I'm The Man: I Know It Like The Back Of My Hand

Somebody's got to be right in this world, Ladies and Gentlemen:

"The IPCC—which has produced four omnibus assessments of climate science since 1992—has issued several embarrassing retractions from its most recent 2007 report, starting with the claim that Himalayan glaciers were in danger of melting as soon as 2035. That such an outlandish claim would be so readily accepted is a sign of the credulity of the climate campaign and the media: Even if extreme global warming occurred over the next century, the one genuine scientific study available estimated that the huge ice fields of the Himalayas would take more than 300 years to melt—a prediction any beginning chemistry student could confirm with a calculator. (The actual evidence is mixed: Some Himalayan glaciers are currently expanding.) The source for the melt-by-2035 claim turned out to be not a peer-reviewed scientific assessment, but a report from an advocacy group, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which in turn lifted the figure from a popular magazine article in India whose author later disavowed his offhand speculation. 

But what made this first retraction noteworthy was the way in which it underscored the thuggishness of the climate establishment. The IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri (an economist and former railroad engineer who is routinely described as a 'climate scientist'), initially said that critics of the Himalayan glacier melt prediction were engaging in 'voodoo science,' though it later turned out that Pachauri had been informed of the error in early December—in advance of the U.N.’s climate change conference in Copenhagen—but failed to disclose it. He’s invoking the Charlie Rangel defense: It was my staff’s fault.

But Pachauri’s days as IPCC chairman are likely numbered; there are mounting calls from within the IPCC for Pachauri to resign, amid charges of potential conflicts of interest (like Gore, Pachauri is closely involved with commercial energy schemes that benefit from greenhouse gas regulation) but also in part because Pachauri chose this delicate moment to publish a soft-core pornographic novel. (The main character is an aging environmentalist and engineer engaged in a 'spiritual journey' that includes meeting Shirley MacLaine, detailed explorations of the Kama Sutra, and group sex.)"

See, when I - The Crack Emcee - say such-and-such is motherfucking NewAge pseudoscience, then god damn it, you can take it to the motherfucking bank, that motherfucking such-and-such is motherfucking NewAge pseudoscience. Are we clear?

ARE WE CLEAR?

A Man Being Listened To (That No One Hears) II

I'm starting to think this "not hearing" thing is on purpose,...

A Man Being Listened To (That No One Can Hear)

It Is Truly A Mad "Whirled" (When The Most Mainstream Skeptic Is Also The Most Radical)

"An anti-New-Wage blogger who had once been sort of an ally, but whose politics as well as his views on the evils of New-Wage culture are a bit too radical even for me, recently published a blog post about what a complete and utter hypocrite I am."

That's a quote from a post (partially) about me, from "Cosmic Connie" at Whirled Musings, and I thought, finally, it deserved a reply. I mean, she wrote it all the way back in December:

Dear Connie, I still consider you an ally, I just can't stand your,...your,...whatever he is.

(I am not going to mention him by name because I do not wish to rile the beast of Buddha,...)

Anyway, as long as you keep he and I apart, we're cool.

You're ditzy as fuck, but we're still cool.

As far as my "radical" politics goes, it seems to me, someone who supported Obama's election - as you, your Significant Other, and many of those who hang out at Steve Salerno's SHAMblog did - would be confused by what, at the time, was one lone black man taking a political position in opposition to, amongst other things, Oprah Winfrey's choice of "The One".

(Salerno himself even went so far as to suggest I might be an Uncle Tom for not voting for Obama, without a harsh word in PC protest from anyone, or ever an apology from Salerno for suggesting such a stupid thing. You see, I hurt his feelings as well, for telling him he'd gone delusional over soon-to-be-President Weirdo.)

Nowadays, of course, I'm obviously ahead of the curve.

And - considering it's the Tea Party Movement that, right now, best represents, politically, what I've been saying all along - that's hardly "radical".

It's just American.

Like I said:

It's easy to see how an Obama supporter would get confused.

And finally, about me and NewAge:

I helped bring down a killer quack - in France - while challenged constantly by those claiming to be on "my side" (including you and Captain Know-It-All.)

Meanwhile, in England, bloggers are dismantling, both, homeopathy and chiropractic practices.

But what have I found, mostly, from America?

Except for (my sister blog) Panda Bear, M.D. and Chris Locke's Mystic Bourgeoisie (probably the Crown Jewel of NewAge studies) I've mostly found your trademark snark and loads and loads of Orac's Respectful Insolence, but not much else.

My impression is you - who know the harm NewAge causes and know the harm it's caused me personally - have no serious intention of ever stopping NewAge, because you're liberals, and bloggers, and, Damn It All To Hell, it keeps you in material. It's just jokes.

At least, that's the best I can come up with.

So like, whatever, I'm not doing this to preach - I'm done.

I just needed to get that off my chest.

It's off now.

Goodnight.

Duck And Cover: This One Has Got It All

Sheer brilliance:

"The world has been placed on a heightened security alert following reports that New Age terrorists have harnessed the power of homeopathy for evil. ‘Homeopathic weapons represent a major threat to world peace,’ said President Barack Obama, ‘they might not cause any actual damage but the placebo effect could be quite devastating.’

The H2O-bomb has been developed by the radical New Age group, The Axis of Aquarius. In a taped message to the world, their leader, Professor Hubert Pennington, said: ‘For too long the New Age movement has been dismissed as a bunch of beardy weirdy cranks and charlatans. But now we have weapons-grade homeopathy and we demand to be taken seriously.’

Homeopathic bombs are comprised of 99.9% water but contain the merest trace element of explosive. The solution is then repeatedly diluted so as to leave only the memory of the explosive in the water molecules. According to the laws of homeopathy, the more that the water is diluted, the more powerful the bomb becomes.

