Wikipedia's Boss Called "Holistic Healers" Crazy Liars

There's been a Change.org petition circulating, demanding NewAge witchdoctors be allowed to amend the information on their practices in Wikipedia. Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, replied:

  "You have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful.

Wikipedia’s policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

What we won’t do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn’t."

And with that bit of TMR, once again - slowly but surely - the western world takes another step towards my American ideal,...

Study Hard (Because It May Be The One Thing You Do)

The Onion has a piece called How Can I Use Feminism To My Advantage? that reads like it's from a young Ann Althouse:

I wanted to cash in on the centuries-long subjugation of my gender, too! 

Many modern women are afraid to call themselves feminists. I often remind these weak, confused women of the words of Gloria Steinem: "In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist." When I first read Steinem, she awoke ambitions I never knew I had. I wanted to be just like her—powerful, famous, and financially well off. 

Since my awakening, I've memorized quotations from feminists of all stripes, from Betty Friedan to Susan Faludi. Decades of activists have left persuasive arguments in support of my campus group's private study lounge in the student union. Hey, whatever works. Take that, International Students Club! Have fun studying in the library, with all the other losers who don't have a dedicated study lounge. 

Not all feminists have this attitude, and I'm relieved. If they did, feminism wouldn't work half as well as it does. Most of the women in the network are fully committed to eradicating harmful gender stereotypes and redefining sexual archetypes. I am, too, whenever it places me in a favorable social position.

Yep, that's our girl - exploitive to the end. Here's her Wikipedia page. See if you can grasp her larger significance, because I can't. No lives saved. No ground broken (except for herself, as The Onion jokes). No true challenges to anything - not even "the patriarchy". No reason to ever think she's anything other than superficially "smart" and unworthy of admiration. Not a single contribution, or concern, for the country or mankind. 

Here's, ultimately, what I found:

Althouse has a degree in fine art from the University of Michigan, B.F.A. 1973, and graduated first in her class from New York University School of Law, J.D. 1981.

Translation: 

The woman with some of the worst taste in art imaginable can still memorize like a motherfucker (landing her smack dab in the "artists who can't - teach" category).

Other than her nephew being a famous golfer, there's not much else. First in her class, and she's famous for riding the feminist-with-a-mouth train, and nothing more.

Her "career" is being Al Sharpton in a dress.

Seriously, there's nothing else there. She's just another insane middle class cipher (look at that photo) taking up valuable space, the amazing memory failing her when updating her biography. 

Wikipedia does mention her famous never-again-mentioned statement on the Obama cult - that he used "trickery" to get the dummy's vote - but, for instance, there's not a single word about her repeated public breakdowns (whether on Wikipedia or her blog) which I find all-around-dishonest. Her one-sided and ignorant broadsides against the Catholic church, in defense of her gay son, don't get mentioned either (She supposedly "teaches" on religion and the Constitution, which must be fun to hear,...). And her goofy racial obsessions - she once saw racism in an innocent smiling statue - get nothing. 

That should tell you how Ann, and biographies on Wikipedia, "work". Just leave out the shit everybody needs to know and viola! You've got Ann Althouse: Rule Breaker, or something else immature she can imagine herself, drunkenly, from a cafe'. (There's no "wine box" mentions on Wikipedia either - a total whitewash.)

Are you starting to get the picture of how Ann's "succeeded"?

No mention the crazy lady is crazy. The crazy lady keeps her trap quiet, too - while calling men out because, she thinks, no one will ever discover she's nuts. And she's riding that shit to the bank, laughing with her "feminist husband" (she's got two) on getting one over on the unsuspecting public. 

In other words, in a decent world - or if she was a man - she'd be a user, a loser, and a pig.

She's definitely been a bad example to her push-over of a kid - and decent bloggers everywhere,...

 

So Good I Need To Buy A Neon Hand With An Eye In It

I know, for a blogger, it's a silly little obsession, but once everyone understands it - and, most importantly, it's implications - it seems to become their silly little obsession as well:

"What I want to know is this: why is this legal?  Or, if it is not legal, then what can be done about it?  I'm quite sure that the clerk himself had no direct financial interest in defrauding me, and likely didn't even know he was doing it."

That's a guy named Jimmy Wales, but you'll never guess who Jimmy Wales is. 

I couldn't guess.

Whoa - I feel another tremor in The Force: 

 

Don't look now but there's more trouble brewing in La-La-Land,…

 

Whenever You Hear NewAgers Declare "It's All Connected" - They Do Mean It Is All Connected!

Awww, look:

Fidel Castro has a logo for his new Wikipedia clone that,...looks,...suspiciously like Obama's!

