by

“Invasion of the Space Spiders” (Alien angel hair)

spider

As Y2K approached, an ominous substance slowly descended from the Western Australia sky. A man recorded to history only as Peter reported seeing oodles of white threads floating down and covering power lines, trees, and digeridoo-playing kangaroos. Similar to how extraterrestrial visitors to the U.S. always vacation in the Nevada Desert instead of on the Boston Common, these aliens chose the Outback while eschewing the Sydney Opera House during their 1999 sojourn.

In his report to the Australian UFO Registry, the mononymous Peter explained that the threads were not webbing nor a sticky substance. But that only tells us what it wasn’t. As to what it was, UFOlogists consider it the remnant of ionized air that peels off an alien spacecraft’s electromagnetic field. However, there exists a more Earthly explanation.

Before $800 hammers and toilet seats, wasteful military wasteful spending was focused on UFOs. In 1968, a resulting report described these threads as “a fibrous material which falls in large quantities, but is unstable and disintegrates and vanishes soon after falling.”

The report noted that the composition and origin was sometimes uncertain, but we now have a good idea of what it is. In the case Down Under, an entomologist reported that his car had been covered with the same mystery silly string that had perplexed Peter. The bug scientist further noted that his vehicle was inundated by hundreds of baby spiders, confirming his suspicion that the thread was the result of an arachnid migration. The entomologist deduced the substance to be siliceous cotton, better known as angel hair. He said that through a common phenomenon called ballooning, the eight-legged beasts disperse cotton when hatching from their cocoon. The wind catches the angel hair and carries it away, where it quickly disintegrates.

Less frequently, atmospheric electricity may cause floating dust particles to become polarized, and the attraction between these particles forces them together and this produces a substance sometimes mistaken for angel hair. In any event, the substances have a rational explanation, which means that iconoclasts need to rear their contrarian heads. 

Some UFOlogists see an extraterrestrial connection and there have been reports of angel hair from the sky for at well over a millennium. The better known manifestations include an appearance at Nuremberg in 1561 and in Portugal in 1917 as part of the Miracle at Fatima. The latter marked a period unusual solar activity that credulous Catholics took to be Jesus and friends dropping by for hot chocolate. There is no way to examine these claims, making them more appealing to those who use them as part of their proof.

UFO researcher Brian Boldman cited 225 cases of angel hair between beginning in 679 CE, and he says 57 percent also featured a UFO. With a percentage that significant, he asserts there may be a connection. Correlation yes, causation no. Believers may see what they consider a strange craft hovering one night, which prompts them to suspect they are observing angel hair remnants the next morning. Or they may come across angel hair and begin to suspect that the seeming helicopter from last night may have been something from much farther away.

Whenever the substance is reported, it tends to soon disappear, which is consistent with the siliceous cotton that is associated with migrating spiders. At the same time, this short existence means there are few chances to analyze it. Therefore, those who like speculating that it is instead something more interesting can do so because there’s no way to test against their idea. Sure, the spider substance secretion disintegrates quickly,  but maybe so too does the ionized air created by a UFO’s magnetic field.

Like their conspiracy theorist and cryptozoologist brethren, alien hunters sometimes paint themselves as curious individuals who are “Just Asking Questions.” But I have found that they are seldom interested in receiving an answer.

Consider what happened this week when the British tabloid The Sun reported that the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle may have been solved. Let me first interject that this is an example of Tooth Fairy Science, where someone attempts to determine WHY something is happening before establishing that it IS happening.

The Sun article read, “Strange clouds forming above the Bermuda Triangle could explain why dozens of ships and planes have mysteriously vanished in the notorious patch of sea. A new theory suggests the clouds are linked to 170-mph air bombs capable of bringing down planes and ships.”

The truth is, the number of craft lost over the last several decades is what would be expected of a heavy shipping lane in a hurricane-prone area. Bermuda, Miami, and Puerto Rico were subjectively chosen and these points and resultant Triangle are no more valid than any other shape one could concoct from various locales. The list of ships and planes that supposedly disappeared in the area include some that vanished literally halfway around the world but had previously passed through the Triangle. Further, some of the alleged disappearances were of ships and planes that were reported missing but eventually found.

But even if there was a mystery, paranormal believers don’t want it solved, especially not by mainstream media or the government. After the story ran, theorists pounced. A man with the somewhat presumptuous moniker Jean-Pierre proudly appealed to personal incredulity, announcing, “Most of the disappearances, if not all, happened on clear skies. I’m not buying this theory one bit and it remains a mystery.”  Next up was Olli, who was at least honest about his motivation: “I’ll take the myth and mystery over explanation. 170 mile per hour winds do not explain why a formation of planes disappear just off the coast while on radio contact, nor other disappearances.” Finally, Carol insists no answer will ever be found, declaring, “This is a mystery that will never be solved.”

And for her, it won’t be. The Bermuda Triangle, along with Atlantis, Bigfoot, angelic intervention, and alien visitors give some people more meaning in their lives. Whether they possess a desire to believe in something beyond the five senses or crave for something vaguely spiritual, they find it in these kinds of phenomenon. The world can be a scary, depressing place and we all need outlets. For some people, music, novels, and books are enough of an escape, but others seek something still deeper, and seeming mysteries can oblige.

I can relate to some degree. Now that I know who Deep Throat was, I don’t care who Deep Throat is. Now that the Red Sox have won the World Series, I don’t care if the Red Sox can win the World Series. Mysteries like Jimmy Hoffa, Jack the Ripper, and the Lost Colony of Roanoke are fascinating to contemplate, and while 80 percent of me wants to know the answers, the rest of me acknowledges that the appeal of those things would dissipate if the answers were revealed. 

But I wouldn’t be looking for ways to counter what researchers announced unless I had good reason to suspect their evidence was fabricated, incomplete, or misinterpreted. Finding the truth must always be paramount. I could never let the love of a good mystery stand in the way of valid solutions.

Besides ionized air, UFO lovers also suggest the angel hair may be excess energy converted into matter. No testing done on the angel hair or any research supports either of these conclusions. A third suggestion is offered by Diane Tessman at ufocasebook.com. She suspects that the beings piloting the flying saucers are plasma life forms and that the angel hair is left behind by “plasma activity,” not explaining what that is, how she knows it’s happening, or how we would know what it should look like.

