse therapy clinic run by Kee MacFarlane. The interviewing techniques used during investigations of the allegations were highly suggestive and invited children to pretend or speculate about supposed events. By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused. Later research demonstrated that the methods of questioning used on the children were extremely suggestive, leading to false accusations. Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false memory syndrome among the children who were questioned. Ultimately only 41 of the original 360 children testified during the grand jury and pre-trial hearings, and fewer than a dozen testified during the actual trial. Videotapes of the interviews with children were reviewed by a British clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry as an expert witness regarding the interviewing of children. He was highly critical of the interviewing techniques used, referring to them as improper, coercive, directive, problematic, adult-directed in a way that forced the children to follow a rigid script and that “many of the kids’ statements in the interviews were generated by the examiner.” Transcripts and recordings of the interviews contained far more speech from adults than children and demonstrated that, despite the highly coercive interviewing techniques used, initially the children were resistant to interviewers’ attempts to elicit disclosures. Recordings of these interviews were instrumental in the jury’s refusal to convict, by demonstrating how children could be coerced to giving vivid and dramatic testimonies without having experienced the abuse. The techniques used were contrary to the existing guidelines in California for the investigation of cases involving children and child witnesses. Shenanigans in the Trial and the Media Johnson, who made the initial allegations, made bizarre and impossible statements about Raymond Buckey, including that he could fly. Though the prosecution asserted Johnson’s mental illness was caused by the events of the trial, Johnson had admitted to them that she was mentally ill beforehand. Evidence of Johnson’s mental illness was withheld from the defense for three years and, when provided, was in the form of sanitized reports that excluded Johnson’s statements, at the order of the prosecution. One of the original prosecutors, Glenn Stevens, left the case and stated that other prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense, including the information that Johnson’s son did not actually identify Ray Buckey in a series of photographs. Stevens also accused Robert Philibosian, the deputy district attorney on the case, of lying and withholding evidence from the court and defense lawyers in order to keep the Buckeys in jail and prevent access to exonerating evidence. During the trial, George Freeman was called as a witness and testified that Ray Buckey had confessed to him while sharing a cell. Freeman later attempted to flee the country and confessed to perjury in a series of other criminal cases in which he manufactured testimony in exchange for favorable treatment by the prosecution in other cases, in several instances creating false confessions of other inmates. In order to guarantee his testimony during the McMartin case, Freeman was given immunity to previous charges of perjury. Under immunity, Freeman admitted to fabricating Buckey’s confession. The media coverage was skewed towards an uncritical acceptance of the prosecution’s viewpoint, and there were several clear conflicts of interest involving romantic relationships between the prosecutor, the social worker who organized the interviews of the kids, and a couple members of media outlets that refused to report on the flaws in the case. David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times wrote a series of articles, which later won the Pulitzer Prize, discussing the flawed and skewed coverage presented by his own paper on the trial. Aftermath The trial lasted seven years and cost $15 million, the longest and most expensive criminal case in the history of the United States legal system, and ultimately resulted in no convictions. The McMartin preschool was closed and the building was dismantled; several of the accused have since died. In 2005, one of the children (as an adult) retracted the allegations of abuse: Never did anyone do anything to me, and I never saw them doing anything. I said a lot of things that didn’t happen. I lied. … Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn’t like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. … I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I was being dishonest. But at the same time, being the type of person I was, whatever my parents wanted me to do, I would do. Mary A. Fischer in an article in Los Angeles magazine said the case was “simply invented,” and transmogrified into a national cause celebre by the misplaced zeal of six people: Judy Johnson, mentally ill mother who died of alcoholism; Jane Hoag, the detective who investigated the complaints; Kee MacFarlane, the social worker who interviewed the children; Robert Philibosian, the district attorney who was in a losing battle for re-election; Wayne Satz, the television reporter who first reported the case, and Lael Rubin, the prosecutor. Shortly after investigation into the McMartin charges began, the funds to research child sexual abuse greatly increased, notably through the budget allocated for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN). The agency’s budget increased from $1.8 million to $7.2 million between 1983 and 1984, increasing to $15 million in 1985, making it the greatest source of funding for child abuse and neglect prevention in the United States. The majority of this budget went toward studies on sexual abuse with only $5 million going towards physical abuse and neglect. Federal funding was also used to arrange conferences on ritual abuse, providing an aura of respectability as well as allowing prosecutors to exchange tips on the best means of obtaining convictions. A portion of the funds were used to publish the book Behind the Playground Walls, which used a sample of children drawn from the McMartin families. The book claimed to study the effects of “reported” rather than actual abuse but portrayed all of the McMartin children as actual victims of abuse despite a lack of convictions during the trial and without mentioning questions about the reality of the accusations. Another grant of $173,000 went to David Finkelhor who used the funds to investigate allegations of day care sexual abuse throughout the country, combining the study of verified crimes by admitted pedophiles and unverified accusations of satanic ritual abuse. The case and others like it also impacted the investigation of allegations that included young children. Normal police procedure is to record using video, tape or notes in interviews with alleged victims. The initial interviews with children by the CII were recorded, and demonstrated to the jury members in the trial the coercive and suggestive techniques used by CII staff to produce allegations. These interviews were instrumental in the jury members failing to produce a guilty verdict against Buckey, and several similar trials with similar interviewing techniques produced similar not-guilty verdicts when juries were allowed to view the recordings. These records ended up being extremely valuable to the defense in similar cases. In response, prosecutors and investigators began “abandoning their tape recorders and notepads” and a manual was produced for investigating child abuse cases that urged prosecutors and investigators not to record their interviews. (Sounds kinda shady.) Continued Allegations In 1990, parents who believed their children had been abused at the preschool hired archeologist E. Gary Stickel to investigate the site. In May 1990, Stickel claimed he found evidence of tunnels, consistent with the children’s accounts, under the McMartin Preschool using ground-penetrating radar. Others have disagreed with Stickel’s conclusions. John Earl wrote in 1995 that the concrete slab floor was undisturbed except for a small patch where the sewer line was tapped into. Once the slab was removed, there was no sign of any materials to line or hold up any tunnels, and the concrete floor would have made it impossible for the defendants to fill in any tunnels once the abuse investigation began. The article concluded that disturbed soil under the slab was from the sewer line and construction fill buried under the slab before it was poured. Further, Earle noted that some fill from beneath the concrete slab was dated to the year 1940. W. Joseph Wyatt’s 2002 report concluded that the “tunnels” under the preschool were more plausibly explained as a rubbish pit used by the owners of the site before the preschool’s construction in 1966. Materials found during the excavation included bottles, tin cans, plywood, inner tubes, as well as the former owner’s old mail box. Only three small items found near the edge of the concrete slab were dated after 1966, which Wyatt suggested were most likely dragged into the pit by rats or other scavengers. Moreover, Wyatt speculated that Stickel’s conclusions were colored by his collaboration with the parents of the McMartin children. West Memphis 3: In May of 1993, three 8 year-old boys – Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers – were reported missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. The following day their bodies were discovered in a drainage ditch. The boys had been hogtied and killed by a knife attack. 16 year-old Jason Baldwin and 17 year-old Damien Echols had initially been arrested for vandalism and shoplifting, respectively. 17 year-old Jessie Misskelley, Jr. was also arrested. At one point, Echols had been arrested for breaking into a trailer with his girlfriend and police heard rumors that the two had planned to have a child and sacrifice the infant. This led Echols to be committed for psychiatric evaluation. He had a confirmed history of some violent confrontations with other kids by this point. Two other local teenagers had been initially suspected and had failed a polygraph examination when questioned about it. And we all know just how reliable polygraphs are, right? FFS (I’ll try not to go off on a tangent about that). A black male was a possible suspect and nicknamed “Mr. Bojangles” because he had been reported to seem “mentally disoriented” inside the ladies room of a local restaurant named Bojangles. He was reportedly bleeding and had brushed against the walls of the restroom. When a potential connection was reported to police, they received a pair sunglasses that may have belonged to Mr. Bojangles, a scraping of the blood (which was subsequently misplaced) A hair that was “identified as belonging to a black male” was later recovered from a sheet which was used to wrap one of the victims. Police thought the crime had “cult” overtones and Damien Echols was a possible suspect because he reportedly had an interest in occultism. *opinion* The interrogation was seemingly full of intimidation, sleep deprivation, leading questions, coercion, and shitty polygraph usage. *end opinion* A municipal judge has since written a detailed critique of what he asserts are major police errors and misconceptions during their investigation. A friend of the deceased made a statement about the boys having been killed at “the playhouse”. The bodies had indeed been discovered near where he indicated. Upon further questioning he claimed that he had witnessed the murders committed by Satanists who spoke Spanish. His further statements were wildly inconsistent and he was unable to identify any of the three suspects from a photo lineup. Another witness claimed that she and Echols had attended a Wiccan meeting and that he had openly bragged about killing the three boys. In return cooperating with the police, charges of stealing money from her employer were dropped. She later recanted her statements claiming she had made the statement to avoid criminal charges and to obtain a reward for the discovery of the murderers. In the trials, Misskelley was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. Echols received a death penalty and Baldwin was sentenced to life in prison. The trial included Dale W. Griffis, whose only bona fides I could find are that he graduated from Columbia Pacific University, as an expert in the occult to testify that the murders were indeed a Satanic ritual. UGH. Wikipedia: Columbia Pacific University (CPU) was an unaccredited nontraditional distance learning school in California. … CPU was closed by California court order in 2000. In the many years following the case and convictions many criticisms have been laid out against the investigation and the detectives who conducted it. DNA evidence obtained from the original crime scene failed to place the convicted at the scene and could showed that an as of yet unidentified person had been present. The three convicted men reached an agreement with prosecutors and entered Alford pleas, which