the good old days

“Disgusted mother” commented on my anti-anti-vaccination post from months ago…

We could also discuss the aluminum, electively aborted fetal cells, calf serum, etc. in vaccines, and how vaccinations are cultured in ground up monkey kidneys and other animal byproducts. Why don’t you all start looking outside the box instead of trying so hard to stay in. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that vaccines are not good for us. Our GOVERNMENT OWNED vaccine Gaurdisil has been killing young girls. Can we say population control? Just because you can’t see through the bullshit doesn’t mean that the people who can are crazy. Knowledge is power. You should really read more.

Ma’am, it’s hardly useful to be so far outside the box that you can’t even see it.

• In an amazing coincidence, I do have the superpower of being able to see through bullshit. Yours is remarkably transparent for being heaped so high.
• Merck owns Gardasil, not the government.
• I certainly can say “population control” (can we say “pompous bitch”, hmm?), but: the 11 deaths that were claimed (with no worthwhile evidence) to be linked to Gardasil… 11 dead out of the thousands vaccinated is a ridiculously ineffective way of controlling a population, even if there was a conspiracy to control the population by murdering young girls with vaccines, which there isn’t.
• While we could discuss miscellaneous bullshit theories, I won’t, since you have only provided scary buzzwords instead of any vague semblance of evidence or facts. Find history, not histrionics, then we can talk.

Hope your kids have fun with mumps, chickenpox, diphtheria, hepatitis, and cervical cancer. Just keep them the hell away from mine while they’re playing Typhoid Mary.

What’s extra scary about this commenter: she posted from within the healthcare system. Her IP address 209.37.141.254 [gnat-corp.osfhealthcare.org] indicates she works with OSF Healthcare in Peoria, IL. She posted at 10pm, and I’m hoping that she was just visiting somebody in the hospital and used their computer, because the alternative is that she’s a night nurse. It’s disturbing that somebody so completely unqualified in basic intelligence (not to mention scientific thought) might be treating sick people in Peoria.

Well, there’s actually no such thing, officially. However, today marks the centennial anniversary of a big explosion near the Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia. The remote location and lack of scientific observation of the occurrence have led to a number of silly theories; however, established theory is that it was a very big meteor that exploded very close to the surface of the planet.

But reality is dull. Let’s amuse ourselves with a bit of ridiculous nonsense instead! Namely, that the explosion caused hyperfertility in local flora, now captured for the modern world in a nutritional supplement (originally found via Bad Astronomy Blog).

Rather than making a desert of the area, the event created a kind of Garden of Eden, an oasis of fertility resulting in “miracle harvests” of the plants grown there.

Oh, it gets better… with their the Tunguska Timeline.

1927-1930 … lush, green vegetation is emerging from beneath felled trees and charred earth.

ZOMG! The plants are growing back!

1931-1949 … While the world is in the throes of war and Russia suffers the oppression of Communism, the Tunguska plants are quietly thriving.

Amazing! Communism usually kills plants!

1950s … As WWII ends and the Cold War begins, Tunguska research becomes the passion of courageous scientists around the world whose curiosity can be slowed but not stopped by the Communists.

OH NOES! Communism also tries to kill scientific curiosity!

1980s … Menotti Galli of Bologna, Italy, visits Tunguska and determines that embedded in the Tunguska vegetation are unusual concentrations of essential minerals known for their ability to conduct energy.

Actually, Galli didn’t physically visit Tunguska until 1991. When he did, he learned that the trees picked up “unusually high levels of elements like copper, gold, and nickel”. (I am fairly sure this only applies to trees around in 1908 which got showered with bits of exploding rock.) At least one of these essential minerals can be introduced to your body by drinking Goldschläger, which is probably cheaper.

2000-2005 … From among thousands of plants reborn from the ashes of Tunguska, scientists identify the ten most concentrated with therapeutic properties.

9/11 conspiracy theory discussion going on, one cubicle over…

… just a quick note to say how much I hate those fucking idiots!

A co-worker lost part of a filling in a tooth, so went to the dentist yesterday. Today he was bitching about it to another guy…

They had to take an x-ray of the teeth, and it’s just they sit you down and cover you up and take a picture and you’re done. And that part of the bill was $50!

Let’s get some perspective here. They just used extremely focused radiation in an extremely controlled fashion to take pictures of the inside of your teeth, so your problem could be correctly and thoroughly diagnosed and appropriate steps be taken to fix the tooth. That’s not worth fifty dollars? I realize fifty bucks buys a lot of cheap low-quality crap from Walmart, but is that really more important than your teeth?