She does relate an experiment during which “Plasma electromagnetic heat and radiation coupled with water and dust created a substance like angel hair.” Perhaps it did, but that is insufficient reason to presume angel hair follicles are leftovers from the plasma activities of the Thing From Zontar.

It is no coincidence that UFOs were never sighted before the advent of Earthly flying machines. There were no flying saucers observed by contemporaries of Lafayette, Francis Bacon, or Eric the Red. This strongly suggests that all the crafts observed over the last century are terrestrial.

Moreover, the gaping problem with the entire UFO field is that virtually all of the reported sightings come from inadvertent witnesses. If campers, motorists, and hikers had combined to see thousands of alien spacecraft, there should be upwards of a million sightings from professional astronomers and amateur stargazers. 

by

“Do you want lies with that?” (Fast food hysteria)

ronald2

McDonald’s is not my first culinary choice, nor even my 11th. But my home decision-making is limited to when schoolwork is done and when bedrooms are cleaned, so my five children see to it that we end up at the Golden Arches once or twice a month.

There, many dangers await, according to an assortment of gruesome graphics and frightful photos. We’ll look today at the stated dangers of a standard meal of a Big Mac, fries, and Coke. First, though, a couple of more items that appear in announcements featuring capital letters, multiple exclamation points, and exhortations to arise from slumber.

One video shows a McDonald’s cheeseburger being dipped in acid. The commentator notes that four hours later, it is merely darkened, not broken down, and invites viewers to imagine this black blob festering inside of them. However, the acid has no digestive properties, nor is it in someone’s stomach working with other organs to break the food down and dispense it through the body for nutritional benefit. The experiment is pointless from a scientific standpoint, but does meet its fearmongering intent.

Another video is of a hamburger that is said to be from two to 14 years old, yet neither this former cow nor the bun that houses it has begun to rot. There is no way to verify the hamburger’s age, but the claim could be true, and it has nothing to do with a plot between evil corporations, mad scientists, and Grimace. It has everything to do with storage. Lacking sufficient moisture in the food or surroundings, bacteria and mold will not grow and decomposition will not occur. A hamburger’s size and shape allow it to repel moisture quickly, which makes decomposition even less likely. And that’s true whether it’s a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a Jumbo Jack, or Amy’s California Veggie Burger.

Now onto the main course. A trio of viral graphics purports to establish that a Big Mac, Coke, and fries make for a most malevolent meal. We already know what happens to someone when they consume tens of thousands of Big Macs and Cokes. They make a couple of documentary cameos, get a book published, and become a slice of Americana and a borderline D List celebrity.

But the focus here is one serving of each, so let’s start with the sandwich and its distinctive two lower buns. The first point in the graphic is that the Big Mac hooks us because of how our ancestors adapted. It reads, “Our brains evolved during a time when food was scarce, so we became adept at choosing high-calorie foods.” This is meant to suggest that our Neolithic grandpappies needed high-calorie meals to survive because their brains were developing, but that we no longer need this and yet continue to crave it. Combined with our hunting-gathering now being limited to us foraging in the vicinity of the deep freeze, our bodies are paying a (literally) heavy price. But this point has the connection between high-calorie food and brain development backwards. It’s not that our brains evolved and grew, necessitating that we eat high calorie foods to compensate. Rather, we developed our cognitive function from scarfing food that was high in fat and protein, causing our brains to grow and develop.

Whatever the evolutionary impact of Big Mac consumption, the graphic next warns us that it will “trigger your brain’s reward system by releasing a surge of feel-good chemicals such as dopamine, which induce feelings of pleasure.” This is accurate, but is a half-truth without context. Anytime pleasure is received, dopamine is released. So if one enjoys Big Macs, here comes the neurotransmitter rush. This goes for any food, as well as roller coasters, poker, and listening to Beethoven, if one enjoys those pursuits.

The second half of this point reads, “This process works in a similar way to cocaine and contributes to the likelihood of compulsive eating.” This is at once the guilt-by-association and composition fallacies. For any neophyte critical thinkers out there, first, welcome to my blog. Second, a composition fallacy is when someone takes two items that maybe have something in common and asserts this means they are alike in totality. But while Big Macs and cocaine are both ingested and may enhance released dopamine, the similarities end there. No one goes into beef withdrawal, the special sauce doesn’t tear families apart, and no mother has ever given birth to a pickle-addicted baby.

A third claim warns of excessive amounts of high fructose corn syrup and sodium. Yet there are just seven grams of the former, compared to the 30 grams in fat-free yogurt. The sodium is a little high, but at just over 40 percent of the recommended daily limit, is not a dangerous amount. The graph further claims this could lead to dehydration, yet sports drinks contain sodium precisely because of the role it plays in replacing electrolytes lost through perspiration.

Next is an assertion that the Big Mac takes 51 days to digest. This is off by 50, by which I don’t mean that it takes 101 days. The graph offers no source for this and it has now gone from half-truths to zero-truths.

It then veers back to half-truths by accurately listing what is in the two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun. But it never bothers to explain the relevance and this is meant only to appeal to chemophobia. This is accomplished by  referencing ammonium sulfate, azodicarbonamide, and many other polysyllabic offerings. One could do this with almost any item, including human blood, green tea, and bananas.

Enough about the sandwich, on to what we are going to wash it down with. A second viral graphic makes some astonishing claims about what happens when one drinks a Coke. First up is the assertion that the 10 teaspoons of sugar in a serving would make the consumer vomit if it weren’t for phosphoric acid that makes it less sweet. But BuzzFeed quoted Dr. Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist, as saying, “This is not true. We have studied hundreds of participants in our studies who consumed beverages that contained more than 10 teaspoons of sugar, but no phosphoric acid. No one ever vomited due to the sweetness, and I don’t remember any of them ever reporting that they felt nauseated due to the sweetness.”

The graph also attempts the dopamine/drug gambit: “Your body ups your dopamine production by stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works.” The composition fallacy was addressed earlier, so here I just want to focus on the problem with cherry picking. A dopamine deficiency could lead to Parkinson’s, so taking this one isolated fact, a person could claim this shows that chugging away on Coke while shooting up heroin would be a beneficial for avoiding nervous system disorders.