allows them to assert their innocence while acknowledging that the prosecutors  have enough evidence to convict them. At least one of them has claimed that it was their only hope given to them of leaving prison at the time that they were made. Little Rascals Daycare Center:  A daycare in Edenton, in the North Carolina run by Betsy and Bob Kelly. In January, 1989, allegations were made that Bob Kelly had sexually abused a child. After investigation by a police officer and social worker, the conclusion was the allegations were valid and parents were urged to have their children evaluated for abuse. A total of 90 children, after many therapy sessions (in some cases up to ten months’ worth), also made allegations leading to accusations against dozens besides Kelly and charges against seven adults (Bob and Betsy Kelly, three workers at the daycare, a worker at a local Head Start center and the son of a judge). The charges ultimately involved rape, sodomy and fellatio, while other bizarre allegations were also made, including the murder of babies, torture and being thrown into a school of sharks. During the trial, children were asked to testify about events that had occurred three years previously, with memories “refreshed” in therapy sessions, meetings with the prosecution and repeated discussions with their parents. While the alleged abuse was occurring, no parents noticed anything unusual about their children’s behavior to indicate abuse or torture. The eight-month trial against Bob Kelly was the most expensive in North Carolina history, ending in conviction on 99 of 100 charges and twelve consecutive life sentences, though on May 2, 1995 all convictions were reversed in the Court of Appeals. The remaining six defendants faced a mixture of charges ending in a variety of sentences from life imprisonment to seven years. Oak HIll Satanic ritual abuse trial: Oak Hill, Austin, Texas, in 1991 when Fran Keller and her husband Dan, proprietors of a small daycare, were accused of repeatedly and sadistically abusing several children. The Kellers were convicted of multiple charges and sentenced to decades in prison, but were freed in late 2013 based on newly-revealed information about misconduct by the prosecution and other authorities. Common Claims Rationalwiki lists a few things that evangelicals and the law enforcement officials they had suckered in believed about these vast networks of Satanists: There are families of devil worshippers, and they tend to be multigenerational. Teenagers are enticed to join Satanic cults. Human sacrifice is common. Disappearing pets were used for animal sacrifice. Ritual child abuse is rampant. Satanist networks are part of a broader conspiracy, e.g. the Illuminati. Wiccans and other neopagans are Satanic in nature. Wiccan symbols such as the pentagram are signs of Satanic activity. Some Christian books on Satanism (and materials provided to law enforcement) included the peace symbol and the anarchy symbol in their lists of “Satanic symbols” to watch out for. (Warning! There are pentagrams in the American flag and in the EU flag.) Some parts of popular culture are functioning as recruiting tools for Satanism, including heavy metal music and the game Dungeons and Dragons. Halloween is a Satanic holiday; urban legends and scares over poisoned candy were claimed to be the work of Satanic cults. Some towns, agencies, or even major corporations (i.e. Procter & Gamble) are secretly under the control of Satanists. Satanist “infiltration” of the military. Washington, D.C. is infested with Satanic symbols designed into the city. Atheists are really satanists. (In)Famous “Documentaries” Geraldo Rivera – Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground (abominable schlock pseudo-journalism all about how satanism and heavy metal were leading to murder, child abuse, animal/human sacrifice, etc.) Key takeaways: The general theme: blaming Satanism for what people do and not the people themselves. Sensationalist schlock pseudo-journalism at its absolute worst. They clearly didn’t think to vet anyone. They bring on a kid who was the youngest person ever on death row, who was convicted of multiple murders. But he’s not alone. They interview him… with a guy who is a self-proclaimed expert on Satanism. According to a review of this man’s book on Amazon, “This book informs that Satanic murders are hidden from the public, digging deeper in other books they tell you “the Elite” are doing this. So I’ve come to the conclusion: your children get kidnapped by the Elite, for ritual, the Police know and are told by their high ups not to tell the public!” According to Geraldo, heavy metal and drugs lead to Satanism, and the Weekly World News and conspiracy theorists are legitimate sources. He talked to parents and therapists involved with the false memory scandal at the McMartin pre-school. The spokesman for the parents said that ? of the children in Manhattan were victims of satanic molestation. They play an interview between Geraldo and Charles Manson. Manson starts talking about how he’s God. Geraldo says “or Satan,” and Manson runs with it. Geraldo pushes the “you think you’re Satan” line a few more times, and Manson rants crazily about Satan and demons. In the voiceover, Geraldo then calls Manson satanic. Ted Gunderson, former head of the regional FBI office in LA, alleged that satanists have a network of very active people with a “rest & relaxation farm”, loose ties to drug trade and motorcycle gangs, and experts in surveillance, photography, and assassination. Gunderson was recently a massive conspiracy theorist. He claimed that the CIA and FBI are behind most terrorist attacks. He also claimed to have proof of the chemtrail conspiracy. He was an apocalyptic nut about Y2K. The first person to say anything that makes sense is Danish metal artist King Diamond: “How much can you influence kids? … I think people are too clever to be influenced by watching a band or listening to an album to go out and do the same. Because if they were that easy to influence, watching the news you get the real thing, and everybody knows that, right into your living room.” Geraldo then says that lyrics which talk about death, graves, and evil are Diamond ‘preaching satanism’. (My insert, link: http://www.mandatory.com/2012/08/07/10-horrific-acts-of-satanic-cults/8) – Erno A guy from the slightly kooky Temple of Set comes across as another one of the only somewhat rational people on the show: “I think that there is some confusion tonight because this same term means something different to Satanists than it does to Christians in the united states. By our own standards, the people who you’ve shown in these films clips would not be Satanists, either present or in the past. Rather, they would be the failures of a conventional religion. … Originally, the Church of Satan, when it was founded, was composed not of people with a hatred for Christianity, but of people who, by and large, were agnostics and atheists because they felt that the institutions which had arisen around Christianity had failed in their moral commitment. So Satanism itself became an emphasis on rational self-interest and on taking responsibility for your own intellectual and ethical decisions.” They blamed cattle mutilations on Satanic rituals. Eyes/ears/tails/internal organs removed – the same sort of thing you hear from UFO people that turns out to just be the result of scavenging. Gary Greenwald and Phil Phillips: Deception of a Generation (all about how toys, comic books, cartoons, and breakfast cereal were occult and evil) Per Rationalwiki: Dr. Gary L. Greenwald is a California-based pastor who strongly promoted the Satanic Panic movement in the 1980’s through a series of videos. Greenwald has made a career in interpreting occult or satanic symbolism in almost everything ever. The video is based on the book Turmoil in the Toybox (1984) by author and guest Phil Phillips. Phil started investigating the toy industry because he walked into a toy store while on a 14-day fast and saw occult symbols. So… he starved himself crazy and then started obsessing. Quotes from Phillips: “There’s a vast movement toward the occult within the cartoon and toy industry. Most people don’t realize it. 80% of all cartoons deal directly with the occult, and 40% of the toys on the market have occultic influence.” He-Man and the Masters of the Universe had “a vast effect on the whole United States and other countries around the world.” “He-Man is being lifted up as a god, and many children are receiving him as such.” He heard of a woman whose young son heard a radio preacher talk about “our lord God, the master of the universe. And her boy jumped from the back seat of the car and said ‘Mommy, God isn’t master of the universe – He-Man is!’” Talks about a boy playing with He-Man toys, running around in a church parking lot saying “He-Man has more power than Jesus!” “We have a good versus evil battle here, but the good is empowered by Satanic power. … Actually, these cartoons are making real what Satan has had for a long time.” Apparently, talking to the dead is called “necromology.” Not necromancy… Regarding Star Wars: “The Force is a word used by witches down through the centuries to describe the power they receive from Satan.” Darth Vader apparently looks almost exactly like Odin. Obi Wan Kenobi: there’s a form of witchcraft called Obi witchcraft where they chant “Obi” over and over again. Yoda was called the Zen master? He’s always seen with serpents around him? “Zen Buddhism says there’s one force in the world and it can be either used for good or evil.” Nope. Just no. E.T. was a camouflaged occult movie including levitation, psychic healing, mind control, mental telepathy, etc. There were inferences to homosexuality. “I think one of the things they tried to do on this movie was make people accept that there’s more Christs than just one. … Maybe Jesus was an alien.” “I was listening to one commentator’s talk about the feelings in Russia, and he said that the Russians were more upset about this new trend in America of the children wearing fatigues and being more militaristically minded than they were about our nuclear arms.” Smurfs are depicted as blue with black lips. When you die, you turn blue and your lips turn black. The smurfs are depicting dead creatures! “The whole storyline is that the smurfs get in trouble. And every time they get in trouble, they run to Papa Smurf who whips up a spell or an incantation to get them out. In fact, he said the name Beelzebub numerous times in the cartoon.” Phil claims Gargamel made a pentagram, lit candles at the points, danced in it and chanted a magical chant, and a spirit left a magic book to enter him and give him the power to levitate. In reality, Gargamel makes a pentagon, hops on one foot, says a phrase that includes “whosy-whatsits” and “31 flavors”, and suddenly finds himself riding an ostrich. “What I’m seeing in Care Bears is almost like they’re setting up their own religion – that children are to tell these Care Bears their problems instead of telling God or their mom and dad. And they’re to depend on their Care Bears to take away all their troubles.” Quotes from Greenwald: “The witchcraft and occult practices are not make-believe. They’re taken from actual witchcraft, actual pagan religions. Levitation, mind control, astral projection, and other forms of witchcraft ceremonies are portrayed within the cartoons.” Regarding D&D: “I have letter after letter where people took the pieces – now, there’s sixes involved in the pieces of the game – but they’d take the pieces of the game, they would throw them in the incinerator or the fireplace, and screams would come out because there seemed to be some kind of spiritual forces inhabiting those pieces.” “Transforming from a man to an animal is a very occultic and new-age concept.” “A parent who allows his child to watch this on television and also brings these toys into the home or buys them for the child is actually breaking a commandment of God and inviting curses upon the family.” Smurfs are an all-male community (wat). Smurfette was magically transformed from a male into a female; she wasn’t born a female (wat). “Now what you’re telling me, then, is that even Smurfs carry a homosexual connotation in that most of them are male.” My Little Pony (they call it ‘My Pony’) has unicorns and pegasus which came from mythology. It also has a satyr which uses evil magic to transform the ponies into dragons. “I can see that we’re actually destroying our children by letting them watch even the innocuous things because they’re all going that direction.” Rainbow Brite cereal box: “The rainbow represents the networking of the new age. And it’s interesting that she has a little five-sided star on her cheek … and it’s upside down … that’s a pentagram again. That’s another New Age and occultic symbol.” They repeatedly talk about the *bad guys* on the show using occult powers, but never mention that they’re the bad guys. They keep trying to connect monsters that are part human, part animal with Egyptian deities. While