Which is great because, much like cultism, we love to see traditions kept alive:

All Together Now

"Wikipedia, the giant online encyclopedia anyone can edit, has decided to block contributions from computers owned by the Church of Scientology, saying that it has changed copy to advance its own agenda."

-- ABC News.

"Norway is considering prosecuting some Scientology practices. The Ministry of Health and Care Services says that the use of the 'OCA' personality test in sales may constitute fraud as well as being part of a pattern of medical malpractice.

The statement came after three undercover journalists took the test. Scientology staff said they should buy a course to solve psychological issues. One was advised to avoid medical care; another was told she needed either a course or 'chemicals'.

A Scientology spokesman blamed individual staff and disclaimed responsibility. The test is notorious since a Norwegian suicided the same evening she received negative results and was subjected to 'hard sell' in a Scientology center in Nice, France."

-- Short News.

"The Church of Scientology in France went on trial on Monday on charges of organised fraud."

-- Reuters.

"The interior ministers of Germany's 16 states have launched an investigation into the activities of the Church of Scientology, hoping to assemble the evidence to support banning the U.S.-based organization from operating in Germany."

-- TIME Magazine.

It's O.K.: According To NewAgers Nobody Really Needs To Be "Informed" Of Anything Anyway

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn’t come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up. It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

-- Shane Fitzgerald, who, upon the death of the french composer, placed a made-up a quote on Wikipedia - that was immediately relayed around the world by the media without question - proving once again (as if we needed a reminder after the Barack Obama/John Edwards fiasco of the last election) there is no "media watchdog" but a bunch of trained parrots incapable of independent thought, unlike at Little Green Footballs.

"May The Farts Be With You" - Wait,...

"For homeopathic treatments to work, basic well-understood concepts in chemistry and physics would have to be wrong."

-- Wikipedia, proving "basic well-understood concepts in chemistry and physics" aren't as basic - or well-understood - by NewAge liberals as we'd like to think.

Finally: Wikipedia Becomes A Little Less Weird

"The human comedy that is Wikipedia just lost one of its more intriguing players.

Late December saw the departure of uber-administrator Jossi Fresco, a longtime member of a worldwide religious movement that Time Magazine lists among the mega-cults of the 1970s, the heyday of the mega-cult.

Fresco retired after another contributor - known only as 'Durova' - publicly questioned his Wikibehavior. Durova launched an ad hoc investigation into Fresco's on-site habits in response to a February article from The Register.

With a post to Wikipedia, Fresco said he retired 'because he could.'

Fresco is a student of Prem Rawat - formerly Guru Maharaj Ji - the India-born spiritual leader who styled himself as the 'Perfect Master' and fostered a worldwide religious movement encouraging followers to call him 'Lord of the Universe.' Fresco has acknowledged that he works for an organization "related" to Prem Rawat, and according to an ex-Rawat-follower and former friend, he served on the guru's personal staff, building his first website.

Wikipedia fancies itself a 'neutral' encyclopedia. But for years, Jossi Fresco maintained strict control over the site's Prem Rawat article and countless related articles. When our initial story appeared, the Wikipedia Prem Rawat article did not include the word cult."

-- Cade Metz, with a story that leaves TMR wondering if things will improve at the online encyclopedia, for The Register.

How Far "Ahead Of The Curve" Can You Get?

"The mysterious Stonehenge was a dance arena for ancient revellers listening to 'trance-style' music, according to one professor who is an expert in sound.

Stonehenge has baffled archaeologists who have argued for decades over the stone circle's 5,000-year history - but now academic Dr Rupert Till believes he has solved the riddle by suggesting it may have been used for ancient raves."

-- The Daily Mail

"If someone decides to use nuclear weapons in anger, I hope he buys enough carbon credits beforehand – people and things vaporized by the ensuing fires will put a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere."

-- Frederick C. Kurz, responding to a Dianne Feinstein column on nuclear weapons, in a comment to The Wall Street Journal.


"Incompetence and infighting are endemic to nonprofits, of course. But Wikipedia's bureaucracy is distinctly, fearsomely awful. The site, which dictates the online reputation of countless living people and companies, itself operates by rules that are completely incomprehensible, determined by a self-appointed group of volunteer editors who can seldom stop arguing over obscurities to explain their ways to outsiders."

-- Owen Thomas, giving us all a WTF? moment, over at the ValleyWag.

"A group called the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee is urging President-elect Barack Obama to "end the six-decade truth embargo" on UFOs. Specifically, the group wants Obama to 'demand a full briefing' from the military and intelligence agencies on what they know about extraterrestrial phenomena. They want him to press for congressional hearings. They want him to 'formally acknowledge the extraterrestrial presence.' And make available for development the technologies that aliens have brought to Earth. 