Yet another tale of lurid lunches and diabolic dinners centers on McDonald’s French fries. The associated graph purports to show the difference between what we in the U.S. consume, compared to our northerly neighbors. Our fries are supposedly crammed with 17 dangerous Frankenstein concoctions, while the fortunate Canadians are worry-free.

Again, the chemophobia is almost as heavy as the ketchup I prefer on my fried potatoes. A long series of chemicals are listed without explaining what it means or why it should matter. And the truth is, dimethylpolysiloxane is there to reduce foaming and oil splattering, while sodium acid pyrophosphate is added to prevent the fries from turning gray. These agents and the rest play an important role and are all safe. Another key point is that toxicity and danger are determined by dose, not chemical or element.

When I pointed all this out to the Friend who posted the graphic, he lamented, “Why can’t we just have fries, salt, and ketchup?” Yet those could be made to sound scary if one doesn’t know better. Salt is a fusion of sodium and chloride, which are potentially dangerous on their own. Sodium will even explode under the right conditions. Ketchup has monosodium glutamate in it and potatoes contain chlorogenic acid. When I typed that last one, it gave me a squiggly line underneath. They don’t even know what it is and they are feeding it to our children!

When Mike Barrett at naturalsociety.com, writes, “McDonald’s fries contain a petrol-based chemical called tertiary butylhydroquinone,” he is either being ignorant or a fear monger. This ingredient serves as a food preservative and Barrett’s point is no more valid than him questioning the efficiency of Exxon’s gasoline because it has a common ingredient with a tasty side order.  

Barrett next asks, “Did you know that McDonald’s French fries contain a form of silicone found in Silly Putty?” I did not, though I was aware that the same element or chemical can be used safely in multiple products, as what it’s combined with will change its properties.

With a wealth of scientific information readily available, there is no excuse for spreading fear over facts. Had Barrett conducted a Google search, he would have found websites like chem4kids.com, where concepts like chemical reactions are explained in deliberately simple terms. I will make a point to introduce my children to that site the next time we access McDonald’s WiFi.

 

 

by

“Acids and baseless” (Alkaline diet)

alkalinepic

The alkaline diet proposes to alter a person’s pH through food intake, making for denser bones, leaner muscle, and a healthier heart. Following the diet might produce these benefits, but it has nothing to do with your body’s pH level.

Various forms of the diet list alleged acidic and alkaline foods, with the healthier ones being heavily in the latter group. Hence, sticking to the diet might result in weight loss and muscle gain, but not in pH alternation. Your body has the same pH balance as Big Mac devotee Don Gorske and a raw food fruitarian.

It has been suggested that promoters of this diet use “acid” and “alkaline” because these terms are among the few middle school science words that almost everyone remembers. But most of us fail to remember much beyond that, which is why it’s easy to get away with this diet’s mistaken claims.

So, a little refresher course. A pH level measures a substance’s acidity and alkalinity. A pH of 0 means completely acidic, while a pH of 14 is all alkaline. A pH of 7 is neutral. Blood has slight alkalinity, with a pH between 7.35 and 7.45. Stomachs are acidic to enable the breakdown of food, and generally have a pH of about 3.5. Diet proponents are fond of pointing out that urine changes depending on what is eaten, but this applies to nowhere else in the body. Eating acidic or alkaline foods has no impact on stomach or blood pH.

Another half-truth is that cancer cells die in an alkaline environment. They do, but so does almost every other cell type. Jacking up one’s alkaline content to avoid dying of cancer would work because you would croak from healthy cell loss instead.

Many of the alkaline diet lists include obviously acidic food like citrus fruits in the alkaline column. Meanwhile, preservatives like sodium benzoate are listed as acidic, despite being slightly alkaline. The main point here is the proponents’ carelessness with the truth. More important than the foods being listed incorrectly is than none of them will change the body’s pH level. If your blood changes its acidity or alkalinity, it is quickly changed back to normal. For this, we should be thankful. Without the proper pH balance, enzymes would be unable to carry out needed chemical reactions.

For a simple example of how this works, hold your breath until you pass out. If I had a lawyer, he or she would likely advise me against promoting this, but I don’t, so take a deep breath and hold it. This will force carbon dioxide to accumulate in your bloodstream, turning your blood acidic. When you pass out, you will resume breathing again and the pH balance will return.  

Like many other items, this balance is the key. With our body temperature, 98 degrees is ideal and going 10 degrees in either direction means death. With pH, any change greater than .5 is likewise fatal. The difference is that no one is hawking a diet with the stated goal of substantially raising or lowering one’s body temperature.

If the alkaline diet worked as advertised, the crazy protein overload favored by bodybuilders would be fatal. They gorge on protein-infused muffins, chocolate bars, and shakes, pumping in more protein than their muscle-bound bodies can store. The excess protein is converted to an organic acid that, if permitted to stay, would sink the pH to dangerous levels. To keep this from happening, calcium leaves the bones and neutralizes the organic acid.

To see the results of the body losing its ability to maintain its pH balance, visit your nearest dialysis machine. Damaged kidneys are unable to regulate a bloodstream’s acidity. This means vital chemical reactions stop, toxins concentrate, and the result is usually death. If the alkaline diet worked, it would be one of the few times that another alternative medicine staple, the detox, would be possible and desirable.

by

“Billy goat’s bluff” (Cubs curse)

cub-loss

The Chicago Cubs had Major League Baseball’s best record this season and are in position to win the pennant and World Series for the first time in 71 and 108 years, respectively. The last time the Cubs won the pennant, World War II had ended the month prior, while their last World Championship came midway between the Spanish-American War and World War I. Newspapers announcing that Cubs victory cost one cent.  

Two years prior to that, the Cubs won 116 games, the MLB record. When that team lost the World Series, there was no talk of any other cause than pitching, hitting, fielding, and base running. If such a monumental post-season letdown were to happen today, it would be considered a further vindication of the Curse of the Billy Goat.

The story has multiple versions, but the gist is that an enraged tavern owner declared in 1945 that the Cubs would never win the World Series again. After being a Wrigley Field regular all season, the goat was given the boot during the Fall Classic. Even today, the owner’s words have held true. Countering the idea of a curse is that when it was uttered, there were already 37 non-goat related championship-free seasons and the Cubs had lost their last seven World Series.