looking at a toy that is a sort of hand puppet insect with motorized wings that has a figurine riding on its back, Phil brings up the verses from Revelation about flying beasts with riders on them. The host seriously looks like he’s about to start cracking up… G.I. Joe is “occult” because of characters that use martial arts. “Occultic toys” seems to include toy grenades and gum that looks like shrapnel (???). They cannot come to grips with the fact that this is all fantasy. They keep talking about how in D&D, there are white and black witches and wizards, pitting good against evil on equal footing, but “in reality”, God is supremely powerful and evil doesn’t stand a chance. They start by talking about how kids can’t separate fantasy from reality, and they end up demonstrating that they’re incapable of viewing fantasy as just fantasy! Big Names in the Satanic Panic Bob Larson Geraldo (for his idiotic TV special) Gary Greenwald (for his numerous audio and video programs about satanic pop culture – toys, music, movies, games, etc.) Ted Gunderson (for being an all-around gullible fool who believed everything anonymous people told him and used his position as ex-FBI to try to make him seem reliable) Jack Chick (for his fantastically goofy Dark Dungeons tract, the movie version of which is funded to over 200% on Kickstarter) What’s Satan Up To Today? The Satanic Panic is alive and well today, though not nearly as prominent. Alex Jones, for example, is certain that there are still baby-eating Illuminati masterminds plotting the downfall of Christianity and America. For example, speaking of atheists, Jones recently said on his radio show: This is their religion. See, you’ll find at the highest level, the atheists really aren’t atheists at the higher levels. These people write books. They worship Lucifer. And they do. They love death. And I’m just in love with life. And I’m sorry for those who have never experienced it. And they laugh at us, all these unhappy atheists and psychologists and psychiatrists, all out there, talking about how horrible their lives are and their incredible rates of suicide. In recent years, some evangelical Christians have tried to make the Halloween holiday their own… by calling it JesusWeen and using it to spread gospel messages and tracts door to door: Every year, the world and its system have a day set aside (October 31st) to celebrate ungodly images and evil characters while Christians all over the world participate, hide or just stay quiet on Halloween day. Being a day that is widely acceptable to solicit and knock on doors, God inspired us to encourage Christians to use this day as an opportunity to spread the gospel. The days of hiding are over and we choose to take a stand for Jesus. “Evil prevails when good people do nothing”. JesusWeen is expected to become the most effective Christian outreach day ever and that is why we also call it ”World Evangelism Day” http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/18/11755862-thai-police-arrest-man-after-babies-bodies-found-roasted-wrapped-in-gold-leaf?lite WUTs: Ken Ham Challenges Pat Robertson To A Debate On Young Earth Creationism On May 13, Robertson ridiculed Ham’s young-earth creationism on the 700 Club (see 37:50 to 40:56): The truth is, you have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to think that this earth that we live in only has 6,000 years of existence. On May 14, Ham accused Robertson of heresy: Many Christians believe that the world is very old based on fossil records that are presumably dated at millions of years. Indeed the dispute between an old earth and a young earth is hotly debated within the Christian community. Unfortunately, those who subscribe to an old earth theory do not realize the enormity of their compromise. The compromise is that as soon as one allows for an earth millions of years old, then one has accepted death, bloodshed, disease and suffering before Adam’s sin. In other words, the Garden of Eden would have been seated upon a mountain of dead animal bones. This doesn’t sound much like paradise. … Now if the world were millions of years old as suggested by evolutionists, blood was shed and death occurred before Adam’s original sin. This would destroy the foundation of the atonement brought by the death of Christ on the cross. According to 1 Corinthians 15:54, sin and death have been swallowed up in victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the enormity of compromise is revealed. To believe in evolution undermines the entire gospel message of Jesus Christ. All Christians believe that Jesus Christ suffered physical death and shed His blood because death was the penalty for sin. Therefore, teaching millions of years of death, disease and suffering before Adam sinned, is a direct attack on the foundation and message of the Cross. On May 15, he challenged Robertson to a debate, either on the “700 Club” or at Regent University, the school founded by Robertson. I wonder if Pat Robertson would be prepared to discuss these issues with me or one of our AiG scientists on the 700 Club? Or maybe in some sort of debate format at Regent University? We are certainly willing to do that—maybe all of you reading this could challenge CBN/Regent University to allow such a discussion, debate, or forum to occur publicly. I wonder if Pat Robertson, who is allowed to state these things so publicly through CBN will agree to have his statements publicly challenged and tested! McElroy’s take on this: Oh boy. Dumb and Dumber! Ham must’ve burned through his earnings from the debate with Bill Nye. Seems like he’s looking for a new influx of cash. Links and sources: Unformatted notes/additions: The Thinking Atheist: Satanic Panic Satanic Panic – RationalWiki Jack Chick – RationalWiki Bob Larson Daycare scandal(s) D&D, rock music, etc… Videos on YouTube: Hell’s Bells – The Dangers of Rock ‘N’ Roll (1989) part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 Hell’s Bells 2 – The Power and Spirit of Popular Music (from 2004!!) part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 ROCK: It’s Your Decision (1982) full video ‘The Cinema Snob’ review

brains. On this episode, the whole gang gets together to trade brain recipes! Or not. Listen and see. (From May 10, 2014…) Today, we’re going to discuss everyone’s favorite cannibalistic flesh-consuming monstrosity, the zombie! Is there life after undeath? How can I keep up an active social life while avoiding the rampaging zombie hordes and fighting off invading bands of survivors desperate for food and basic necessities? We’ll find out! Or, maybe not. Whatever. Zombie History The origin of the concept of zombiism stems from Haitian Voodoo culture. The word zombie, which is just “zombi” with no ‘e’ in the original Haitian, means “spirit of the dead.” According to Voodoo folklore, a Bokor is a voodoo priest who studied and used black magic, and who can use their knowledge to resurrect the dead. (For more info about the science behind Haitian zombies, we recommend Brian Dunning’s Skeptoid episode on the subject. He breaks down the concept of a toxic powder being used to put people into a catatonic state, and determines exactly what science has to say about it.) In a 2012 essay for The New York Times, Amy Wilentz described zombie lore as an extension of old African religious beliefs that had followed slaves of French-run, pre-independence Haiti. The zombie was essentially a slave trapped in a never ending existence of servitude with no possibility of returning to Africa to rest in peace. Suicide was a common occurrence in slaves who wished to be free of the brutality of near starvation, extreme overwork and cruel discipline on Haitian plantations. Suicide was seen as the only way for a slave to take control over his or her own body. From the essay: “The zombie is a dead person who cannot get across to lan guinée. This final rest — in green, leafy, heavenly Africa, with no sugarcane to cut and no master to appease or serve — is unavailable to the zombie. To become a zombie was the slave’s worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand. It is thought that slave drivers on the plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes Voodoo priests, used this fear of zombification to keep recalcitrant slaves in order and to warn those who were despondent not to go too far.” The more conventional ideas of zombies have sprung from books and films, which we’ll talk more about in a bit. The Feasibility of Real Zombies Plain and simple, once a human body dies and the blood stops pumping, it’s not going to keep working. The muscles need oxygen to function, and with no circulation, they’re not going to get any. Actual undead zombies are fantasy – period. But we can’t let that spoil our fun. Your traditional undead zombies just could not survive for long real life, and they would do a terrible job of spreading their infection. A huge number of factors are working against them – decomposition, natural predators, temperature, terrain, emergency response plans and… well, people with weapons. Duh. Decomposition/Predators If you bury a body in a coffin deep in the ground, it could take as long as 50 years for all of the tissue to disappear. But if a body remains exposed to the elements, it will decay very quickly. Exposure to air or water will speed up the process of decomposition dramatically because of the presence of bacteria. Animals and insects will feed on the tissue if a body is exposed, which also speeds up the process. Flies that land on a corpse will each lay up to 300 eggs on it that will hatch within a day. The maggots that come from the eggs will start on the outside of the body, and within a day’s time, they will have burrowed into the corpse. The maggots, moving as a single mass, will feed on decaying flesh and spread enzymes that speed the decay of the body. They can consume up to 60 percent of a human body in under seven days. Temperature Extreme heat and cold are zombie-killers, too. In extreme cold, the tissues of the body would freeze, just like they would in a living person. This isn’t exactly conducive to a lot of walking around and brain-munching. In extreme heat, the process of decomposition will speed up to the point that, within a short period of time, the zombies wouldn’t have enough functioning muscle tissue to move, let alone gnaw on people. The buildup of gases caused by decomposition would make the zombies swell up and eventually burst as well. Terrain A zombie plague would require a large victim population to sustain itself. If there aren’t many people around, the infected could decay to the point of ‘deactivation’ before they manage to infect a lot of others. So a zombie outbreak would likely be most successful in larger population centers like cities and metropolises. One-stoplight towns are likely going to be okay. But there’s a problem for our brain-chewing friends in the big cities: we’ve designed them with people’s ability to see in mind. Within 24 hours of death, human eyes lose much of their internal pressure. Mr. Zombie is going to have some trouble navigating a city with partially deflated eyes; his vision would be obscured at best and totally useless at worst. Combine this with the fact that their brains are decaying and their sense of balance probably isn’t working, and you’re not going to see a lot of particularly coordinated (or even upright) ghouls. You’d probably be safe if you just went up a few floors into a tall building. Even in smaller population centers, the landscape isn’t exactly suitable for letting blind, brain-damaged corpses wreak havoc. In small towns, there’s generally a much lower population density, which means you’ve got a lot of open space and not so many people. It’d be hard for a horde to form that you couldn’t escape; you’d have to be really unlucky to get overwhelmed in the backwater towns of Michigan, for example, where your nearest neighbor is a quarter mile away and there’s nothing but open fields between you and them. Even if a hundred zombies came trundling across the farm, you could hop in your pickup truck and be on your way without much of a hassle. Maybe you could be in trouble if you didn’t notice them coming, but the odds of something like this not coming up in the news on TV or the radio are pretty slim. Which brings us to… Emergency Response Plans Contrary to what you see in most zombie movies, where everyone panics and makes the dumbest decisions possible, in the real world, people tend to be much more organized and thoughtful in response to emergencies – even emergencies that hit much faster and harder than people might be expecting. The day before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the government issued a mandatory evacuation notice to the citizens. By nightfall, about 80-90% of the citizens had already evacuated safely. Some 112,000 of the city’s 500,000 people didn’t have access to a car; of these, about 10,000 ended up taking shelter in the Superdome, and another 10,000 or so rode the storm out at home. The Coast Guard wound up rescuing 34,000 people, and