"The CIA has issued a statement after last week’s catastrophic waterboard incident in Guantanamo that embarrassed the agency and raised questions about security.
The events unfolded as a suspected terrorist was being interrogated and the session went on for nearly four hours. According to sources, the suspect 'seemed to enjoy it' and at one point nearly fell asleep.
An investigation revealed the water had been inadvertently stored next to a photograph of Valium and aspirin, and had apparently retained that memory. The origin of the photo is unknown, and calls to NewAge World Headquarters in the Sedona suburb of Circle Rock, AZ went unanswered. A spokesperson in the Roswell, NM office declined comment.
In a brief statement, the detainee told reporters he felt relaxed, pain-free and 'very clean.'
The water has been checked into a rehab program."
-- Joseph Nigro, on a "terrible" situation, only made better by the hilarity of it (with the following video) as The Macho Response.
"Given her obsession with filming even the most insignificant minutiae of her life, it is hard to believe anything could come as a surprise to Heather Mills.
The 40-year-old is permanently followed around by a lackey with a video camera, while she has surrounded her country estate with remote controlled lenses to ensure nobody can creep up on her, unexpectedly.
Which makes it all the more surprising that she didn't see Sara Trumble's lawsuit coming.
The claim - for sexual discrimination, intimidation and constructive dismissal - apparently came as a complete shock when Heather's long-standing nanny lodged it with an employment tribunal in Kent last week.
Coming barely three months after 24-year-old Miss Trumble's resignation in September, it has thrown the notoriously volatile Heather into a black hole of rage and introspection.
She is, friends say, beside herself with fury at the 'betrayal' by somebody she regarded as a close friend, at a time when she was beginning to think that the 'bad old days' were behind her.
She even seems to have been sidelined by her pet charity, No More Landmines, which last year admitted it was ‘allowing a period of calm’ in its relations with Heather, while simultaneously singing the praises of Sir Paul as an esteemed benefactor."
-- Richard Price, describing Heather "you can call me Peg" Mills and her apparent shock and disbelief that she is still her - no matter what she does or where she goes - which is an important safety tip for NewAgers, from Joseph Nigro and The Daily Mail.
Shout out to "Skeptic" for this: I don't know whether to laugh or cry,...these NewAge Nazis are truly disgusting in that - no matter what another's situation might be - they just won't leave them alone. It's just all about them, and what they want, and what they want is to determine what others are about. Like I said, truly disgusting.
"I think the biggest victory scored by the promoters of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) was the name itself. Fifty years ago what passes today as CAM was snake oil, fraud, folk medicine, and quackery. The promoters of dubious health claims were charlatans, quacks, and con artists. Somehow they managed to pull off the greatest con of all - a culture change in which fraud became a legitimate alternative to scientific medicine, the line between science and pseudoscience was deliberate blurred, regulations designed to protect the public from quackery were weakened or eliminated, and it became politically incorrect to defend scientific standards in medicine.
Add to this a general anti-establishment movement beginning in the 1960s. CAM proponents were successful in portraying scientific medicine as the Establishment - something that needed to be taken down."
-- Steven Novella, close to pulling it in (but also close to dropping the rope) for the esteemed "skeptologists" on the Skepticblog.
The 1960’s anti-establish movement isn’t a side-car to the CAM mentality; it’s the tree from which CAM branches. And that tree is the contrarian, “gas lighting” mind game that is NewAge.
It is the ultimate temper tantrum, an immature control tactic and an “I’ll show you you’re not so smart” arrogance subliminally directed at disappointing parents, but acted out against anything where enough confusion and chaos can be generated to guarantee on-going, albeit dishonest, debate.
For some, the smug motive is to feel superior to those who actually had the fortitude to get educated in a difficult or demanding field, and mock them out of envy.
What bigger insult is there then to dismiss an achievement that took years and replace it with their own delusions, spit up while sitting in a circle of rocks in front of a blinking crystal.
Instant parity and accomplishment without exertion. An offshoot of the self-esteem movement.