Belief in curses is a form of magical thinking, where two events are tied together and one said to cause the other, without considering other factors. Before going further, I want to stipulate that Cubs fans who cite the billy goat are different from believers in Tarot Cards or Ouija boards. There are people who genuinely believe in the power of those things, whereas few persons actually think a sports curse is real. A devotee of the sports page is going to have much less concern over a billy goat than a fervent Gemini will have over an ominous horoscope. Baseball fans spend the season analyzing possible trades, batting order changes, and middle relief shortcomings, with curses only being discussed late in contending seasons. Meanwhile, the horoscope enthusiast plans the totality of their lives around its words.

To further demonstrate the difference, consider how the two types react when prophecies are negated. When Boston’s Curse of the Bambino was reversed in 2004, Red Sox fans were euphoric. By contrast, astrology believers react with hostility when it’s pointed out horoscopes don’t work, that they merely contain general terms that would apply to most people and also mostly tell readers what they want to hear. If anyone believes in the billy goat curse, it is likely someone who believes in curses in general and not an octogenarian Cubbies fan fretting that it’s going to happen again.

So the point of this post is not to argue against the reality of sports curses, it’s to analyze why rational persons can become captivated by something they don’t believe in.

For this phenomenon to occur, the first requirement is that an alleged incident be highlighted as the starting point. This will allow the mass delusion and feeling of tormented community to take hold. If the billy goat had been allowed into Wrigley Field, maybe no curse would have ever been associated with the team. But once it got affixed, it was highlighted during Cub collapses in 1969, 1984, and 2003.

This leads to the second necessity, which is that at least some of the failures have to happen in spectacular fashion. Fans are by nature a nervous bunch and they can get caught up in the idea of a curse when their team repeatedly falls short despite getting close. The Red Sox were said to be under a curse for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees and they found incredible ways to lose late in the season at least a half dozen times. However, the championship drought endured by the Chicago White Sox began before Boston’s did and ended after it, yet the Pale Hose were not usually said to be under a curse. This was because they appeared in just one World Series from 1920 to 2005, they seldom had a division lead to blow, and they pretty much just sucked. A series of fifth-place finishes has none of the pizazz that comes with ground balls between the leg and base running blunders in late October.

A third factor is the human desire for explanations and an aversion to randomness. Evoking a curse can take care of these both. It is reassuring and satisfying for one play to serve as a microcosm for a gut-wrenching failure and latest curse manifestation. In Boston’s most infamous loss, Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Jim Rice was thrown out at home by 20 feet after a horrible third-base coaching decision. Yet almost no one remembers that play and even Bob Stanley’s wild pitch, uncorked with a runner on third and Boston one out away from winning the Series, isn’t shown once for every 100 times that Bill Buckner’s error is broadcast.

The idea of external powers coming into play only applies when losing. When the Red Sox finally won the World Series, no one credited this to Ted Williams’ ghost. Rather, the resiliency of a team that rallied from down three games to none in the ALCS to win eight straight times was credited. There is no satisfaction in attributing a thrilling championship run to the cosmos, but it can be reassuring to blame invisible sinister forces when things unravel.

Of course, the idea of a Cubs curse is silly. It’s really the Indians that are afflicted.

by

“Black lie affair” (Miracle salve)

pauladeen

There are a number of bogus cancer cures being marketed, but black salve is the only one that will sand your face off while you succumb to the disease.

Black salve is defined as an escharotic, which are topical pastes that burn skin tissue and leave a thick, black scar. Other than in sadomasochistic sessions, there would seem no reason to apply this.

The salve is best known in skeptic circles for the victims whose noses melted off after it was applied. Even in less severe cases, permanent scarring and skin damage has resulted. Its strength and purity is unknown, which highlights one of the problems with alternative medicine treatments. It’s possible that some alt-med products might have curative properties. But their active ingredient has yet to be identified, isolated, and its ideal dose determined and included in a pill, syrup, or cream. Perhaps sandalwood is effective at mitigating poison oak, but this needs to be tested according to the Scientific Method and in double blind studies, not passed around as holy writ in Tweets and in booths at paranormal fairs. Just citing anecdotes is inadequate and may cause someone to bypass a legitimate treatment.

With black salve, there is the additional danger of its potential to cause substantial harm. It is illegal to advertise black salve as a cancer cure, and there has been action taken against those who did so. This included Greg Caton, who was also charged with being a felon in possession of a weapon, and he was sentenced to 33 months. Part of this sentence was served on probation, so he took advantage of this to move to Ecuador, where he continued to market black salve as a cancer cure. When he was deported to the U.S. to serve the remainder of his sentence, Mike Adams at Natural News called this an FDA kidnapping. In reality, it was an arrest by Ecuadoran law enforcement with assistance from Interpol.

Adams endorses black salve and every other quack cure, and does so legally because he is not selling the products. It is repugnant but legal for Adams to declare, “Black salve has eliminated cancers in many people,” and then post links to other websites selling it. He even claims that swallowing a pea-sized portion of black salve for 20 days will forever banish the cancer.

The alleged mechanism for this miracle is that the salve’s corrosive agents will draw out the disease. If a tumor were limited to superficial layers of skin, it might be possible to burn it off with a corrosive salve. However, the product could also scorch the surrounding healthy tissue and result in unnecessary scarring. For superficial cancers, the cure rate with standard treatment is nearly 100 percent and there is usually no damage to nearby tissue. I had skin cancer on my face removed this way and was hoping for a scar so as to look tougher, but was confounded by modern medical efficiency.

There is no support for the claim that escharotics can draw out cancers from underneath the skin and even if they could, it wouldn’t impact cancers that had spread to other regions. In genuine skin cancer treatment, a surgeon removes the affected area, then a pathologist determines if the entire tumor has been removed. One will not receive this level of care from someone hawking black salve.

Enough about what black salve can’t do. For what it can do, we look to the book Natural Causes, which documented users whose noses or other appendages evaporated after use. This included Ruth Conrad, whose naturopath had her apply the slave to her nose because she feared a bump on it might be cancerous. She soon developed red streaks on her face, which her naturopath said was good since it looked like a crab, and Cancer is a crab in astrology. Slap on some more, he told her, and by the end of the week her nose had been replaced by a three-inch mass of thick, misshapen scars. It was the most offensive blackface since 19th Century minstrels.  