ordinary citizens organized themselves to provide boats for evacuation, as well as food and shelter for the people they rescued. The response to Hurricane Katrina is generally held up as an example of failed government planning. Nearly 2,000 people died, and New Orleans still hasn’t truly recovered.; 7 years later, in 2012, the population of New Orleans had only just returned to 81% of pre-Katrina levels. However, the situation also shows how well people can respond to a disaster. On a side note, the CDC has a zombie apocalypse survival guide website. They made it as an entertaining way to get people thinking about how they should prepare for and respond to a serious emergency. Guns (or any weapon at all, really) A dead body can’t repair any damage done to it. This sort of goes without saying. So now we can compound a bunch of decaying, near-blind corpses are stumbling around ineffectively, trying to find a single victim in a mostly evacuated area, with the fact that the people who don’t evacuate are most likely armed to defend themselves. Guns, knives, baseball bats, golf clubs, chainsaws – anything humans use to fight off the bumbling undead hordes would leave the monsters permanently damaged. Moreover, any wounds that people open up would add new holes for parasites and bacteria to enter, which would just make the zombies decompose even faster. Weapons could also permanently disable a zombie without even killing it. The whole “aim for the head” thing is kind of redundant; take out a zombies legs, and it’ll have to crawl after you. Considering that these things would be stumbling and tripping all over the place, they might even show you the courtesy of already being on the ground, at which point a swift boot to the head would probably do it in. Other Kinds of Zombies So what if we’re dealing with other kinds of zombies? In some movies, for instance, the zombies are actually just living people who have been infected with some disease or parasite that takes over their brain. In this case, the rules are all different. A horde of ‘infected’ is a much bigger challenge. Predation, decay, temperature, and terrain will be much less of a problem; when it comes to those factors, the infected would be on about equal footing with the uninfected as long as the infection doesn’t damage the brain too severely. Lots of books and movies show packs of infected moving and thinking as a hive-mind as well, which could make things more difficult for people trying to carry out any kind of emergency response plan. And if they’re magical zombies? Well… forget everything we just said. There are no rules. Zombies in Pop Culture Origins Victor Halperin’s White Zombie was released in 1932 and is often cited to be the first zombie film.  In the movie, Bela Lugosi portrays a voodoo priest who falls for a woman and turns her husband into a zombie in an attempt to win her affection. The 1818 novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (and the subsequent countless literary, film, and TV adaptations) features a reanimated rebuilt corpse, but the monster wasn’t what people typically consider a zombie (i.e., no brain-munching). The 1942 film The Living Ghost is another zombie movie with two examples of artificially created zombie characters. The modern man-eating monster came about largely as the creation of George Romero, producer and co-writer of the 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead. Romero reimagined the zombies as mysteriously reanimated dead people who had an insatiable lust for violence and murder. Whereas some previous zombie movies imagined zombies as living people put into a sort of trance to enslave them to their zombifier, Romero explicitly wanted them to be the dead raised back to life. According to Wikipedia: Some critics have seen social commentary in much of Romero’s work. They view Night of the Living Dead as a film made in reaction to the turbulent 1960s, Dawn of the Dead as a satire on consumerism, Day of the Dead as a study of the conflict between science and the military, and Land of the Dead as an examination of class conflict. Whether Romero intended them to work that way or not, I don’t know. Regardless, much  of the sine qua non of modern zombie films came from Romero’s work: the survivors boarding themselves up in a building, a desperate attempt to get access to some sort of resource that would help them survive, tension and infighting among the living, a military/militia response, someone bringing a ‘sick’ person into the safehouse who turns out to be infected, and so on. Prominent Variations Slow zombies: Night of the Living Dead Shaun of the Dead The Walking Dead Resident Evil (the first and second movies) State of Decay (Video game) Fast zombies: World War Z (the movie) Army of Darkness Evil Dead Quarantine/REC Pet Sematary Resident Evil (the other movies) We’re Alive (the podcast) Non-zombies: 28 Days/Weeks Later White Zombie I Am Legend Zombieland (technically just humans with a ‘mad zombie disease’ virus) Left 4 Dead (the game makes a point of saying that they’re infected with a pandemic, not actually dead, and that your characters are immune to the virus) The Last of Us (the ‘zombies’ are people infected by a mutant strain of the Cordyceps fungus, which takes over their body and brain, changing how they look and behave) Magic zombies: Weekend at Bernie’s 2 (resurrected by voodoo) Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament (first-person comedic romance novel about a man who finds himself reanimated after a car accident. They say it’s some sort of genetic anomaly that makes people reanimate, but this is clearly a ‘magic zombie’ situation – people are up and moving around without a functioning circulatory system, as they continue to rot like any corpse. Eating human flesh allows them to slowly return to life – moving faster, healing wounds, etc.) Nazi zombies: Zombies of War Oasis of the Zombies Shock Waves Zombie Lake War of the Dead Dead Snow Call of Duty DLC Wolfenstein Survival Plans So let’s dispense with the realism for a bit and have some fun with zombie apocalypse planning, shall we? It bears noting that when drawing up your zombie contingency plan, you would be wise to bear in mind that you don’t know for certain what manner of zombie you’re dealing with. (i.e. Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, etc) With that in mind, an adaptable plan that best fits the most common elements of all manner of zombie infestation is likely the best. One could of course just run with what they consider the most likely though. I’d like to note that I’m of the idea that in a zombie apocalypse, you’re basically just fighting the clock and that you’re going to lose eventually. Survival for another hour/day/week/month/year is the goal in itself. Groups vs. Solitude: Let’s discuss the benefits/risks of banding together versus going it alone. Equipment: Now we should discuss a list of items that would be both useful and possibly easily transportable (if one were on the go). Location (static vs roaming): Which is a better strategy for long term survival? Is it a fortified survival palace, or a nomadic and sparse existence? … discuss Transportation A huge fortified truck? A fast yet exposed motorcycle? A bicycle? Your own two feet? Let’s talk for a few minutes about what would likely be the best mode of transportation. Foodstuffs: MREs? Foraging and hunting? Farming? How will you feed yourself when Zeek the Zombie is looking to fill up on your brains? Weapons: Loud, attention grabbing guns? Less noisy projectiles? Up close and personal with a blade or bludgeoning implement? How can one be best prepared to confront the menace of corpses who don’t realize they’re supposed to stay dead? 25 Things You Need to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse WUTs: The Zombie Ant and the Fungus That Controls Its Mind There’s a fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis which attaches itself after its spore falls upon an unsuspecting ant. This spore builds pressure until it’s enough to punch through the ant’s exoskeleton, then begins the infestation. Via chemical manipulation it directs the infested ant to a very precise point in the forest. The ants “are manipulated to bite onto very specific locations on the underside of a leaf, the main vein of a leaf, leaves orientated north, northwest, roughly 25 cm off the ground,” said David Hughes, a behavioral ecologist at Penn State. “And all of this happens with a remarkable precision around solar noon, making this one of the most complex examples of parasite manipulation of host behavior.” Once the ant attaches to the leaf, it perishes and a stalk erupts from the back of its head. This stalk then rains down spores upon the now deceased ant’s fellow workers, beginning the process over again. “Zombie” Roaches Lose Free Will Due to Wasp Venom (this was mentioned in the Parasites episode of Radiolab) The Emerald Cockroach Wasp or Jewel Wasp injects its venom initially into a thoracic ganglion and injects venom to mildly and reversibly paralyse the front legs of its victim. The roach, now being temporarily immobilized is then stung in a precise spot on its brain, in the section that controls the escape reflex. As a result, the roach will groom extensively, and then become sluggish and fail to show normal escape responses.  The wasp then chews off half of each of the roach’s antennae. The wasp then leads the roach to its burrow by pulling on the antennae, lays an egg on the roach’s abdomen, then blocks the entrance of the burrow with pebbles, more to keep predators out than the roach in. With its escape reflex now inhibited, the roach just lays about while the larva chews its way into the roach’s abdomen, feeds on the internal organs and emerges VICTORIOUS! … or something. What are our favorite zombie stories? McElroy: For books, Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy. Really quite brilliant stuff. Also, Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament is great. For movies, Shaun of the Dead. Links and sources: The Haitian Zombies – Skeptoid HowStuffWorks: How long does it take a dead body to decompose? HowStuffWorks: How a Body Farm Works Hurricane Katrina – History Channel New Orleans reached 81 percent of pre-Katrina population in 2012, Census figures show (New Orleans Times-Picayune) Wikipedia: George A. Romero Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse (CDC) A Zombie Is a Slave Forever

SPOOPY On this episode, Jon, Erno, and the Mikes discussed some really terrifying ways to meet your demise. Fun topic, no? Show notes: Radiation: – Radiation poisoning sounds nice and terrifying. Although rare, it’s a particularly nasty way to go. A bit more info on what radiation poisoning does to you?  Early symptoms of ‘treatable’ radiation sickness are usually nausea and vomiting. The severe exposure symptoms are: Nausea and vomiting within minutes. Diarrhea Headache Fever Dizziness and disorientation weakness, fatigue hair loss bloody vomit and stools infections poor wound healing low blood pressure glowing pee ( I’m just guessing on this one ) Treatments for radiation sickness include: Potassium iodide. This is a nonradioactive form of iodine. Because iodine is essential for proper thyroid function, the thyroid becomes a “destination” for iodine in the body. If you have internal contamination with radioactive iodine (radioiodine), your thyroid will absorb radioiodine just as it would other forms of iodine. Treatment with potassium iodide may fill “vacancies” in the thyroid and prevent absorption of radioiodine. The radioiodine is eventually cleared from the body in urine. Potassium iodide isn’t a cure-all and is most effective if taken within a day of exposure. Prussian blue. This type of dye binds to particles of radioactive elements known as cesium and thallium. The radioactive particles are then excreted in feces. This treatment speeds up the elimination of the radioactive particles and reduces the amount of radiation cells may absorb. Diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA). This substance binds to metals. DTPA binds to particles of the radioactive elements plutonium, americium and curium. The radioactive particles pass out of the body in urine, thereby reducing the amount of radiation absorbed. A famous case of radiation poisoning in history was the Radium Girls. Female factory workers who painted watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey, around 1917. The workers were told that the paint was harmless and ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to keep the points fine for detailed painting. Some even painted their nails and teeth with the glowing paint. The company hired around 70 women to perform a variety of tasks associated with handling the radium, while the company scientists and owners who were familiar with the effects of radium were careful to avoid exposure. Plant chemists used tongs, masks and lead screens when interacting with the radium. US Radium had even distributed literature to the medical community describing the dangerous nature