Especially since he won’t even pay it himself.

I mean it’s not the money, insurance covers THAT. It’s the damn principle of the thing! FIFTY DOLLARS! DAMN!

Oh come on! Just shut up and be happy that you live in an time and country where your dentist has technology more sophisticated than pliers and elbow grease. If you’re so concerned about principle — and that principle is, apparently, the International Dental Conspiracy — tie one end of a string to a doorknob and the other to your sore tooth and get it over with DIY-style. Don’t let the International Dentist Conspiracy win.

I always found Friday the 13th to be so seriously underwhelming. “OOOOOOH, you don’t want to do THAT!” my friends would squeal about anything totally random. “It’s FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH! It’ll go wrong!”

Today, June 13th, is my son’s birthday, and it is going to go beautifully. Babies are great: everything is so totally extreme to them. He will smear cake all over himself and think that is the Best Thing Ever. His older sister will open presents for him and he will think that is the Best Thing Ever. He will be bounced and cuddled and cooed over and he will think that is the Best Thing Ever. He will probably fall and bonk his head and that is the Worst Thing Ever, but then he gets picked up and comforted which is the Best Thing Ever. And that stacking shape toy thing that’s his present… you guessed it, Best Thing Ever.

I am immune to friggatriskaidekaphobia because I have a frigging awesome baby party to attend. Booyah. I don’t even care about the forecast of rain, because even if it comes true, Baby Boy has taught me that rain can be the Best Thing Ever.

So thanks, Frigg, if you’re actually responsible for fertility, because the kids are loads of fun and very educational.

But the mortallest enemy unto Knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a peremptory adhesion unto Authority, and more especially, the establishing of our belief upon the dictates of Antiquity. For (as every capacity may observe) most men of Ages present, so superstitiously do look on Ages past, that the Authorities of the one, exceed the reasons of the other: Whose persons indeed being far removed from our times, their works, which seldom with us pass [unquestioned] either by contemporaries, or immediate successors, are now become out of the distance of Envies; and the farther removed from present times, are conceived to approach the nearer unto truth it self. Now hereby methinks we manifestly delude our selves, and widely walk out of the track of Truth. — Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1672)

With that reflection, let’s look at one of the world’s oldest Authorities of Antiquity… astrology!

You’re still filled with great mental energy today and should be able to start just about any project on the right foot.

SO NOT. I am queasy and listless thanks to inadequate sleep/caffienation, the presence of in-laws in town, and a greasy breakfast sandwich.

You are in tune with the practical issues in the work place today. A firm sense of direction will help get you to your destination.

Uh, my work place is shutting down in three weeks. Not many practical issues to be in tune with, and who needs direction to know our destination is JOBLESS?

Family needs are important and there is no question about attending a family event this evening…. You are the cheerleader and the inspiration for your family and friends.

Actually my mother-in-law secretly hates me for being younger than she is, which is really creepy because I don’t think she would want a daughter-in-law who is OLDER than she is, or maybe she actually would, which is even creepier. My position isn’t so much “cheerleader” as it is “bearer of grandchildren that aren’t quite as fulfilling as Nana expected.”

I guess my parents lied about when I was born, because my Virgo horoscopes are always ironic, twisted versions of true reality.

I really like “friendship bread.” I think it’s delicious. My mother had a starter of this when I was growing up, and we ate it for years. After a while, we got a bit tired of it (and got more busy, as my brother and I went through adolescence), and gave up. Now, fifteen years later, I got a chance to get another starter. Great, I thought, I can have this again! Fits in well with my fairly-new tendency to make things from scratch, and it means I’ll have a delicious cakey bread every ten days but not too often.

I was a bit surprised to see the starter offered as “Amish friendship bread” — when we had our batch, it wasn’t called Amish. I have no clue how that mythology started, since one ingredient for the bread itself is a box of instant pudding (how very non-modern). And I was infuriated to read this at the end of the instruction page…

If you lose your starter you will have to get another one from a friend! ONLY THE AMISH know the SECRET INGREDIENT to making a new starter, so keep yours going!