In the wake of such spectacular failure, the likes of Adams will sometimes point out that chemotherapy can cause red scarring. But this is a false equivalency. We know how chemotherapy works and scarring can be an unfortunate, unsightly byproduct of a technique that has saved many. By contrast, black salve doesn’t work and has cured no one. Proponents of black salve never perform biopsies before, during, or after treatment. They conduct no long-term follow-ups, without which there is no way to determine efficiency or ultimate success. They do not make develop a hypothesis, make predictions on that hypothesis, experiment, analyze, or submit for peer review. Rather, they make baseless assertions like this one from Adams: “Black salve is powerful and safe and much better than any conventional treatment.”

He would have you believe this is the work of a wizard, and I’m being literal. He wrote, “Black salve is a magical cancer cure.” Never you mind about double-blind testing or long-term studies, Frodo, it’s magic.

But we cannot access this magic because it’s being squashed by the FDA. Adams, in fact, rejects all positions and statements from the FDA except for warnings on vaccine inserts.

He insists the reason black salve is being suppressed is because it is a natural herb. Yet half of medicines have a plant base, so pharmaceutical companies, government regulators, and doctors are not against considering treatments and cures derived from nature. For example, there has been research done on the potential medical value of primrose oil for eczema, cinnamon for blood sugar control, and clove oil for tooth pain. All of these have had mixed results and have yet to be confirmed as legitimate medicine. But they have been considered and studied, not hushed up and repressed.

I have backed up my belief with action, receiving traditional care for my skin cancer. Should Adams be hit with the same, I would hope for his sake that he would decline the black salve and only lose face in the figurative sense.

by

“Lamp shady” (Himalayan salt crystal lamps)

angrylamp

Himalayan salt crystal lamps are made from material mined in Pakistan, which lies outside the Himalayas.  “Himalayan” is probably used to appeal to those captivated by eastern mysticism or New Age thought. But Panama hats are made in Ecuador and Canadian Bacon is of British origin, and I have no issue with those products. With the lamps, my concern is again not with the region, but with the alleged benefit.

The primary claim is that they purify the air, though depending on how many unicorns and wizards are in the storefront you’re buying them from, additional boasts may include the ability to increase chi, produce positive energy, realign chakras, boost immune systems, and my favorite, eliminate electro-smog.

All this is allegedly accomplished by releasing negative ions. But how they are released and the mechanism of how the ions purify the air or retool auras is never explained. In truth, there is no scientific support for the powers attributed to salt crystal lamps.  Electric lights don’t get near hot enough to break apart the ionic bond between sodium and chlorine. That’s probably a good thing since it would open the possibility of kitchen lights causing salt shakers to release chlorine gas. I for one prefer my French fries without World War I overtones.    

The only way to get the salt crystal lamps to release negative ions would be to destroy them by boiling, which would emit sodium and chlorine ions. So unless one plans on keeping an armada of salt lamps on hand for a daily boil, they are not an effective means of unleashing negative ions. It is noteworthy that the lamp’s size remains constant. Lamps are wont to do that, of course, but ones that are releasing ions would be shrinking over time. 

These lamps are merely a hollowed salt crystal with a light bulb inside.  Without a steady supply of electrons from a source, there’s no way for them to be releasing negative ions. If they did, they would be giving themselves a positive charge that would attract negative ions, rendering the whole process pointless. It would be like comedian Steven Wright’s stated desire to place a humidifier and dehumidifier in the same room and let them fight it out.

There is a separate question about the impact of releasing negative ions. The idea that it proffers a multitude of health benefits is mostly without merit, though there are some double blind studies that suggest being bombarded with negative ions can positively impact Seasonal Affective Disorder. But this is a negative ion overload for persons with a specific condition, not the release of a spattering of negative ions for the general population to fend off any malady. I don’t want to go traipse down this road any further since it doesn’t matter because lamps aren’t releasing ions anyway.  

They look pleasant enough and there’s nothing wrong with buying one.  Just don’t expect any benefit beyond increased visibility when looking for your Panama hat.

by

“Masked hysteria” (Clown sightings)

clownsighting

Five weeks ago, I addressed the phantom clown panic in Greenville, S.C. There had been sporadic reports like these since the early 1980s, but this was the first in a few years.

These trends are usually like delivery pizza. Good to consume for a few hours, and under certain conditions, can still be ingested two days later. After that, the pizza becomes unpalatable and the social media trend is supplanted by the next outrage, racial remark, Pop Warner football play, or celebrity mishap.

But like the classic compact car skit, the clowns just keep coming and coming. Even a divisive presidential campaign can’t keep a bad clown down. There have been reported clown sightings in at least a dozen states, and Moline had its first reported sighting yesterday. Despite not knowing the who, when, where, why, or how, the Dispatch-Argus posted this grainy image on its website.

Faux news sites are generating clown stories that get passed around as legitimate. In these hoax articles, the clowns can be either the victims or perpetrators. One story had a clown being gunned down in Indiana, while another article centered on clowns murdering 23 Canadians, as the absurdity assumed an international flavor. One widespread image even appeared on the Tennessee Highway Patrol Facebook page and was supposed to be of a clown that had tried to lure children into the woods. The problem was that the location kept changing depending on where poster sharing the image lived.  

Twitter has a ClownSightings hashtag so people can share photos and videos of menacing Bozos. The photos are often revealed to be downloaded stock footage, while with the moving pictures, it’s impossible to tell if someone happened upon a clown or fabricated the whole shoot.  

Almost every day brings at least one piece of clown news, but in no case has anyone been harmed or abducted. In fact, the only threat seems to be from keyboard warriors who promise to harm, mutilate, or murder any hometown harlequins they come across, dad nab it.

Even a couple of police officers have publicly endorsed the shoot first, ask questions later approach. I suppose a cream pie to their painted face might be acceptable, but how did we get to a state of condoning second-degree murder because someone looks funny?

One update from my previous post is that there now have been nearly 20 arrests, though not usually of clowns. Three were of persons in clown outfits, but most were for filing false reports of said costumed individuals. One young woman made up a story to cover for being late to work. And some teens were caught insinuating that an insane clown posse would swarm their school. Similar online threats were made in Texas, California, and New Jersey, the latter suggesting that a “Wally” was about to go bonkers.