of radium. The Radium Girls suffered from anemia, bone fractures and necrosis of the jaw. The company faked at least one medical examination in order to discredit claims of radiation poisoning. For a while doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from US Radium and other watch-dial companies to withhold data detailing the radiation sickness. At the behest of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes. Often Syphilis was cited as a convenient way to smear the reputations of the women. MM: There actually used to be a whole cottage alt-med industry around radiation. People used to think that by lacing water with radon or radium, it’d become some sort of miraculous cure-all. But from what I can tell, what it typically cured people of was not having cancer. In the case of the fantastically-named Eben McBurney Byers (April 12, 1880 – March 31, 1932), who drank more than 1400 bottles of ‘Radithor’ (a patent medicine containing high concentrations of radium) over a period of three years at the recommendation of his doctor for a complaint of persistent pain after he fell from a bed on a train, his bones were so badly weakened that they had to remove most of his jaw. His brain was abscessed, and there were holes forming in his skull. He died of radium poisoning – no surprise there – and they had to bury him in a lead-lined coffin. But it could still be worse. You could be Cecil Kelley, a chemical operator at the Los Alamos plutonium-processing facility. On December 30, 1958, he was working with a mixing tank that contained plutonium-laced water. Normally, there was supposed to be less than 0.1g of plutonium per liter of water, but for some reason, the concentration that day was 200 times higher. When Kelley turned on the stirrer, the water formed a vortex, with the plutonium separating out into a layer that went critical and released a huge burst of neutrons and gamma radiation. The burst lasted just 200 microseconds, but Kelley, who had been viewing the contents of the tank through a viewing window, fell off his foot ladder in shock. The people who found him heard him shouting incoherently; the only thing they could understand was “I’m burning up!” over and over again. They rushed him to the hospital, semiconscious, retching, vomiting, and hyperventilating. At the hospital, Kelly’s bodily excretions were sufficiently radioactive to give a positive reading on a detector. Two hours after the accident, Kelley’s condition improved as he regained coherence. However, it was soon clear that Kelley would not survive long. Tests showed his bone marrow was destroyed, and the pain in his abdomen became difficult to control despite medication. He died 35 hours after the accident. At least radiation poisoning is relatively uncommon. There’s some pretty bad things out there that could spread pretty quickly if we can’t get a handle on them – and it’s partially our fault that they exist in the first place. Of course, I’m talking about super bugs – diseases and pathogens that, as a result of mutation, have gained antibiotic resistance or other defense and infection mechanisms that make them extremely hard to handle. Super Bugs: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which 72 hours after infection can substantially take hold in human tissues and become resistant to treatment. Beginning as small red bumps that resemble pimples, spider bites, or boils: they can be accompanied by fever and occasionally, rashes. Over the course of a few days the bumps become larger and more painful; they eventually open into deep, pus-filled boils. MRSA infections can spread, infecting vital organs and lead to widespread infection, toxic shock syndrome, and necrotizing pneumonia (the dreaded flesh-eating virus that you may be somewhat familiar with). Super Gonorrhea!! (sounds …. super?) A sexually transmitted bacterial infection, Gonorrhea can cause symptoms such as: A burning sensation during urination (m/f) A white, yellow, or green discharge from the penis Painful or swollen testicles (less common) Increased vaginal discharge (probably not in men… probably) Vaginal bleeding between periods For men and women: rectal discharge, itching, soreness, bleeding and painful bowel movements. Long-term symptoms? Scar tissue that blocks the fallopian tubes Ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the womb – someone needs to explain this to me because WTF!) Infertility Long-term abdominal/pelvic pain Pain in the tubes attached to the testicles Sterility (more rare) Increased risk of HIV/AIDS Can also spread to your blood or joints, which is a life-threatening infection at that point. Staphylococcus aureus (commonly known as Staph infection). A tissue destroying infection that can cause a frighteningly wide array of complications. Streptococcus and Enterococcus: More tissue destroying infections that will fuck your shit up and is often treated by removing large amounts of tissue (or even limbs) to prevent its spread. Clostridium difficile: a pathogen that causes widespread DIARRHEAL DISEASE in hospitals worldwide. Poop yourself and neighbors to death?? Salmonella and E. Coli … Cook your fucking food, people. Mycobacterium tuberculosis: increasing around the globe, especially in developing countries, over the past few years. Symptoms include: chronic cough blood-tinged sputim (spit) fever night sweats weight loss Poisoning: – The Iceman and Cyanide (Richard Kuklinski): Cyanide poisoning is a form of histotoxic hypoxia because the cells of an organism are unable to use oxygen. Inhalation, ingestion, absorption through the skin, injection, etc.. Richard Kuklinski is a somewhat well known killer who favored Cyanide for killing his victims. He would either spike the victim’s food, like a hamburger, spill it on someone in a crowded bar (pretending to be intoxicated), or fake a sneeze and spray it in the person’s face. Defenestration: Simply put, this is being thrown from a window. Although I’ll group in just being thrown from any position of high altitude… Some examples in history? The year is 1203 -King John’s nephew, Arthur of Brittany, by King John himself from the castle at Rouen, France. 1383 – Bishop Dom Martiño was defenstrated by the citizens of Lisbon, Portugal. He was suspected of conspiring with the Castilians who had besieged Lisbon. On June 27, 1844, an armed mob with blackened faces stormed Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were being held. Hyrum, who was trying to secure the door, was killed instantly with a shot to the face. Smith fired a pepper-box pistol, then sprang for the window. He was shot multiple times before falling out the window, crying, “Oh Lord my God!” He died shortly after hitting the ground, but was shot several times more before the mob dispersed. On June 11, 1903, a group of Serbian army officers murdered and defenestrated King Alexander and Queen Draga. In 1911, during the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (I recommend the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode on this), numerous people died after leaping from or falling out of windows. On this note, FIRE is a terrible way to die. In 1977, as a result of political backlash against his album Zombie, Fela Kuti’s mother was thrown from a window during a military raid on his compound, the Kalakuta Republic by 1,000 Nigerian soldiers. The injuries sustained from the fall led to her death days later. In addition, the commanding officer defecated on her head, while the soldiers burned down the compound, destroying his musical equipment, studio and master tapes, and jailing him for being a subversive. 1993 – Toronto lawyer Garry Hoy fell to his death after attempting to demonstrate the strength of his office tower’s windows. Within the last year I read a story about a couple who were having sex against the window of their high rise apartment (in China, I think), when the window gave way and they fell to their deaths. QUICK HITS Religious Sacrifice/martyrdom Plane Crash Maule by a bear/tiger Torture Death by Rape Grain Silo Industrial accidents Drowning – MM: I’m just terrified of this. I’ve had lots of nightmares where I’ve drowned. WUTs: Oklahoma Satanic Monument update – MM A satanic group commissioned a statue of the devil, raising money to pay a sculptor who it won’t identify, as a way of protesting the Sooner State’s placement of a Ten Commandments monument on the Statehouse lawn in Oklahoma City. The statue, being sculpted in a New York studio, is nearly complete, according to Lucien Greaves, spokesman for the Satanic Temple. “We’re really coming along fast,” said Greaves, whose group claims to have raised more than $20,000 for the project through an online crowd-funding site. The statue of the Baphomet, or Sabbatic Goat, a figure that has been used to represent Satan for centuries, is to be made of bronze, poured over a clay mold. Images provided to FoxNews.com show the hideous figure on a throne, with smiling children at each knee. Greaves’ organization seeks to force Oklahoma to allow placement of their statue or demonstrate what it considers an unconstitutional double standard. “There will never be a satanic monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol and the suggestion that there might be is absurd,” Alex Weintz, spokesman for Gov. Mary Fallin, said in a statement to FoxNews.com. A Hindu leader in Nevada wants to put a monument at the Capitol, along with an animal rights group and the — satirical — Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In response, the Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission has put a moratorium on deciding new requests. Links and Attributions: Mayo Clinic – Radiation Sickness Wikipedia – Radium Girls Stuff You Missed In History Class – The Radium Girls Listverse – 10 Famous Incidences of Death By Radiation Wikipedia – Antibiotic Resistance Wikipedia – MRSA Mayo Clinic – MRSA Infection CDC – Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea CDC – STD Facts: Gonorrhea

Hi, folks. We want to give a shout-out to the folks over at the Brainstorm Podcast, who have been running a fundraiser recently to support mental health services in Canada. In basically every single part of the developed world, mental health care is still far worse than it could be. A significant portion of the population of Canada is affected by this, including both the sufferers of mental illnesses and their families and friends. So Cory and his fellow co-hosts wanted to bring some attention, and a little cash, to the issue. If you want to help out, go to TeeSpring.com/BrainstormAndMentalHealth. You can pick up a sweet Brainstorm Podcast tee shirt, complete with the electrified brain logo and the slogan “woo free since 2013” on the front, and the logo of the Canadian Mental Health Association on the back. They’re pretty sweet. I’ve already snagged one for myself. The profits from the sales of the shirts will be used as a donation to the CMHA. For the low low price of $22.50 – American, by the way; none of this Canadian play money bullshit – you can get yourself or a loved one a shirt that shows everyone that you’re both smart enough to listen to good podcasts and compassionate enough to care about mental health. They’re sized from small to 3XL, so they’ll even fit your gross, sweaty body. On November 22, Kevin Huber from the Regina Branch of the CMHA will join Cory in the Brainstorm studio to talk about the state of mental health care in Canada. The guys will also be joined by Chris Real, a local musician who suffers from depression, regular panel member Mike, and guest Heidi Smithson who has an education in psychology and will bring her expertise to bear. The campaign ends November 17, so hurry out and get your shirt before it’s too late. As of this posting, they’ve sold 23 shirts toward their goal of 50. Cory has 3 free shirts left to give away to anyone who shares a link to the Teespring page with their friends – all you have to do is send a screenshot of where you shared it to mail@brainstormblog.net! Don’t forget to check out the Brainstorm Podcast on the web at brainstormblog.net, on Twitter as @Brainstormpod, at Facebook.com/Brainstormpodcast, or on iTunes or Stitcher.

On September 17, 2014, Jon and McElroy sat down over drinks to talk about some of the feedback we’ve received. We promise we didn’t write it all ourselves! P.S. – if your name is Wade Kaardal or Brian Koppi, we owe you a prize for sending in feedback. Send your contact info to feedback@irreverentskeptics.com and we’ll hook you up!

As mentioned in the last post, this show actually came before episode 18. But that doesn’t matter. Time is all wibbly-wobbly anyway. In this episode: McElroy reviews “God’s Not Dead” (here’s the Reasonable Doubts episode about it, too) Erno talks about woo he discovered walking around his town in Finland Bohler talks about the stuff he’s been researching, especially the history of civilization and how quacks cherry-pick evidence We discuss the Burzynski Clinic and its record of failure and pseudoscience No show notes this time – we were just winging it! YUM.