Others are con artists and opportunists, who don’t believe anything in particular, but see a way to make a buck, elicit worship or obedience, get laid or flirt with fame. Without much disciplined effort, responsibility or daily chores.
It’s a free-wheeling life that claims the rewards of those who do the real work.
“You poor dummies that actually work to prove something” is an implied taunt.
The third head of this monster are the more regular people, including those who earned degrees in medicine and science and then turned scared or lazy, plodding away, grasping at anything to set themselves apart and create a little drama in their lives, dodging any notion that they are not the victims of their lives but the architects.
“The devil made me do it”, “The universe didn’t want me to”, “The stars weren’t aligned right”, “My palm reader said no”.
These are the folks pointed to by the intellectual crowd when dismissing NewAge as harmless.
Unfortunately, there are ex-spouses, warped children, shafted business partners and emptied bank accounts that beg differently.
These are the easy marks for the con artists.
As the “down with The Man” culture dates back to the 1960’s, it should be no surprise that now, being older, they have infiltrated government agencies, medical communities and other fields, but haven’t matured a bit.
The baby has tied up the babysitter, and the baby is as determined as ever to replace organized thinking with the garbage they use to feed their own broken egos.
One ego-defense used by theses disordered fools is a root of Politically Correct.
It is a control tactic. “How dare you notice I’m wearing soiled underwear on my head”.
Now anything goes, and any notice or criticism is deflected by wide-spread anxiety about mentioning reality… it might upset somebody.
It is an insidious conditioning that promotes disorder as a virtue.
And why bother to develop any virtues and values when it’s easier and more fun to force others into pretending they have them, without any evidence (or more accurately, with evidence to the contrary).
The goal of NewAge/CAM is not to prove water has memory or any other such claim.
The goal is to jerk around the “Establishment”, to watch with glee as sincere people give some bizarre crud enough credibility to actually look into it, to keep the confusion alive and to hide behind it snickering.
“Look what I made them do”.
This is what happened to the Main Stream Media.
It’s a big, ugly tree, and it’s nothing more than a practical joke grown by cons.
They should be dismissed, brushed off with a laugh, told they’re stupid, and shown we’re not playing anymore.
"Disagreeable and closed to new ideas - that's the picture that emerges of contributors to community-curated encyclopaedia Wikipedia from a survey of their psychological attributes.
Led by Yair Amichai-Hamburger of the Sammy Ofer School of Communication in Herzliya, Israel, a team of psychologists surveyed 69 Israeli contributors to the popular online encyclopedia,...
...But to his surprise, although Wikipedia is founded on the notion of openly sharing and collecting knowledge as a community, they scored low on agreeableness and openness."
-- Peter Aldhous, who left out Wikipedia's, cultish leanings (and ties) and how these fundamentalist traits are found throughout the landscape of cultism, which hopefully doesn't include New Scientist.
"'Dialogue' is now defined as 'a conversation between equals, just so long as your equal is bound and gagged in a chair, and is forced to listen to your list of grievances'. Ahhhh....Liberal Fascism in full bloom. What a beautiful sight....and it is not even spring."
-- Charlie Foxtrot, interpreting The New York Times' latest attempt to define life under "liberal" rule - and I do mean "rule" - for (what else?) Charlie Foxtrot.
I said that, as the upgrade is going on, I wasn't going to post unless something worth mentioning happened. Well, word is now getting around that John Travolta's son, Jett, has died - at the age of 16.
Why is that important? Because it's been said for years that Travolta's son had autism, and Travolta's a Scientologist, and as we all learned through Tom Cruise's antics, Scientology morons have a *little* problem with any mental disorder not created by L. Ron Hubbard. John Travolta reportedly couldn't even admit his kid had autism. Who knows if he ever got him any help?
The fact that cults are allowed to flourish in society, and cultish thinking is allowed to go unchallenged, is a crime - a crime of epic proportions - and, as far as TMR's concerned, the death of Jett Travolta is further evidence of that fact. No matter how many of these unwarranted deaths stack up, no one does or says anything significant about the cause. (How sick and compliant to an idea do you have to be to sacrifice your own child?) This is why I say we are in a time of NewAge Nazis: normal people just don't think and behave like this.