As to the arrested clowns, a Fairmont, W. Va., man was taken into custody after donning a mask and chasing children with a baseball bat. Then two teens in clown masks were arrested for a similar offense perpetrated with sticks.

Those arrests were justified, but people are calling to report the mere presence of a clown, and law enforcement officers are jumping in the Batmobile and chasing these Jokers, then putting out warnings to the public. This raises the matter of what crime is being committed. There are some jurisdictions where covering your face is illegal, and where that’s not the case, prosecutors might be able to finagle a charge of intimidation or something similarly vague.

A man in Middlesboro, Ky., was arrested for simply wearing a clown mask, as a city ordinance prohibits covering one’s face in public. So if seeking a clown career, avoid Middlesboro, and the same goes if desiring employment as a welder or hockey goalie. Meanwhile in Lakeville, N.Y., Christopher Hooper posted a picture of a clown he said he had seen in a park. He cautioned parents to not let their children go out alone or after dark. When it was discovered he had made this up, he was arrested for filing a false report even though he had never contacted law enforcement.

Despite the dubious nature of some of these charges, and despite no one being harmed or threatened, police resources are combating this phantom menace and the public seems mostly supportive. And civilians are not necessarily waiting for the police to respond. An anonymous woman in Auburn, Maine, reported that a clown mouthed the word “bang” at her while driving by and positioning his finger like a gun. She allegedly responded with an authentic firearm, and the car made a speedy getaway, presumably to Yakety Sax. A few days later in Bardstown, Ky., a man fired into the air after mistaking a woman for a clown. “Oh, sorry, Miss, but with your curly orange hair, and me being without my glasses and all.”

Some police seem ready to endorse such vigilantism. In a Dallas suburb, police officer Latrice Pettaway wrote on her personal Facebook page, “Pop a cap in the first clown you see. Someone needs to just hit one and the rest of these fools will learn.” In West Virginia, in the clownish-sounding town of Paw Paw, police chief James Cummings threatened, “If someone sees you dressed like this they have the right to defend themselves. I will stand behind anyone who feels they need to protect themselves from clowns. You should expect for citizens to beat you.”

Though not endorsing this Charles Bronson Death Wish approach, police in Modesta, Calif., nonetheless warned, “If you see individuals dressed as clowns, avoid contact and report the circumstances to us immediately.” “Um, yes officer, I’d like to report a highly Caucasian male with bright red hair and size 25 shoes peaceably assembling. He appears to be searching for some semblance of a life.”

The top non-firearm overreaction goes to the San Jose, Calif., school district for banning Halloween costumes that conceal the wearer’s identity. Why not go all the way and ban candy and any sense of merriment as well?

These aren’t second graders concerned about monsters under their bed. These are persons aged 20 to 60 freaking out about unverified jesters. Even a member of the White House Press Corps asked press secretary Josh Earnest about his take on it. And the Dallas CW affiliate pondered if law enforcement should be tracking sales of clown costumes. “Do you have a license for that comically oversized nose, sir?”

These panics happen all the time, with previous focuses being on witches, Jews, Satanists, communists, Dungeons & Dragons, or heavy metal. The huge difference now is social media. With ease, any prankster can produce an image that gives the satisfaction of instant feedback. Such Tweets and posts are the descendants of campfire stories and sleepover tales, just with a less intimate audience and more imagery.

I liken this to another great farce, Spinal Tap. They were initially a fictitious band, but blurred the lines by releasing albums and touring. Similarly, the clown sightings were at first fabricated, but now seem to have entered a phase where at least a few of the sightings are real. They are being perpetrated by those who want to be part of this insatiable phenomenon, and their antics in turn fuel more anxiety. This is a self-perpetuating phenomenon, and the more it grows, the more people there are that want to pull a prank, pull a hoax, or pull a trigger.

by

“Shallow Gal” (Detox products)

paltrow3

If needing to detoxify, Gwyneth Paltrow offers a seven-day regimen that features almond smoothies, miso soup, and cucumber juice. Then there is the day eight menu of whatever is being served at your funeral dinner.

Because anyone needing to detoxify would be dead by then. In fact, the only persons who need detoxified beyond what the body can manage are longtime drug addicts, and they must be treated by medical specialists dispensing prescription drugs.  

Julie Beluz at Vox noted that Adam and Eve’s fruit consumption got them kicked out of the Garden of Eden and the idea we need to atone for our dietary transgressions continues today. Purification rituals are recorded in the earliest histories and are still part of religions. Appealing to this idea that we must cleanse ourselves are an ever-growing list of products.

But as to what we are being purified from, the detox sellers are unable to tell us. In 2009, Sense about Science asked 15 such merchants which toxins their products would remove. None could do it, despite the array of smoothies, supplements, shampoos, creams, shakes, juices, pills, tea bags, face masks, bath salts, brushes, body gels, and pads on the cleansing market. Were these products legitimate, sellers would have been able to identify the toxin, measure it, explain why it’s causing maladies, and describe how their products remove it. Dr. Scott Gavura wrote on sciencebasedmedicine.com, “To establish that even a single chemical can cause disease requires a significant amount of research, i.e. the entire field of epidemiology.”

About 5,000 years ago, people thought toxins were produced exclusively inside the body. Not a whole lot changed until the 19th Century, when one mistaken idea replaced another. For most of the 1800s, people thought toxins from feces would be absorbed back into the bloodstream and make us sick. This was dubbed autointoxication and it was attacked with leeches, which could be called the first detox therapy.

Then early in the 20th Century, scientists began better understanding physiology and the causes of disease, and they realized there was no autointoxication to be detoxed from. Illnesses and disease were fought with lifestyle choices, vaccines, and antibodies.

With that, detoxing should have died a painless death. But a misunderstanding by some of how the body works, coupled with celebrity endorsements, have made detox one of the most lucrative scams in the country. There are two primary approaches when peddling products that attack unnamed toxins. One is to keep it general enough that the symptoms will apply to almost anyone, such as headaches, nausea, or fatigue. The second approach warns that without Modern Alternative Mama’s Organic Apricot Face Scrub, we are at grave risk of imminent cancer, Alzheimer’s, or ALS.