They want him to open thousands of pages of documents, and who knows, maybe even divulge the plot of 'Battlestar Galactica's' final season before it airs this winter."

-- The Chicago Tribune

Cultists Always Get Caught: Wikipedia Is Weird

"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.

The Macho Response: Clint Eastwood (Again!!!)

"I never look at the Internet for just that reason."

-- Clint Eastwood, looking "slightly aghast" when A) told his wikipedia page claims he's a vegan, and B) it was explained to him exactly what a vegan is, in The New York Times.

No, No, No - It Just Kills And Destroys People

"It's not a threat or some cult."

-- Giovanni Ribisi, actor and "active Scientologist" (AKA a member of "the world's most dangerous cult") who attended the December 2005 opening of Scientology's 'Psychiatry: An Industry of Death' Museum. His twin sister, Marissa, is also a Scientologist, "married to Scientologist indie-rocker Beck," according to Giovanni's web page on the very-cult-friendly (and sometimes wrong) online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia.

TMRs Favorite E-Mail Of The Day

"To the The Crack Emcee, 



How about we call it what it is from now on. Stupidity. I'm not willing to struggle with the cognitive dissonance of 'They're intelligent BUT'.. or 'They're smart..BUT'. 



That your co-workers have cars and responsibilities doesn't mean they aren't dumb. They are in fact dumb and stupid, and will likely remain so.



And well-to-do has no direct relationship with very smart. Stupid people can be TRAINED to do most things, even brain surgery. This appears to make them look intelligent, but it is only TRAINING. As you pointed out about your new friends, 'they know very little outside of how to make it there'. 



Stupidity should not be confused with poor memory, poor immediate recall or lack of information or facts due to lack of exposure to the subject.



You can spot the stupid by the reaction to supplied missing information. The stupid will be left confused, bewildered or blank, and you rarely see the light bulb come on to some simple thing they didn't know before.



Couple that with incredible tenacity in clinging to the absolutely absurd, and you have stupid to the tenth power, known as 'NewAge'.



Consider this definition of stupidity from Wikipedia;



..stupidity denotes an incapability or unwillingness to properly consider the relevant information.



And this:



Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pg A133/B172; tr. J.M.D. Meiklejohn; Paul Guyer (1998) translation:



'The lack of the power of judgment is that which is properly called stupidity, and such a failing is not to be helped. A dull or limited head, which is lacking nothing but the appropriate degre [sic] of understanding and its proper concepts, may well be trained through instruction, even to the point of becoming learned. But since it would usually still lack the power of judgment (the secunda Petri), it is not at all uncommon to encounter very learned men who in the use of their science frequently give glimpses of that lack, which is never to be ameliorated.'



You were the only one in your group of friends that day (and everyday, judging by your excellent site) that isn't stupid. Car or no car.



By the way, have you seen the movie 'Idiocracy'? I used to think it was an amusing comedy but I now see it as a documentary."

-- "JRN", immediately getting on my good side, in TMR's comment section.

By the way, JRN: I've only seen part of " 'Idiocracy" but I'll check it out on your recommendation (that was a recommendation, wasn't it?) and, dude, thanks for the punch in the arm - I really needed it.

The Cover-Up Continues,...

"Yesterday evening, the entry for Jay McInerney's book Story of My Life contained the tidbit that his inspiration for protagonist Allison Poole, whom he has described as "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year-old," is none other than his ex-girlfriend Rielle Hunter, who just happens to be the woman with whom Edwards is allegedly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife. Today, that little nugget has been deleted."

-- Walker Boyd, on the busy little Left-wing beavers at Wikipedia - and with some choice quotes from McInerney's book - over at Radar Online

Message to Democrats: this won't work, people - what do you think you're doing? How many times must it be repeated that the cover-up is always worse than the crime? You NewAgers will never learn.

I said long ago, the Democratic Party would bring down Obama, and you guys are making it happen right before my eyes. It's incredible - and incredibly stupid. One slip-up - just one - and your whole house of tarot cards is going to come tumbling down.

The American people* won't stand for it.

*Special message to those who are donating money:

Fuck - you assholes are making me feel humbled. (That's new.) Thank you. And, I promise, I'll try to keep up my end. Assholes. (Smile)

Cultists Working Overtime

"Despite the fact that the basic facts of the evening seem to be proven, Wikipedia's power-mad power-users are immediately deleting any and all mention of the John Edwards lovechild scandal the second any other user adds it."

-- Gawker