The death of Jett Travolta - a kid most Americans didn't even have the pleasure to know existed - is another shameful chapter in cult and Scientology history. And society at large deserves to be damned for it, as well as John Travolta, and you can bet TMR will:
I almost forgot about this video, but today I'm going back and trying to fill in some of the blanks on the blog - like attaching some of the thousands of articles I've collected to the titles of the posts (go on: click on the titles on this 1st page and see what you get) - it was by sifting through those old columns that I found this video again. It's a pretty good expose' of how critical thinking works, and why it tends to break down "magic" NewAge nonsense.
Anyway, if it seems like I'm not posting a lot today, don't be fooled: I'm hard at work in the background. And I might be busy for the next few days: I'm really enjoying attaching music to the posts, and getting rid of all this extra info I may never post on, because I'm too busy trying to stay current.
So now would be a good time to check out the posts of the past - there's almost 2, 700 here, kids - and they all need my attention, to be correctly formatted, in some way. And since I'm only one guy, I'm going to stick at it until I'm tired, or something. I'm really hating leaving the job undone.
And hey - don't forget: the red text indicates what I think is important information (like that link goes to Orac's list of hospitals with the wrong attitude). People seem to be missing the red link thing - and making links red is one of the biggest jobs I've got ahead of me - there's a lot of links in here!
O.K., that's all I've got to say right now. I'll still be posting when something demands it, but until then, stay "macho" until I get back:
I was just reading an article about a desire for more politeness this year when I found this Kathy Griffin New Years clip. And it wasn't a moment too soon, because anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a seething cauldron of unrepressed rage and there's no way, surrounded as I am by you NewAge Nazis, that that's going to stop until you guys get off the pot and repent.
Truth be told, it doesn't stop for any of you from being assholes, either; you just express it differently - read: hypocrisy - and, thus, try to hide it better. That doesn't mean you're not waaay more insulting (and/or meaner) than I am. You just make more of an effort at putting up a better front - even more layers of hypocrisy - like Kathy, here, saying what she really thinks once she believes the mic's off. I'm more like that description Richard Lester gave of John Lennon:
"I noticed this quality he had of standing outside every situation and noting the vulnerabilities of everyone, including myself."
So what pisses NewAgers and I, both, off is I can see through it all, and I react to their despicableness, and then they react to getting busted - again - and round and round we go. A mutual hatefest in the making.
We're, like, the world's most perfect example of synchronicity,....preparing for a Happy New Year.
"Several years ago, a friend's religion killed her. No, she wasn't part of a mass suicide, or burned at the stake, or stoned to death. She was the victim of a deadly combination: breast cancer and the 'homeopathy religion.'
...The majority of Americans are raised in a religious home, where they are taught from an early age to accept faith, magical forces, impossible miracles, and anecdotal 'evidence' without question. These beliefs are directed at Yahweh and Jesus, but more importantly, children are taught to reject the evidence of their senses and the techniques of rational thought.
It's no surprise, then, that this same system of faith-based beliefs is easily transferred to other false claims. Homeopathy isn't very different from any religion."
-- Craig A. James, claimng another death by homeopathy, as The Religion Virus.
Richard Craig McNew, 34, a former "Overachievers" traveling magazine salesman, pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges that he raped and killed 90-year-old Anna Elizabeth Vuori in her home three years ago, and is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
"The CIA has issued a statement after last week’s catastrophic waterboard incident in Guantanamo that embarrassed the agency and raised questions about security.
The events unfolded as a suspected terrorist was being interrogated and the session went on for nearly four hours. According to sources, the suspect 'seemed to enjoy it' and at one point nearly fell asleep.
An investigation revealed the water had been inadvertently stored next to a photograph of Valium and aspirin, and had apparently retained that memory. The origin of the photo is unknown, and calls to NewAge World Headquarters in the Sedona suburb of Circle Rock, AZ went unanswered. A spokesperson in the Roswell, NM office declined comment.
In a brief statement, the detainee told reporters he felt relaxed, pain-free and 'very clean.'
The water has been checked into a rehab program."