The most invasive of these techniques is colonic irrigation, in which a hose in inserted up the most private of parts and is said to wash away mucoid plaque and toxic sludge. Indeed, after such an irrigation, there will be no mucoid plaque or toxic sludge, as these do not exist.

Other merchants give visual reassure. Colon-cleansing tablets turn excrement into a substance akin to plastic. The user then produces a rubbery brick that is assumed to be toxins in concentrated form. Then there are detoxing foot pads that turn black overnight. But this is from the reaction of moisture to the pads, not from toxins being drained. Similarly, detoxing foot baths turn the water brown, but this is because of rust generated by the corrosion of iron electrodes.

Peddlers get away with it by appealing to irrelevant authority such as actresses, and by relying on a population that is all too often scientifically-challenged. As one example, the New England Journal of Medicine has criticized these products, but 18 times more subscribers read People, which praises Paltrow’s detox diet.

Another factor in the industry’s success is laziness. Customers can eat, drink, and apply the right substances, then pat themselves on their banana cream-lubricated back and wait for optimal health to arrive.

This sham industry often relies on the naturalistic fallacy. This is a great irony because the body’s natural processes will detox for us. The skin, liver, kidneys, and lymphatic and gastrointestinal systems will get rid of the guck. They work together to turn potentially harmful substances into matter that can be safely stored or eliminated. The liver self-cleans, so toxins won’t accumulate there. It functions just fine unless one has a liver disease, at which point you need the ER, Dr. Oz’s kale conditioner.

While detox products make their manufacturers a lot of money, a majority of us don’t buy them. If the peddlers were right, this would mean most of us have bodies that are continually accumulating toxins that have no way out. Were this the case, I would be howling in agony instead of sitting here happily typing away while listening to a Kavin Senapathy podcast and sipping nonorganic tea.

 

by

“Bad moon revising” (End of the world)

jesushockey

Last week’s end of the world came on Friday during a Black Moon. The second new moon in a calendar month is normally referred to as blue moon, but the color was changed by wannabe seers to make for a more sinister satellite.

Various tweets, blogs, and vlogs predicted end was coming Friday, with most saying it would mark the return of Jesus. Never addressed was why a manmade concept like a month would be relevant to a god deciding when to destroy his creation. As to why this second full moon of this month as opposed to any previous one would be the catalyst was mostly unexplained, though some tried to tie it in to the Jewish feast of trumpets, which began three days after the Black Moon.

As in previous Christian-themed astronomical doomsdays, the key Bible verses were in Luke, chapter 21: “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations. Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and looking after those things which are coming on the earth.” With words this vague, one can create any meaning. It never outlines what the signs are, what they mean, or how to recognize them. Additionally, the verses establish no timeline, so believers can claim they have validity 1,900 years after being written.

Doomsayers point to disparate events such as beheadings, earthquakes, marriage between other than one man and one woman, and a Hindu giving the opening Congressional prayer as signs that Jesus is about to return. Yet decapitations, natural disasters, polygamy, and Hinduism all predate the birth of Jesus.

Christians who declare that the end is near must ignore the Bible verse that says only God knows the end date. They are willing to commit this blasphemy because they find it exciting to think they are living close to the end and it makes them feel in the know to interpret current events thusly. Best of all, it means everlasting bliss is tantalizingly close. Some keep it vague (“The end is approaching”), some are more specific (“Jesus will return in our lifetimes”), and some like Harold Camping set a date.

These are all representatives of the dominant variety of apocalyptic thinkers – the religious – while other persons subscribe to a pseudoscientific line of cataclysmic thought.

Since most religions don’t have an equivalent of Revelation, most faith-based doomsdays have a Christian flavor, though not always. One blogger calculated that the Black Moon coincided with the Greek goddess Hecate’s visit to Earth, which he said takes place every 200 years. During her latest stop, she was to mate with a demon, with the offspring’s fate being to devour our planet.

Overall, the Black Moon predictions drew little attention, but doomsday warnings are regular features on our extant world. The most well-known of recent years came from Camping and readers of the Mayan calendar, but there have been similar predictions for centuries.

Few persons making these cataclysmic predictions are fearful. It’s the end of the world as they know it and they feel fine. This is because they think the impending doom validates their religion and will transport them to a higher plain for eternity. That’s how Marshall Applewhite got Heaven’s Gate members to overdose on barbiturate-laced chocolate pudding in order that their souls would levitate to a spaceship being shielded by the Hale-Bopp comet. Though not lethal like Applewhite’s prediction, John Hagee makes end of the world prognostications at least a biennial event. And Pat Robertson predicted world judgement by the end of 1982.

These predictions excite those making them, and most of us can relate to some degree. Be it the plausible The Day After or the glut of TV zombies today, it’s fascinating to be given a window to cataclysm. Watching a program about an asteroid slamming into Earth and the aftermath, we get to be among the survivors. The story of life on Earth is amazing, but without an ending the tale seems incomplete. For most persons, doomsday in entertainment form is enough, but others long for it to be real. In some cases, the desire is so strong that even failed predictions won’t dim their enthusiasm.

In fact, when those predicted days end up being apocalypse-free, most followers stay on board the Crazy Train. This is due to extreme cases of cognitive dissonance. They refuse to accept that the time and energy they put into prepping for it was wasted. They cannot deal with the thought of having given away their money and possessions in vain. So the redouble and might say their piety saved the world from judgement. That’s what Dorothy Martin and her followers declared in 1954. Others accept their messiah’s assurance that it was merely a minor miscalculation. After his fire-from-the-sky guarantee fizzled, Camping changed the date to a few months later. Camping died shortly thereafter from non-sky inferno causes, and his protégé Chris McCann did another recalculation and arrived at Oct. 7, 2015.

Similarly, when the Mayan apocalypse didn’t happen, believers reinterpreted the date as June 4, 2016. This was the same experience of William Miller and his followers. He had guaranteed the end of the world as 1843, then had to adjust to 1844. Camping and Miller could have said their original calculation was off by 100 years and prevented a second public failing while keeping the parishioners and their money. But persons with their mindsets are unable to do that. It has to be in their lifetimes or it loses value to them. I have come across hundreds of end of the world predictions and have never seen one that would take place after the prognosticator’s probable lifespan.

