Opening a religion post with "Though you haven't heard of it,...." cracks me up. It's now the story of my life and - while Emily Yoffe may not have heard of it - feminist NewAge is definitely THE "fundamentalist church" where "fishing" has always been real, too, so ♪shut-up♬.
As far as I know, whites will only really stand up to Oprah on two topics - cattle futures and race - when they curiously, but proudly, love to point out how rich she's gotten with their full support:
You know, selling dangerous, bogus, NewAge occult "remedies" and the gurus and beliefs that go with 'em,...
Cool - about 9 months ago someone on Redditgot the word out about TED - finally:
The TED name is being dragged through the mud in Valencia, Spain, where a TEDx-approved event is promoting pseudoscientific stuff like (and I quote): crystal therapy, Egyptian psychoaromatherapy, healing through the Earth, homeopathy and even "basic mind control".
I'm not really sure how this event got approved by the TED headquarters, but almost every respected scientific journalist in Spain is outraged by it.
Some of the speakers (Google-translated for non-Spanish speakers).
Amma - Mahatma (Great Soul) of Hugs, Lots of Politicians go to Her to Receive Her Blessings.
José Rius - Reiki Master, Master Reconnection, Basic Mind Control, Zen and Crystal Theraphy Specialist.
Aura Küpper - Energetic Healing through Earth, Rebirthing Therapy, Angelic Reiki and author of a book called "Doctors from Heaven".
Adoracion Ferreres - Master in Clinical Psychology and Natural Therapies. Technical Expert in Bio-Energetic and Holistic, Egyptian Psycho-Aromatherapy and Transpersonal Homeotherapy.
The whole event is "women-oriented" and marketed as a female empowerment gig, which to me adds insult to the injury, as if women were incapable to distinguish true science from utter superstitious, anti-scientific bullshit.
Seeing the TED name associated with this freak show in a country where science and education have already been cornered and budget-cut by its own government is extremely sad. TED should react and examine its own standards in order to avoid being ashamed by these hordes of rain-makers and mystic scam artists in the future.
Ask and you will receive - today I found this hysterical screed from Natural News' freakazoid ringleader, Mike Adams:
Allow me to be the first to announce that TED is dead. Why? Because the group that organizes so-called "TED talks" has been thoroughly hijacked by corporate junk science and now openly rejects any talks about GMOs, food as medicine, or even the subject of how food can help prevent behavioral disorders in children. All these areas of discussion are now red-flagged from being presented on any TED stage.
This is openly admitted by TEDx itself in a little-known letter publicly published on December 7, 2012.
In that letter, TED says that people who talk about GMOs are engaged in "pseudoscience." Those who discuss the healing potential of foods are spreading "health hoaxes."
The letter also advises TEDx organizers to, "reject bad science, pseudoscience and health hoaxes," meaning anyone who talks about GMOs, "food as medicine" or similar topics.
And, sure enough, here's the letter from TED, and a list of some of the banned topics - all of which are TMR favorites:
"Healing," including reiki, energy fields, alternative health and placebos, crystals, pyramid power
"Free energy" and perpetual motion machines, alchemy, time travel
The neuroscience of [fill in the blank] — not saying this will all be non-legitimate, but that it’s a field where a lot of goofballs are right now
The fusion of science and spirituality. Be especially careful of anyone trying to prove the validity of their religious beliefs and practices by using science.
That wording, alone, says this was a major "win" for common sense. And that means it was a good day. After all these years, a finger's been put in the dyke, somewhere where it matters:
Amongst the real barbarians - those who've encouraged it and/or let the nonsense go on.
So yeah, right now, you guys can't see me but - whether I need money or not - I'm smiling,...
Aromatherapy is not demonstrably effective for any condition. It also is not entirely free of risks. Its risk/benefit profile is thus not positive which can only mean that it is not a useful or recommendable treatment for anybody who is ill.
I wish the professor would include "belief" as one of the "risks" - especially for others - because, without the belief, there ain't no risk. There's also (never mentioned in these reviews) no family arguments, no divorces, no cult influences - none of it. It all disappears when the belief does. As Panda Bear, MD said (on my sister blog):
"Uh, the point being that you’re studying it. If it doesn’t pan out you will shrug your shoulders and say, 'Oh well, guess we were wrong about that one,' not form the Cult of Cinnamon Therapy and defend it from all infidels"
"When you point out a problem with the evidence, people don’t engage with you about it, or read and reference your work. They get into a huff. They refuse to answer calls or email queries. They wave their hands and mutter sciencey words such as “quantum” and “nano”. They accuse you of being a paid plant from some big pharma conspiracy,...they cry, they call you names, they hold lectures at their trade fairs about how you are a dangerous doctor, they contact and harass your employer, they try to dig up dirt from your personal life, or they actually threaten you with violence (this has all happened to me, and I’m compiling a great collection of stories for a nice documentary, so do keep it coming)."