We’re switching the order of things up a bit. On April 19 and April 26, 2014, we did two ‘potpourri’ episodes, where we all came up with our own topics to talk about centered around a vague general subject. In the first episode… which was actually the second episode… after a quick discussion of how the internet might be able to give you PTSD, we talked about science stories we found fascinating. McElroy talked about the Higgs boson, and how it gives things mass. Bohler talked about South American civilizations and why the Ancient Aliens people are assholes. Jon talked about the concept of emergence, and how it has broad applications in many fields. And then… McElroy pretended to be a presuppositionalist apologist, and pissed Jon off immensely. Check out the full show notes! Two notes: Yes, sadly, the Colton Burpo twitter feed turned out to be a parody. And no, the next won’t be about scary ways to die… the next show will actually be the April 19 show. You have one more episode in the meantime before we scare you to death! YES PLEASE I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW MORE On today’s show: A brief discussion of the brou ha ha about Melody Hensley, feminism, PTSD, misogynists, and stuff from both sides of the argument(s). McElroy: the Higgs boson and how it explains how particles have mass. The Higgs boson is a particle that, according to the Standard Model, should be generated as a byproduct of the collision of certain kinds of energetic particles. We can’t actually measure or detect the Higgs itself, because it decays way too quickly, but there are certain predicted ‘daughter particles’ (that is, remnants of its decay) that would indicate it was there. Collisions at the LHC produced the expected daughter particles in ratios that gave them 2,000,000-to-1 odds of being the product of the Higgs. As of early 2013, at least two independent teams had confirmed the results. The near-certain confirmation of the Higgs boson supports the idea of the Higgs field. Exactly what it is I don’t know, but the way I’ve seen it described is that it’s a field that permeates the universe (as a product of the Big Bang) that gives mass to particles. As particles with different properties move within the Higgs field, the field acts upon them to impart different masses upon them, much the same way that different wavelengths of light within a beam of white light will refract at different angles in a prism and thus separate out into different colors. The Higgs field is the prism, the particles are the wavelengths of light, and the masses are their colors. This concept is called ‘symmetry breaking’ and is part of the explanation of why seemingly similar (but slightly different) particles behave quite differently. The Higgs field is the first known example of a group of fields known as scalar fields. This kind of field was previously mostly a matter of speculation – a field xinvolving particles which, unlike all known kinds of particles, are neither force-carrying particles or particles with mass. The existence of the Higgs field is evidence that other such scalar fields may exist throughout nature, and some physicists have speculated that complicated concepts like the mysterious ‘dark energy’ (which is involved in the expansion of the universe) might be explained in similar ways. Others speculate that they may be able to investigate the Higgs field and related concepts to determine the nature of the universe prior to the Big Bang, and to explain how the fundamental forces of the universe – gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces – came to be the way they are. Bohler: Archaeology and South America vs. Ancient Aliens JonO: Emergence! – So I’m going to talk about this now before I read a book or two on the subject and probably have to come back and amend what I say here. There was an episode of Radiolab years ago on the subject of emergence. I highly highly recommend that you listen to it. It’s one I’ve discussed with many people, to varying degrees of interest/receptivity, and a subject which I’ve never lost my interest in. So the idea of emergence is kind of “order from chaos”. You take a multiplicity of simple systems, actions and interactions, then can see a complex yet “organized” (finger quotes) system emerge from them as a whole. In the 1875 collection of works on philosophy known as The Problems of Life and Mind, the term “emergent” was coined by G.H. Lewes, who wrote: from wikipedia: “Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same — their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogenous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference.” Ant colonies: ants seem to act in a random manner individually, yet as a whole they create massive (sometimes many miles long and interconnected) colonies. They can tackle massive tasks as a whole and appear to be very organized. However when you watch an individual ant, it can appear to be confused (or just dumb) and acting in a very unproductive manner. Biology: from wikipedia: Biology can be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of chemistry which, in turn, can be viewed as an emergent property of particle physics. Psychology: Similarly, psychology could be understood as an emergent property of neurobiological dynamics, and free-market theories understand economy as an emergent feature of psychology Natural emergent structures: Examples include coral reefs, bee hives, termite mounds, ice crystals/snowflakes… McElroy play Jesus’ advocate! I’ll give a brief intro to presuppositional apologetics, and we can do the little ‘debate’ thing as more of a demonstration than an actual debate. It’s really not much of a debating strategy anyway so much as a ‘nuclear option’ for making debate futile. More info, straight from a presuppositionalist website. The TL;DR is Romans 1:18-25,28-32: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Feedback At Last!!: I want to take a moment to discuss the heaps of feedback we’ve had on irreverentskeptics.com recently. w00t w00t!! … sorta WUTs: John Paul II crucifix crushes man in northern Italy A 21-year old man has died after being crushed by a crucifix erected in honour of Pope John Paul II in northern Italy. Marco Gusmini was killed instantly and one other man taken to hospital, Italian media reported. Part of the 30m-high (100ft) sculpture collapsed at a ceremony ahead of the Pope’s canonisation. John Paul II and his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, are due to be declared saints on Sunday. The “Heaven Is For Real” kid has a twitter feed, and it is glorious. @TheColtonBurpo Although I’m suspicious of it because of tweets like these: “Jesus smelled amazing.” “God asked me if I wanted my human body back or to be a bird and I said human.” “Since I came back, Dad stares right through me.” “In heaven if you take a slice of pizza it grows back.” “In heaven anyone can dunk.” “I knew karate in heaven.” “Heaven has every cereal.” 12:12 PM – 22 Apr 2014 – “I know how the world ends.” WAT Also, Colton Burpo is now 15 years old. This seems like a person pulling a prank without realizing how old the kid is. Mike Bohler’s quote of the day: “American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.” – Edgar R Murrow

On April 12, 2014, we talked about SPOOKY GHOSTS! McElroy related his experiences on a ghost hunt and in a seance, Bohler talked about the tools of the trade, Jon described some of the “world’s most haunted places,” and more. Take a listen! Also check out the outtake for this episode… we had a bit of a false start. No, seriously. Ghosts. Show notes: What the effen hades IS a ghost?: Essentially a disembodied spirit of a deceased person or animal. Manifesting themselves as orbs, vortexes, invisible presences, transparent forms, physical forms and … other stuff, I guess. Ghosts are often “noticed” by someone who has had an association with the spirit in its living state. Ghosts in more popular stories seem to retain some characteristics of their past life. Replaying scenes or performing tasks that were associated with them. Evidence of Ghosts: Pictures: THE BROWN LADY GHOST PIC “This portrait of “The Brown Lady” ghost is arguably the most famous and well-regarded ghost photograph ever taken. The ghost is thought to be that of Lady Dorothy Townshend, wife of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount of Raynham, residents of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England in the early 1700s. It was rumored that Dorothy, before her marriage to Charles, had been the mistress of Lord Wharton. Charles suspected Dorothy of infidelity. Although according to legal records she died and was buried in 1726, it was suspected that the funeral was a sham and that Charles had locked his wife away in a remote corner of the house until her death many years later. Dorothy’s ghost is said to haunt the oak staircase and other areas of Raynham Hall. In the early 1800s, King George IV, while staying at Raynham, saw the figure of a woman in a brown dress standing beside his bed. She was seen again standing in the hall in 1835 by Colonel Loftus, who was visiting for the Christmas holidays. He saw her again a week later and described her as wearing a brown satin dress, her skin glowing with a pale luminescence. It also seemed to him that her eyes had been gouged out. A few years later, Captain Frederick Marryat and two friends saw “the Brown Lady” gliding along an upstairs hallway, carrying a lantern. As she passed, Marryat said, she grinned at the men in a “diabolical manner.” Marryat fired a pistol at the apparition, but the bullet simply passed through.This famous photo was taken in September, 1936 by Captain Provand and Indre Shira, two photographers who were assigned to photograph Raynham Hall for Country Life magazine. This is what happened, according to Shira:  “Captain Provand took one photograph while I flashed the light. He was focusing for another exposure; I was standing by his side just behind the camera with the flashlight pistol in my hand, looking directly up the staircase. All at once I detected an ethereal veiled form coming slowly down the stairs. Rather excitedly, I called out sharply: ‘Quick, quick, there’s something.’ I pressed the trigger of the flashlight pistol. After the flash and on closing the shutter, Captain Provand removed the focusing cloth from his head and turning to me said: ‘What’s all the excitement about?'” Upon developing the film, the image of The Brown Lady ghost was seen for the first time. It was published in the December 16, 1936 issue of Country Life. The ghost has been seen occasionally since.”   Ghoststudy.com Image of Family in the Yard, Ghost in the Background “Family Activity Attracts Ghost” (according to ghoststudy.com) “”Not sure if this is a ghost by the cage but it sure gave us a fright when we saw the photo! The picture was taken last summer on August 2nd, 2013.  The little girl standing on the trampoline is my daughter and the little boy running near the ghostly figure is my son.  Could our yard be haunted? Any help you can offer would be much appreciated.”   Ghost Hunting, you say?: (it bears noting that the show is called Ghosthunters, not Ghostfinders) Recommended watching – Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Season 3 Episode 10 “Ghost Busters”. With appearances by Nobel prize winning physicist, Dr. Frank Wilczek and Dr. Steven Novella, who is a clinical neurologist, assistant professor at Yale University School of Medicine, co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society, columnist for the New Haven Advocate, a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, author of the Neurologica blog, and the host/organizer of the ever famous Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast. Holy fuck is that guy busy!!   Some spooooky haunted places: Traverse City State Hospital. Traverse City, MI. Eastern State Penitentiary – Philadelphia, PA. Waverly Hills Sanitorium – Louisville, KY Tower of London (obviously) Island of the Dolls – Xochimilco, Mexico Old Changi Hospital – Changi, Singapore   WUTs: Polish Priest Warns of the Satanic Influence of Legos A Polish priest has warned parents to be on their guard against Lego, warning the plastic blocks are a tool of Satan and can “destroy” children’s souls. In a presentation aimed at parents, Father Slawomir Kostrzewa said the popular Danish toy company had taken a lurch to the dark side with its series of Monster Fighters and Zombie mini-figures, and that they “were about darkness and the world of death”. The slideshow also speaks of the evil of Disney’s “Gay Days,” the “satanic band KISS”, and new plans for expanded and improved sex education in Polish schools. “Friendly fellows have been replaced by dark monsters,” he explained. “These toys can have a negative effect on children. They can destroy their souls and lead them to the dark side.” The priest also cited research by New Zealand’s University of Canterbury that found the facial expressions of Lego figures have also become angrier over the years, and that this compounded their evil potential. “Facial expressions may be lead to confusion between good and evil,” said Father Kostrzewa. “It appears the good suffer in battle and the ‘villains’ have a face showing satisfaction with their evil deeds.” But the claims that Lego blocks are becoming the work of the devil was dismissed by at least one expert. Father Kostrzewa’s attack on Lego is not the first time he has accused toys of harbouring evil. Hello Kitty and My Little Pony have also come under his scrutiny, with the latter being described as a “carrier of death”. First English source – Telegraph article, dated April 1 (so I thought it was a joke) Polish tabloid source, dated March 25 Original source: the priest’s crazy presentation on a Polish Catholic blog, dated June 20, 2013   rPope asks forgiveness for ‘evil’ of child abuse by priests: From Reuters…   Pakistani 9 month-old baby charged with attempted murder: During protests of gas cuts and price hikes, people stoned police and gas company employees while attempting to collect on bills due. Baby Musa Khan appeared in court in the city of Lahore, along with his father and grandfather who were also charged. The baby apparently was charged because an assistant sub-inspector complained in a crime report that Musa’s whole family beat him up and injured his head. It bears noting that the case against the child was very quickly thrown out of court. The relatives have expressed concern of facing reprisals from the police and “land mafia” who originally brought the charges against them.   Links and Attributions Understanding The Different Types of Ghosts Ghost – Wikipedia  