Very few predictions of our planets demise center on notions such as the all-time tsunami, Earth’s core bubbling up, or even the plausible nuclear war. Most come from above, either a vengeful god or a rouge planet, or for maximum impact, a rouge planet launched by a vengeful god.

People have always been drawn to celestial bodies for their sense of wonder. In 1502, Jamaicans refused to let Christopher Columbus come ashore. He knew an eclipse was coming and told the natives to comply with his demands or his god would take away the moon. When this seemingly happened, the natives were alarmed, and not merely because they had a displeased deity on their quivering hands. The moon was central to their lives, being the focus of festivals and determining the planting and harvesting seasons. With it gone, their lives would be turned upside down and might even come to an end. Columbus told them he would supplicate to his god on their behalf if they would agree to his demands. Of course, they agreed.  

The moon can still be a source of wonder, as we can marvel at men having been there, or might erroneously consider a full one to be a cause of loony behavior. To some, eclipses, meteors, and star showers can seem to have supernatural overtones, usually detrimental ones. And of all the portents of doom, none is more complete or compelling than the one that ends it all. Most of these doomsdays have a religious bent, but some prefer a science fiction approach.

A 1997 book by Richard Noone laboriously titled, “5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster,” predicted a worldwide extinction by freezing. According to Noone, the Antarctic ice mass would be three miles thick by the titular date, by which time the planets would be aligned in the heavens. Not sure what that means, nor would I be any more likely to understand it after pouring over Noone’s 350 pages of detailed diagrams and extensive explications. The book is still available for purchase, way cheap.

Noone’s idea has flittered, but one of the most enduring SciFi suggestions for how Earth will end centers on it being targeted by a ninth Solar System planet, Niburu. This comes mostly from Nancy Lieder, the only Earthing in contact with aliens from Zeta Reticuli. Through her brain implant, they told her Niburu had gone rouge and was going to throw Earth off its orbit, giving inhabitants either a fiery or icy death, depending on which way we are hurtled. This was to take place in 2003. When this failed to materialize, she received a second, corrected message, but won’t give this date because world governments would declare martial law and imprison us all in cities. Why would lifetime banishment in Seattle be so bad? Because the countryside will offer salvation for some reason or other. At any rate, Niburu is said to be four times Earth’s size, meaning it would be visible, perhaps to the naked eye and certainly to telescopes. When this was pointed out, a hasty ad hoc rationalization was trotted out that it had been hidden behind the sun for all these years, a geometric impossibility.

There are an assortment of doomsdays that center on the alignment of celestial bodies doing damage, but the only bodies whose gravity significantly impact Earth are the sun and moon. Bodies will always align in certain ways, but all are unrelated to Earthly oblivion. By contrast, the flipping of Earth’s poles does take place, but won’t kill anyone, not even the penguins. It takes place over thousands of years and is not an immediate occurrence, and so is no threat.

By far the most well-known of the SciFi hypotheses was Y2K. The supposed inability of computers to differentiate 2000 from 1900 was to be the cause of calamity, from crashing airliners all the way to self-launching nuclear missiles. In the end, the most harmful result was the rare ATM malfunction. This was especially inconvenient to the families who had run low on cash after making food, supply, and shotgun runs as part of their Y2K drills.

The most ironic thing about this desire for doom from the religions and pseudoscientific is that there are genuine scientific reasons to suspect a horrific ending. Earth could be swallowed by the sun, or it might end earlier than that. UK astrobiologist Jack O’Malley-James predicts that environmental changes will lead to the extinction of all Earthly inhabitants within 3 billion years. He says oceans will evaporate and the last organisms left will be microbes in the few water enclaves on what is otherwise a massive, uninhabitable sand dune.

His ideas are based on scientific models, observation, data, and inference, so they hold little interest for the likes of Hagee, Camping, Lieder, and Noone. But an even bigger reason for their indifference is because this doomsday takes place in a distant future. They may not think the world revolves around them, but they do think that the end of the world does.

by

“Bland Old Party” (Porn crisis)

bela-smoking

If the topic is cleaning up dirty air, dirty water, or a smoker’s dirty lungs, the Republican Party takes a hands-off approach. But when it’s dirty movies, magazines, and websites, the platform encourages legislation, if not censorship. At the 2016 convention, the GOP added a plank that declared, “Pornography, with his harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions.”

If this alarmist language were correct, society would have started hemorrhaging in the mid-1990s, when Internet access became more common. And with most persons today having about four ways to access porn at any time, our country would be in a total freefall and a zombie-infested dystopia.

This is not the case and no evidence was offered for the plank’s claims, nor does there seem to be any. According to The Hill, a 2009 review of studies concluded that porn was not addictive, was unrelated to unsafe sex practices, and did not make purveyors more like to commit rape or assault. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is fond of pointing out that a majority of rapists have regularly viewed violent pornography, but he was committing a causation/correlation error. Persons inclined to commit these crimes want to view images that fuel their twisted fantasies. By contrast, someone disinclined to rape would be no more likely to do so after watching I Spit on Your Grave than they would be to hit the links after reading Golf Digest.

There is also a linguistic issue. While a few persons may struggle with watching obsessively or have other problems with pornography, that would be an individual concern, not a public health issue. “Public health” suggests something that impacts everyone: Clean water, improved sanitation, quarantines, immunization, and water rationing during droughts.

Legitimate public health initiatives would be eradicating malaria-carrying mosquitoes, giving free polio vaccinations to underprivileged children, and testing food for e. coli. These are all attempts to protect individuals who are not engaging in risky behavior. That could not be said of restricting pornography.

Similarly, bans on Big Gulps, trans fat, clove cigarettes, and even heroin and methamphetamines are unrelated to public health. True, some of those issues can indirectly impact others, but none will have widespread impact. For that, you need unregulated emissions, an invasive venomous species slipping through customs, or a previously eradicated disease becoming endemic.

A smoker who eschews seatbelt use can cut his risk of disease and improve his chance of making it home alive by snuffing the cigarettes and buckling up. No collective action is needed, nor is there public benefit to the lone smoking driver doing so.

Porn is certainly not my thing. It is the only movie style that keeps action from being my least favorite genre. I’m more of a Bela Lugosi man. But if you’re into it, watch away. It’s almost certainly harmless to you and definitely harmless to me. It will no more unravel society than my watching Dracula will cause mass exsanguination.