So am I - because I, too, am going to prove that's what these morons do and have done. They don't care about facts or reality - or anyone else - they're zombies attacking anyone who pushes back.
Remember the last election? When all the Righties started defending Mitt Romney's NewAge nonsense, no matter how much I pointed out he was hopeless? How they came up with excuses, got angry, and then either attacked or abandoned me altogether as a fake conservative?
What's the difference between that and my experience with NewAge "spirituality"?
Belief in nonsense is the problem, because the behavior people exhibit once they give in to believing easily-disputable bullshit is cultish, deplorable, and harmful.
Or does anyone think I've become a nicer blogger since discovering NewAge or, say, the Instapundit/Althouse crew showed their totally insane election-losing asses?
The Big Con appears to always be in play these days:
"A confidence trick or confidence game (also known as a bunko, con, flim flam, gaffle, grift, hustle, scam, scheme, swindle or bamboozle) is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills. Confidence men or women exploit human characteristics such as greed and dishonesty, and have victimized individuals from all walks of life.
The first known usage of the term 'confidence man' in English was in 1849; it was used by American press during the United States trial of William Thompson. Thompson chatted with strangers until he asked if they had the confidence to lend him their watches, whereupon he would walk off with the watch; he was captured when a victim recognized him on the street.
Confidence tricks exploit typical human qualities such as greed, dishonesty, vanity, honesty, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility and naïveté. The common factor is that the mark relies on the good faith of the con artist.
Just as there is no typical profile for swindlers, neither is there one for their victims. Virtually anyone can fall prey to fraudulent crimes. ... Certainly victims of high-yield investment frauds may possess a level of greed which exceeds their caution as well as a willingness to believe what they want to believe. However, not all fraud victims are greedy, risk-taking, self-deceptive individuals looking to make a quick dollar. Nor are all fraud victims naïve, uneducated, or elderly.
A greedy or dishonest mark may attempt to out-cheat the con artist, only to discover that he or she has been manipulated into losing from the very beginning. This is such a general principle in confidence tricks that there is a saying among con men that 'you can't cheat an honest man.'
Shills, also known as accomplices, help manipulate the mark into accepting the con man's plan. In a traditional confidence trick, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be strangers who have benefited from performing the task in the past."
Whether in politics or religion, our society runs on scams - especially NewAge or "spiritual" cons - I hear it all the time, in large and small ways:
Classic BS. "A fairly open person"? Try more like Madonna in heat. With an equal amount of brains:
"The term ‘pseudoscience’ refers to statements, beliefs or practices that are presented as being based in science when in reality they are not. Plainly stated, the word pseudoscience means ‘fake science.’ Magic healing crystals, spirit channeling, and homeopathy are all types of pseudoscience - they are all fake science."
As that "aromatherapy" quote shows, the shills (who are usually not too bright) are the worst, since they give themselves credit for being wrong. Once they realize they, too, have been taken, they are usually so embarrassed (about the magnitude of what they've done - my money! - and what's been revealed about themselves - I'm an idiot!) you can forget about a confession, to having been used, ever emerging - which leaves the door open for the con to continue elsewhere, to take in some other poor sap who doesn't know the difference between "knowing" and "believing" or "watching and seeing".
"I don't care what they say: that's the way I feel about it." (Jenny McCarthy's breasts have trained this one well. The power they held over Jim Carrey was amazing - though, admittedly, he was in closer proximity). Oh, if only they could harness their feelings for good.
Yea, yea, I know - but now you're thinking and not believing - NewAgers need something they can feel that can also work against them:
"The Secret is filled [with] the same sort of ignorant, harmful and racist teachings that Esther-Hicks promotes and it is supported by media personalities and spiritual teachers."
Using one kind of NewAge con to fight another is good but the race thing is played out, and I think to focus on more specific, easily definable, and familiar forms of fraud would work better.
"To this day, many people on Wall Street make their living as 'technical analysts,' even though their methods have no more merit than homeopathy or astrology."
O.K., for instance: I think if we eliminated everything with a relationship - in any way - to homeopathy and astrology, we'd probably put an end to most of the flim flam artists and also a massive amount of related fraud-based crime. I suspect even the collapse of the Left, as a whole, once they're rooted out. At the very least, it would set the Left on the run (even more) which would be doing our nation a great service.
This mixture of NewAge fraud and politics has gone much too far already - and I haven't seen much that says I'm wrong about that, PTSD or no.
"The best news of the New Year, quite probably the only cheering news we will hear in 2009, is that you can renounce 'good' habits as well. To be specific, you can renounce detox.
...This is not a message the big business of retailing quackery wants you to hear. Look at the shelf space in any chemist's devoted to purveyors of voodoo treatments. Not only detox but homeopathy, aromatherapy and herbal and flower remedies prey on the gullible and frightened."
-- Nick Cohen, telling it like it is (to those with no idea they need to be told), for The Evening Standard.Uk.