On March 29, 2014, the gang talked about dieting – fad diets, diets that work, diets that could kill you, and so on. We also talked about what actually worked for all of us and why some diets just aren’t up to snuff. Read on for the show notes! We also have a couple of outtakes: here’s the first and here’s the second. For best results, never eat this. Today we’re going to talk about fad diets. People all over the world have been trying for ages to find easy ways to lose weight and get fit, which has led to the development of a huge number of often bizarre and sometimes potentially dangerous diet ideas. But do any of them actually work? We’ll discuss just a small number of the more popular fad diets and see if there’s any merit to them. So what is dieting, really? Dieting is any change in behavior and food consumption that you undertake to have a desired effect such as weight loss or improved heart/liver/etc. function. Most people diet to lose weight. But there are drawbacks to losing too much weight too quickly, and unless the diet is designed to be maintained long-term, you’re likely to gain the weight back when you go off the diet. Fad Diets: Paleo The paleolithic diet is a modern nutritional plan based on the presumed diet of Paleolithic humans. It is based on the premise that human genetics have scarcely changed since the dawn of agriculture, which marked the end of the Paleolithic era, around 15,000 years ago, and that modern humans are adapted to the diet of the Paleolithic period. The Paleolithic diet consists mainly of fish, grass-fed pasture raised meats, eggs, vegetables, fruit, fungi, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, potatoes, refined salt, refined sugar, and processed oils. Certain portions should be established for balance of nutrients to maintain homeostasis. Proponents argue that modern human populations subsisting on traditional diets, allegedly similar to those of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, are largely free of diseases of affluence and that Paleolithic diets in humans have shown improved health outcomes relative to other widely-recommended diets. The paleolithic diet is a controversial topic among dietitians and anthropologists. An article on the website of the National Health Service of the United Kingdom Choices refers to it as a fad diet. The Paleolithic diet is also known as the “paleo diet”, “paleodiet”, “caveman diet”, “Stone Age diet”, and “hunter-gatherer diet”. The Werewolf Diet – aka The Lunar Diet or The Moon Diet The basic idea of this diet is to drink water, fruit or vegetable juice (fresh squeezed) for a 24 hour period when the moon is full. An extended version of this plan tailors the diet around phases of the moon. Time and amounts of food eaten will vary by the moon’s current phase. from moonconnection.com: “Human knowledge throughout time have spoken of the moon’s effect on the earth and the human body. The moon’s gravitational pull dictates the action of the ocean’s tides. A woman’s menstrual cycle runs in parallel to the cycle of the moon. Some believe the moon affects the emotions – for example, the full moon stimulates aggressive behavior.” (which is utterly bullshit) “In addition, the moon can affect the water contained in the human body. The human body is 60% water. When the moon reaches its full phase and new phase, its gravitational pull combines with the sun for the greatest gravitational effect. This period of increased effect lasts about 24 hours.” HCG – Human Chorionic Gonadotropin The “crazy” or “icky” factor of this diet is that you are injected with or ingest pills of a hormone (hCG) of pregnant women. The real mechanism of weight loss in this case is that one eats no more than 500 calories per day. Considering that the average American adult eats an average of around 2500 calories per day, this is going to be a shocking change and one that would be impossible to maintain indefinitely. hCG is only approved for treatment of infertility and there is a lack of evidence that injecting one’s self with hCG is a viable long-term weight-loss solution. Vegan (can certainly be undertaken as a fad diet) (To the detriment of babies and kittens alike) A diet where no animal products are consumed. So honey, eggs, milk, cheese, etc are foregone in this case. There are a number of plant-based diets that are similar. Raw Food This is the practice of eating only uncooked and unprocessed foods. Types of foods eaten can include: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs, fish, beef and unpasteurized dairy products. I saw cheeses and yogurts included in the list, but wonder how that is justified under the non-processed bit. Developed in the 1890s by Dr. Maximilian Bircher-Benner of Switzerland, inventor of muesli. Popularized somewhat in 1984 by Leslie Kenton’s book “Raw Energy – Eat Your Way to Radian [or degree] Health”. It cited examples of the diets of long-lived Hunza people, in Northern Pakistan, as proof of the benefits of a raw food diet. Blood Type [McElroy] – this one is especially bullshitty and pseudoscientific. I had no idea. Per Wiki: The blood type diet is a nutritional diet advocated by Peter J. D’Adamo, outlined in his book Eat Right 4 Your Type. D’Adamo claims that ABO blood type is the most important factor in determining a healthy diet and recommends distinct diets for each blood type. Throughout his books, D’Adamo cites the works of biochemists and glycobiologists who have researched blood groups, claiming or implying that their research supports this theory. The consensus among dietitians, physicians, and scientists is that the theory is unsupported by scientific evidence. D’Adamo’s premise is that blood type is key to the human body’s ability to differentiate self from non-self. Lectins in foods, he asserts, react differently with each ABO blood type and, to a lesser extent, with an individual’s secretor status. (Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins that perform recognition on the cellular and molecular level and play numerous roles in biological recognition phenomena involving cells, carbohydrates, and proteins. Blood group O is described by D’Adamo as the hunter. He recommends that those of this blood group eat a higher protein diet. The group is alleged by D’Adamo to be the first blood type and to have originated 30,000 years ago, although research indicates that blood type A is actually the oldest. Blood group A is called the agrarian or cultivator by D’Adamo, who believes this type dates from the dawn of agriculture, 20,000 years ago. He recommends that individuals of blood group A eat a diet that emphasizes vegetables and is free of red meat, a diet more closely vegetarian. Blood group B is called the nomad by D’Adamo, who estimates this group to have arrived 10,000 years ago. He states that this type is associated with a strong immune system and a flexible digestive system. He also asserts that people of blood type B are the only people able to thrive on dairy products; this is contradicted by the fact that while people with blood type B tend to be from Asia (specifically, China or India), lactose intolerance is most common among people of Asian, South American, and African descent and least common among those descended from northern Europe or northwestern India. Blood group AB is described by D’Adamo as the enigma, and believes it to be the most recently evolved type and to have arrived less than 1,000 years ago. In terms of dietary needs, he treats this group as an intermediate between blood types A and B. The blood type diet has met with criticisms for many different reasons. D’Adamo responds to several of these on his website. A 2013 scientific review by the Centre for Evidence-Based Practice of the Belgian Red Cross, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, concludes that no scientific evidence exists to support the blood type diet theory and calls for properly designed scientific studies to address it: “No evidence currently exists to validate the purported health benefits of blood type diets. To validate these claims, studies are required that compare the health outcomes between participants adhering to a particular blood type diet (experimental group) and participants continuing a standard diet (control group) within a particular blood type population.” Criticisms of D’Adamo’s research include: Consistently providing inadequate evidence – his first book had no references, only a bibliography, and in subsequent books, his specific process and reasons for reaching his classification conclusions remain undocumented. Restricting the complex processes of the human body to just four limiting stereotypes is basically a kind of “blood type astrology”. There is a lack of scientific evidence supporting the asserted associations between disease states and ABO blood types. D’Adamo has published no peer-reviewed articles with data to support his claims. For example, his claim that elderberry can be used as a remedy for the common flu lacks scientific evidence and may be misleading. D’Adamo claims many ABO specific lectins exist in foods. This claim is unsubstantiated by established biochemical research, which has found no differences in the reactions of lectins with human ABO types. Research shows that, with rare exceptions, lectins specific to a particular ABO type are generally not found in foods and that lectins with ABO specificity are more frequently found in non-food plants or animals. While D’Adamo’s theory refers to lectins in food that react to specific ABO blood types, he cites a study by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition to support his claim that actually makes the opposite conclusion. The blood type diet has been criticized for its lack of support by clinical trials. In Eat Right 4 Your Type, D’Adamo mentions the diets being in the eighth year of a 10 year cancer trial. However, the results of this trial have never been published. In his book Arthritis: Fight It With the Blood type Diet, D’Adamo mentions an impending clinical trial of the blood type diet to determine its effects on the outcomes of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, but the results of this 12 week trial have also never been published. A study published 16 and 7 years, respectively, after the books (in July 2013) turned up no published results of any such trials. D’Adamo’s assertion that the O blood type was the first human blood type requires that the O gene have evolved before the A and B genes in the ABO locus; phylogenetic networks of human and non-human ABO alleles show that the A gene was the first to evolve. It would be extraordinary, evolutionarily, for normal genes (those for types A and B) to have evolved from abnormal genes (for type O). The paper “Evolution of Primate ABO Blood Group Genes and Their Homologous Genes”, published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, put it this way: “Although the O blood type is common in all populations around the world, there is no evidence that the O gene represents the ancestral gene at the ABO locus. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that a defective gene would arise spontaneously and then evolve into normal genes.” A 2004 study concluded that “diversification of the representative alleles of the three human ABO lineages (A101, B101, and O02) was estimated at 4.5 to 6 million years ago”. D”Adamo asserts that the ABO blood types emerged between 30,000 and 1,000 years ago. Weight Watchers [McElroy] Does it work? Well, it’s a pretty basic idea: reduce the intake of things which will get stored as long-term energy storage in fat, get exercise to burn off calories, reduce portion sizes to reduce caloric intake, and view the plan as a life-long change rather than a quick fix. Personally, when I took it seriously, I lost about 27 pounds over about 12 weeks, and it wasn’t a huge hassle. But I didn’t stick with it, and I gained the weight back and more… What do studies show? There are lots of studies funded by Weight Watchers that are, unsurprisingly, all positive. But there’s plenty of independent research as well that confirms the results. (per Time’s article Study: Weight Watchers Works Better than Clinical Weight Loss Programs, October 11, 2012) Study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the journal Obesity: a study pitting the commercial weight-loss program against professionally directed weight loss treatments found that dieters stuck with Weight Watchers longer and were more likely to lose weight. Researchers randomly assigned 141 overweight or obese men and women to one of three groups: a behavioral weight-loss treatment led by a health professional; Weight Watchers, whose weight-loss groups are led by peer counselors; or a hybrid program that started with 12 weeks of behavioral weight loss treatment, followed by 36 weeks of Weight Watchers. All programs lasted a total of 48 weeks. People in all three groups experienced significant weight loss: it didn’t matter whether a health professional was running the treatment or not. On average, Weight Watchers users lost just over 13 lbs., compared with just under 12 lbs. for those who lasted all 48 weeks in the professionally led group, and nearly 8 lbs. for people in the combination treatment. The Weight Watchers group fared best overall. Nearly 37% of those doing Weight Watchers lost at least 10% of their starting weight, compared with 11% of those in the professionally led group and 15% of those in the hybrid group. The researchers said they were surprised, since they assumed the hybrid treatment would lead to the most success. The Weight Watchers members attended more meetings and were more likely to stick with the study to the end than people in the other two groups. I have personal experience with this. The basic concept is keeping track of the things you eat to control your intake of sugar, fiber, fat, and calories. The program provides you with tools and meal ideas for meeting your basic dietary needs and avoiding things that could cause weight gain. It also promotes regular exercise and the use of a support structure of other dieters to encourage you to stick with the plan. Detox/Cleansing Some diets are meant to help ‘cleanse’ or ‘detox’ the body as well, but most popular cleansing/detox diets are pretty unscientific, often promoting the idea that you can remove unspecified ‘toxins’ from your body by drinking special juices or taking herbs. From WebMD’s The Truth About Detox Diets page: You might lose weight on a detox diet, because they’re usually very low in calories. But the idea that your body needs help getting rid of toxins has “no basis in human biology,” says Frank Sacks, MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health. Your organs and immune system handle those duties, no matter what you eat. Some involve fasting, or just drinking liquids. Others allow some foods, like fruits and vegetables. They typically are short diets — they’re not a way of eating you can stick with in the long run. You’ll be hungry and may feel weak. Whether or not a detox diet is safe depends on the plan and how long you stay on it. ATKINS DIET The Atkins Diet, officially called the Atkins Nutritional Approach, is a low-carbohydrate diet promoted by Robert Atkins from a research paper he read in The Journal of the American Medical Association published by Alfred W. Pennington, titled “Weight Reduction”, published in 1958.