That is pathetic. It’s intuitively obvious what the SECRET INGREDIENT is — something that replicates itself ad nauseum, since otherwise it would be diluted out of the solution. So, the SECRET INGREDIENT is alive. So, it is good ol’ yeast. (Duh, right?) I was amused for a while by the possibility that perhaps this was homeopathic Amish friendship bread, and the SECRET INGREDIENT was somehow made more powerful by dilution…

How sad is it that baking has become a mysterious art? I have a lot of respect for the Amish and Mennonite ability to cope, even thrive, without most modern technologies. But they aren’t keepers of some secret magic. Two generations ago, every woman knew how to bake; today, it’s all about pre-mixed tricks. Yeast was once as normal an ingredient as flour, but today it’s become a mysterious unknown additive.

There is, of course, the distinct possibility that I am taking this much too seriously. Wikipedia, that most credulous of online sources, disputes the Amish mythology behind friendship bread. My Sister’s Kitchen blog has a great post about “AFB” which debunks the myths (such as “NO METAL!”) and, in the comments, has a long list of variations (chocolate, ZOMG!), suggestions, and tricks.

I was chatting with a couple engineers today, and one of them mentioned that a guy he knows has a PhD, but doesn’t seem to be all that smart. “I mean, obviously he’s smart enough,” he added, “but he seems to be lacking a lot of common sense, that really surprises me.”

Somehow — and I seriously don’t know how — this morphed into “people without degrees who operate on the fringes of science have incredible, revolutionary theories which are quashed by Institutional Knowledge who don’t want things to get out.” The example one engineer gave was that everything has a natural frequency (true) which can be used to cure disease (uhhh… not true).

I mean, take the Rife Machine. The guy who invented it, he got an award for how well it worked, he could cure cancer. It was the solution, just find the right vibration and the cancer was gone. Just amazing! They paid him tons of money to buy the rights, and then they destroyed it. The medical community didn’t want that getting out!

No mention of what that award he won was. I guess that happened at the same time the pharmaceutical companies bought off the inventor of the cure for diabetes, while staging the moon landing and blowing up the World Trade Center, because big corporations will kill people for fun and profit and leave no traces of their mischief.

I can’t even get away from these people at work. I thought engineers were supposed to be clever and rational. (That’s my own version of Lab Coat Awe.) We work at a big corporation, for fuck’s sake — we know first-hand that it is nothing more than a conglomeration of dumbfuckery. They can’t figure out how to stay in business, and this is the sort of setup that can conspire to hide medical revolutions?

I read an article this morning about an outbreak of pertussis in a California school which resulted in closing school to try to control the epidemic. Apparently, it’s a school where only about half the students have the normal required round of vaccinations; most parents had opted-out (presumably due to fears of autism).

This drives me up the wall. Autism is not caused by vaccines. The thimerasol (mercury-based preservative), which was initially blamed, has been out of vaccines for years now; multiple scientific studies show that the rate of autism has risen since then. Now anti-vaccinationists rely on the bugaboo of “toxins” without bothering to define them — no science, just fearmongering. Thus whooping cough is able to spread.

Pertussis isn’t just a “bad cough”, it’s agonizing. Similarly, chicken pox isn’t just a week of itching, it’s a ticket to shingles (agonizing pain, again). Polio is crippling (FDR wasn’t in a wheelchair for fun). Rubella causes dreadful complications in pregnant women. Diphtheria kills. Smallpox kills. I’m not a fan of putting all sorts of weird stuff in my kids bodies — I buy organic food, for example — but fuck, letting them die instead? Kinda defeats the purpose.

Modern medicine works. Let it. And in the meantime, keep your “wholesome” unvaccinated children the hell away from me and my family.

UPDATE: Bad Astronomy Blog was ranting about this at the same time I was today

In the Middle Ages, people had visions. In modern times, it’s more common to have various holy apparitions appear in food (cheese sandwiches, tortillas, potatoes, etc.)… and now, deus in machina.

This past January, James Randi has received a letter from an applicant for the JREF million dollar prize, in which the author describes mysterious communications on his computer.

Guh…

A frequent user of any word processing software is probably familiar with the automatic word checks it will do for you. I’m willing to make a large bet that this guy is using Microsoft Word, which ships with the checkers turned on, and see those green/red squiggly underlines that are on his screen but not on the paper when it prints out… with no idea what the software is doing, he concludes divine intervention is the cause.

It’s more sad than anything else, really — I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell him his deep religious experience is just a spell check. (Bill Gates is so totally not the Messiah.) But at the same time, he’s trying to peddle this deep religious experience for money…