"If the Mumbai terror assault seemed exceptional, and shocking in its targets, it was clear from the Thanksgiving Day reports that we weren't going to be deprived of the familiar, either. Namely, ruminations, hints, charges of American culpability that regularly accompany catastrophes of this kind.
Soon enough, there was Deepak Chopra, healer, New Age philosopher and digestion guru, advocate of aromatherapy and regular enemas, holding forth on CNN on the meaning of the attacks.
How the ebullient Dr. Chopra had come to be chosen as an authority on terror remains something of a mystery, though the answer may have something to do with his emergence in the recent presidential campaign as a thinker of advanced political views. Also commending him, perhaps, is his well known capacity to cut through all sorts of complexities to make matters simple. No one can fail to grasp the wisdom of a man who has informed us that "If you have happy thoughts, then you make happy molecules."
In his CNN interview, he was no less clear. What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that "our policies, our foreign policies" had alienated the Muslim population, that we had "gone after the wrong people" and inflamed moderates. And "that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay."
All this was a bit too much, evidently, for CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann, who interrupted to note that there were other things going on -- matters like the ongoing bitter Pakistan-India struggle over Kashmir -- which had caused so much terror and so much violence. "That's not Washington's fault," he pointed out.
Given an argument, the guest, ever a conciliator, agreed: The Mumbai catastrophe was not Washington's fault, it was everybody's fault. Which didn't prevent Dr. Chopra from returning soon to his central theme -- the grave offense posed to Muslims by the United States' war on terror, a point accompanied by consistent emphatic reminders that Muslims are the world's fastest growing population -- 25% of the globe's inhabitants -- and that the U.S. had better heed that fact. In Dr. Chopra's moral universe, numbers are apparently central. It's tempting to imagine his view of offenses against a much smaller sliver of the world's inhabitants -- not so offensive, perhaps?
Two subsequent interviews with Larry King brought much of the same -- a litany of suggestions about the role the U.S. had played in fueling assaults by Muslim terrorists, reminders of the numbers of Muslims in the world and their grievances. A faithful adherent of the root-causes theory of crime -- mass murder, in the case at hand -- Dr. Chopra pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that most of the terrorism in the world came from Muslims. It was mandatory, then, to address their grievances -- "humiliation," "poverty," "lack of education." The U.S., he recommended, should undertake a Marshall Plan for Muslims.
Nowhere in this citation of the root causes of Muslim terrorism was there any mention of Islamic fundamentalism -- the religious fanaticism that has sent fevered mobs rioting, burning and killing over alleged slights to the Quran or the prophet. Not to mention the countless others enlisted to blow themselves and others up in the name of God.
Nor did we hear, in these media meditations, any particular expression of sorrow from the New Delhi-born Dr. Chopra for the anguish of Mumbai's victims: a striking lack, no doubt unintentional, but not surprising, either. For advocates of the root-causes theory of crime, the central story is, ever, the sorrows and grievances of the perpetrators. For those prone to the belief that most eruptions of evil in the world can be traced to American influence and power there is only one subject of consequence.
Accustomed as we are by now to this view of the U.S., it's impossible not to marvel at its varied guises -- its capacity to emerge even in journalism ostensibly concerning the absurd beliefs about the 9/11 attacks held by so many Muslims. It's conventional wisdom in the region -- according to a New York Times dispatch from Cairo, Egypt, last fall by Michael Slackman -- that the U.S. and Israel had to have been involved in the planning, if not the actual execution of the assaults. No news there. Neither was the information that there was virtually universal belief in the area that Jews, tipped off, didn't go to work at the World Trade Center that day. Or that the U.S. had organized the plot in order to attack Arab Muslims and gain access to their oil.
The noteworthy point here was the writer's conclusion that the U.S. itself was to blame for the power of these beliefs. "It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre," Mr. Slackman allowed. But that would miss the point that the persistence of these ideas represents the "first failure in the fight against terrorism." A U.S. failure? Nowhere in the extended list of root causes here was there any mention of the fanaticism and sheer mindless gullibility that is the prerequisite for the holding of such beliefs.
Its very ordinariness speaks volumes about this report. A piece written with evident serenity, the perversity of its conclusions notwithstanding, it's one emblem among many of the adversarial view of the nation that is today entrenched in the culture. So unworthy is the U.S. -- an attitude solidly established in our media culture long before the war on terror -- that only it can be held responsible for the deranged fantasies cherished in large quarters of the Arab world. So natural does it feel, now, to hold such views that their expression has become second nature.
Which is how it happens also that the U.S. is linked to the bloodletting in Mumbai, with scarcely anyone batting an eye, and Larry King -- awash perhaps, in happy molecules -- thanking guest Dr. Chopra for his extraordinary enlightenment."
-- Dorothy Rabinowitz, catching all of this quack's usual NewAge cues - the lack of feeling for (or mention of) the dead, the twisted "spiritual" belief systems, laying the blame for everything on America's doorstep - and, then, dropping the con artist's whole stinking pile in The Wall Street Journal.