[1] Atkins used the study to resolve his own overweight condition. He later popularized the method in a series of books, starting with Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in 1972. In his second book, Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution (2002), he modified parts of the diet but did not alter the original concepts. The New Atkins for a New You (2010) is based upon a broad array of information gained over the last decade not covered in previous editions, including nutrient-rich foods. The New Atkins for a New You Cookbook was released in 2011 by Colette Heimowitz to provide dieters with simple, low-carb recipes. The Atkins Diet involves limited consumption of carbohydrates to switch the body’s metabolism from metabolizing glucose as energy over to converting stored body fat to energy. This process, called ketosis, begins when insulin levels are low; in normal humans, insulin is lowest when blood glucose levels are low (mostly before eating). Reduced insulin levels induce lipolysis, which consumes fat to produce ketone bodies. On the other hand, caloric carbohydrates (for example, glucose or starch, the latter made of chains of glucose) affect the body by increasing blood sugar after consumption (in the treatment of diabetes, blood sugar levels are used. [2]) Fiber, because of its low digestibility, provides little or no food energy and does not significantly affect glucose and insulin levels. Lemonade Diet Drink (cleanse) (Ew) “Did you know: The slim and trim Beyonce’ Knowles in the movie “Dreamgirls” lived on a crash diet consisting of lemon cayenne pepper drink for 14 days to reduce 20 pounds, in order to fit into the role of a teenager! Read on to know more about how to make this detox drink. Popularly known as master cleanse diet, lemon juice detox or lemon detox diet is basically a liquid diet comprising lemon cayenne pepper drink. It is claimed to be effective for cleansing the body, for boosting energy, for clearer skin, and for better sleep. Lemon detox diet is also said to beneficial for losing weight. Though the diet was developed for the purpose of detoxification and fasting, it is now very popular as a weight loss program.” Keto – Ketogenic Diet (similar to Atkins, but I don’t know for sure that it’s undertaken as a fad diet) it definitely is – http://www.reddit.com/r/keto A high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, used in medicine primarily to treat epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fuelling brain function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures. Tapeworm Diet Tape worm diet, sounds insane and disgusting right? Well, after this article you will understand how this diet actually works, the theories behind the results and maybe even consider a tape worm or two of your own. Or not. Tapeworms Balance Our Immune System Many years ago before the modernization that we have become accustomed to today, it was common for the human body to have a variety of worms. Diet, hygiene and other lifestyle changes have meant that most if not all worms in the body have been removed in developed nations. Now some believe that our bodies have not evolved to a point where it is accustomed to being free of worms. Consequently, our bodies are still undergoing the process of looking for the worms that our bodies inhabited for so many years. But they’re not there now. What does this mean? This means that the body becomes more sensitive to other foreign material creating an immune system imbalance. This immune balance is responsible for conditions that are currently rife in society, for example in the common form of allergies such as psoriasis, hay fever etc. This is the theory anyway. And the fix? Introduce not just any old worm back into the human body, but specific worms that help to keep the immune system in balance. A side effect, which we are focusing on in this article, is that of weight loss. How Does the Tape Worm Diet work? The way that tapeworms aid in weight loss is reminiscent of urban myth and in fact, the concept of using tape worms for weight loss has been around for almost a century. Tapeworms Reduce Calories The idea is that introducing tapeworm into the body means that the food you eat is split between your own body and that of the tapeworm. You are a host and tapeworm uses you by attaching suckers to your stomach and feeding on the foods that you eat. To expel calories, we are usually required to expend energy through exercise as an example. The tapeworm is an additional means of reducing the amount of calories that you absorb WITHOUT reducing the calories that you consume. Supporters of the tapeworm will praise this idea of dieters being able to eat whatever they choose to eat while still losing weight. How to Ingest a Tapeworm The traditional way of becoming infected with a tapeworm is by eating raw meat, being in contact with infected faeces and other foods containing tapeworm. However, for the purposes of dieting, methods would include the tablet form. Life cycle of the Tapeworm After being ingested, the tapeworm makes its way through the digestive system, attaching itself and feeding as it goes. Eventually, it will make its way out of the body with bowel movements. This is a very unpleasant experience both physically and psychologically. People have been known to take drugs designed to reduce the lifespan of the tapeworm so that it is already dead when it is removed from the body.” Tapeworm Diet Side Effects When the tapeworm diet is being promoted, then of course the side effect of weight loss will be at the top of the list. But let us take a look at some of the other potential side effects & symptoms of the tapeworm diet. Abdominal pain Weakness Headache Nausea Diarrhoea Constipation Bloating Grapefruit Diet “There have been a few studies about grapefruit and weight loss. In one, obese people who ate half a grapefruit before meals for 12 weeks lost significantly more weight than those who didn’t eat or drink any grapefruit products. It may be that the water in grapefruit helps you feel full, and then you eat less. But if you’re hoping that grapefruit will melt fat, you’re going to be disappointed. Trying to lose 10 pounds in 10 days isn’t healthy. Even if it worked, you’d be likely to gain it all back, as with any fad diet. For lasting results, it’s much better to lose weight at a slower, steadier rate, focusing on a plan you can live with for life. The classic version of the diet involves: Cutting back on sugar and carbs (including rice, potatoes, and pasta) Avoiding certain foods, such as celery and white onion Eating more of foods that are high in protein, fat, and/or cholesterol (such as eggs, pork, and red meat) Eating grapefruit or grapefruit juice before or with every meal Most variations also cut calories, some to as low as 800 calories per day. On the diet, you also drink 8 glasses of water and 1 cup of coffee daily.” SLIM FAST Basically, the plan is thus: A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a 500 calorie dinner. ‘Nuff said.. New Guy Diet (Joke) This diet involves 4 basic food groups Bacon Group Chili group Cheese Group Meat Group Hot Dog Hamburger Gyros Meat Foods with one or all these groups are prefered. It does require some exercise. Works best when there is a health nut present. List of diets: Apple Cider Vinegar Diet – Body for Life – A calorie-control diet. Cookie Diet – Another calorie-control diet in which low-fat cookies are eaten to quell hunger, often in place of a meal. Hacker’s Diet – A calorie-control diet from “The Hacker’s Diet” by John Walker. It’s basically a system of carefully monitoring caloric intake. Nutrisystem Diet – The dietary element of the weight-loss plan from Nutrisystem, Inc. Nutrisystem distributes low-calorie meals, with specific ratios of fats, proteins and carbohydrates Breatharian Diet – A diet in which no food is consumed, based on the belief that food is not necessary for human subsistence. Dukan Diet – A multi-step diet based on high protein and limited carbohydrate consumption. It starts with two steps intended to facilitate short term weight loss, followed by two steps intended to consolidate these losses and return to a more balanced long-term diet. ITG Diet – A 3-step diet based on limiting carbohydrate consumption combined with low fat protein to maintain muscle. The first step is followed to reach the dieter’s goal weight while steps two and three focus on returning the body and dieter to a healthy balanced diet for long term weight maintenance. South Beach – Stillman Diet Beverly Hills Diet – An diet that restricts foods to only fruits in the first days and gradually increases the selection of foods up to the sixth week. Cabbage Soup Diet – A low-calorie diet based upon heavy consumption of cabbage soup and probably a lot of socially awkward fart hiding moments. Israeli Army Diet – An eight-day diet where only apples are consumed in the first two days. Cheese in the following two days, chicken on days five and six, and salad for the final two days. Despite what the name suggests, the diet is not followed by Israel Defense Forces. Junk Food Diet – wut? Alkaline Diet – The avoidance of relatively acidic foods – foods with low pH levels – such as grains, dairy, meat, sugar, alcohol, caffeine and fungi. Proponents believe such a diet may have health benefits; critics consider the arguments to have no scientific basis. Feingold Diet – A diet which attempts to combat hyperactivity by avoiding foods with certain synthetic additives and sweeteners. Fruitarian Diet – A diet which predominantly consists of raw fruit. Jenny Craig – A weight-loss program from Jenny Craig, Inc. It includes weight counselling among other elements. The dietary aspect involves the consumption of pre-packaged food produced by the company. [Testimonial(s)] WUTs: Abraham game makers believe they are in a fight with Satan: From Colin Campbell at gaming news site Polygon: Richard Gaeta, co-founder of Phoenix Interactive and the man behind the Kickstarter for Bible Chronicles: The Call of Abraham, says he believes 100% that Satan is literally working to confound the plans to release the game. In the end, the game, which follows the life of Abraham (a central figure in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) raised only $19,000 of its $100,000 target, and they are now seeking alternative fund-raising efforts. “It’s very tangible,” added business partner Martin Bertram. “From projects falling through and people that were lined up to help us make this a success falling through. Lots of factors raining down on us like fire and brimstone.” “If Satan is rallying some of his resources to forestall, delay, or kill this project, I think, this must be a perceived threat to his kingdom,” added Ken Frech, a religious mentor to the project. “I fully would expect something like this to have spiritual warfare. Look at the gospel accounts of demons and so forth. That’s reality. Many Americans don’t believe it anymore. That doesn’t change reality.“ Phoenix Interactive’s executives are Biblical literalists. Gaeta scoffs at the wishy-washy notion that Bible stories are allegories. Bertram dismisses the theory of evolution as “wrong.” Polygon’s Campbell asked them if they believe the world was created 6,000 years ago. “Yes,” they both said, without the faintest hint of prevarication. They also believe that the extraordinary stories surrounding Abraham all happened, just as they are described in the Book of Genesis. The game is an action-RPG in which you play as an attendant in Abraham’s party. You witness Biblical events, and play a role in the overall group’s adventures, fetching, fighting and questing. God appears from time-to-time. Gaeta and Bertram speak of coming to business decisions through prayer. They regularly gather in a local diner, along with a panel of religious advisers (all men, all middle-aged). As they wait for their pancakes and fried potatoes, they hold hands and pray for guidance. This, they say, helped them decide to make their game about Abraham, rather than other options, like Moses or Jesus. They want to tackle those other Biblical stories at a later time. God, they say, will help them choose when and how. Maricopa, AZ vice mayor Farrell apologizes for pro-Westboro Facebook post – a RWNJ politician shared a fake Onion obituary of Fred Phelps that praised the man for standing against homosexuality on biblical principles. He had never heard of Phelps or The Onion. The quotes in the article are fucking golden. Onion obit: Fred Phelps, Man Who Forever Stopped March Of Gay Rights, Dead At 84