Meanwhile, new security measures at airports require that all water bottles be scanned to ensure that they are not being used to smuggle the memory of an explosion on board a plane.

‘Homeopathic weapons are the ultimate Smart Bombs,’ warned President Obama, ‘They are so smart that they only affect the gullible. The only defence is for everyone to remain calm, vigilant and to always wear a magic vibrating crystal.’"

Click the title to understand it better (you'll never understand it.)

Left Vs. Right: The Dark, Dark Hours (Now)

Ha! James Dean and Ronald Reagan, discovered together in a TV show, still acting as representative icons of their generation's political outlooks.

Dean's all wigged-out cool, once he tastes a little power, while Reagan fights to stay comically upright. Hell, the kid's even demanding free healthcare for his friends!

Don't tell me life ain't stranger than fiction.

It just is.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

The Only Guru I Ever Listened To (Is Dead)

"The influential rapper Guru has died in hospital aged 43 following a battle with cancer.

The Boston-born MC, real name Keith Elam, was hospitalised last month after he suffered a heart attack and had been in a coma.

Guru rose to fame in the 80s as one half of Gang Starr, the conscious rap group he founded with Grammy award-winning producer DJ Premier.

Gang Starr was credited with the birth of the Hip-Hop/Jazz genre."

-- The Daily Mail

This is a shock: I met Guru once - saw him perform, at least, a half dozen times. He was a really nice guy and one of the most prolific artists around. To say he will be missed is, both, a huge understatement and a lie:

Like most artists of note, through his work, he will be with us forever.

Conservatives: Missing The Forest For The Trees

"Probably no one has coined as many memorable phrases about belief than GK Chesterton. His key insight was to observe that 'human nature simply cannot subsist without a hope and aim of some kind'. Hope is like a drug which humanity can’t survive without. Therefore hope — and the faith that it will be fulfilled –  is 'as dangerous as fire.' The wisest treat it with caution because it can be twisted into a noose around their necks; but the most careless of humanity imagine themselves above it and fall into it more completely than those who see it from what it is. Chesterton wrote that 'the modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas.'"

Someone just sent me this Richard Fernandez piece, and that quote, above, made me laugh.

I was married to a killer NewAger, someone who was convinced - despite numerous failures - she could "heal", so the idea that "hope — and the faith that it will be fulfilled –  is 'as dangerous as fire'" isn't something I'm completely unfamiliar with.

As a matter of fact, I'd say I'm more familiar with the reality of Fernandez's topic than he is (I'm his "ordinary" guy who's been handed an "aim of some kind" while, apparently, he's a Christian who muses about cults now and then):

In other words, I've actually been living what he's just writing about - and writing about pretty cluelessly:



I think I might be able to see a few things Richard Fernandez, or most people reading this post, might not.

Like Chesterton's observation that "the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas" only leads me to Slavoj Žižek's observation that today "New Age 'Asiatic' thought ... is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism."

Didn't see that one coming, did you? That's right: you could already be under it's spell and not even know it.

Not getting mentioned much on the 6 'O Clock News, is it?

Yea, such little nuggets should start to inform your ideas about the reach of those "ridiculous" cult leaders pretty quick.

And you've got a lot of catching up to do:

"Political expression on the Left in the American sixties was split. Radical activists such as Students for a Democratic Society (1960-68) drew their ideology from Marxism, with its explicit atheism. But demonstrations with a large hippie contingent often mixed politics with occultism-magic and witchcraft along with costumes and symbolism drawn from Native American religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For example, at the mammoth antiwar protest near Washington, DC, in October 1967, Yippies performed a mock-exorcism to levitate the Pentagon and cast out its demons. Not since early nineteenth-century Romanticism had there been such a strange mix of revolutionary politics with ecstatic nature-worship and sex-charged self-transformation. It is precisely this phantasmagoric religious vision that distinguishes the New Left of the American 1960s from the Old Left of the American 1930s and from France's failed leftist insurgency of 1968, both of which were conventionally Marxist in their indifference or antagonism to religion."

That's the history of your enemy.

Richard Fernandez is on Pajamas Media with Victor Davis Hanson, who's looking at our current politics and crying, "What is the logic behind something so clearly unhinged?"

Maybe , if Fernandez ever reads this, he can show it to VDH and everything will start to make a lot more sense. You know, like this:

"The Material Girl is such a fervent believer, she reportedly paid almost $10,000 to have the radiators in her 10-bedroom London house filled with Kabbalah holy water so the heating system would radiate spirituality, according to London’s News of the World.

Madonna, 51, reportedly believes it gives the house a spiritual quality and will help heal and protect its residents. The Pope doesn’t even go to such lengths at the Vatican.

'It’s cost a fortune. She’d have Kabbalah water coming out of the kitchen taps if she could,' a source told the tabloid.
Word about holy water coursing through the house leaked (so to speak) when plumbers were called to her residence to fix a faulty radiator.

The housekeeper informed them that they couldn’t drain the radiator because of the water.

'The housekeeper was in a flap and told them it was blessed water and they could not drain it,' the source said.

'But they insisted they had to change a broken valve. It took almost an hour before she gave in and allowed them to put the water in steel buckets, pleading with them not to spill a drop.'

Holy Kabbalah water apparently was one of the reasons behind Madonna’s split from Ritchie.

She apparently blew up when he cancelled a near $20,000 order for Kabbalah holy water to fill the swimming pool at their Wiltshire house, the paper reported.

Madonna was also said to have caused an uproar when boy toy Jesus Luz’s parents found out that Madonna was trying to convert their Roman Catholic raised son to the mystical religion."

It's called NewAge, Gentlemen. And it'll haunt your dreams.