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Winners each receive a tube of haemorrhoid cream and a wire brush applicator. Prize recipients must come to where I live at their own expense to collect their prizes, which will be awarded (including the haemorrhoid cream application) at public ceremonies in a busy commercial district at lunchtime. I will arrange press and television coverage.
Award winners are invited to mention the award on their sites and to display the award graphics.
First Place – The Anus Maximus Award
National Vaccine Information Center
Competition was intense for the top award in 2009, but the victory and the Anus Maximus Award finally went to Barbara Loe Fisher and NVIC in recognition of the many tears of service Ms Fisher has put into the campaign to harm children by putting them at risk of deadly and disabling diseases. Her efforts are not restricted to endangering children, though. A few years back she was leading the effort to prevent research into a vaccine to prevent AIDS and she has been very vocal recently in the lying campaign to discredit the vaccine against the human papilloma virus, so she has no problem sentencing gay men or mature women to death. They can be added to the collateral damage of the children who would die if she were to have her wishes granted. The NVIC regularly holds public meetings which feature the luminaries of anti-vaccination lying like the discredited Andrew Wakefield and the incompetent chemist Boyd Haley and these people are treated as authorities who might have something worthwhile to say.
The final thing which caused the judges to put Ms Fisher into first place was her reaction to a magazine article in which her truthfulness was questioned. Her reaction was not to provide evidence to refute the claim but to sue the magazine publisher, the article author and a prominent doctor. She followed this action by an appeal for a frank and open conversation between vaccine supporters and opponents. Hypocrisy like this should not go unrewarded, and this action convinced the judges that she and her organisation were worthy winners of the 2009 Anus Maximus Award.
Dear Ms Fisher,
Congratulations. You and the NVIC have won the Anus Maximus Award for 2009, the highest award presented annually by The Millenium Project. You are in excellent company, as previous winners include Dr Joe Mercola, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and Benny Hinn Ministries. The judges were particularly impressed by your call for a free and open dialogue just after you sued someone for hurting your feelings. The award citation read:
[see above]
Please feel free to publicise your award and display the award logo on your web site. If you wish to collect the physical prize (a tube of haemorrhoid cream and a wire brush applicator) you can do so at your own expense, but please give me sufficient notice so that I can organise the location for the public application of the cream and the accompanying media coverage.
You can see the other award winners at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2009/2009awards.htm
Quote of the Year
Jim Carrey
I rarely agree with the anti-vaccination liars at Age of Autism, but I have to make an exception. They awarded their Quote of the Year to actor Jim Carrey for something he said on the Larry King Show.
When asked about problems relating to vaccination and autism he offered the following brilliant response:
We are not the problem. The problem is the problem.
Faced with such a strong philosophical and logical statement, the judges had little choice but to award Jim Carrey the Millenium Quote of the Year prize.
Highly Commended
The competition for the overall winner of the 2009 Millenium Awards was very close, but there can only be one winner. Unfortunately for Mike Adams, the one who didn't win was him, although I imagine he will be a strong contender for the Anus Maximus Award in future years. Mike and his site reached the top of the competition by his total disregard for the truth and the imagination he shows in inventing the lies he tells about medicine. He claims that mammograms cause cancer, he is an anti-vaccination liar of remarkable mendacity and virulence. Needless to say he is an AIDS denier. Mike has never met a form of quackery he doesn't like or any form of medicine which he cannot ridicule and deride. A true champion for the future.
Dear Mr Adams,
Congratulations. Natural News was Highly Commended in the 2009 Millenium Awards presented by The Millenium Project. I hope that this will go part way to relieving your disappointment at being thrown out of the Shorty Awards for cheating. The Millenium Project has a much more lenient policy on cheating, so if you can get all of your followers to send me $10 each you will be a certainty to win the top award for 2010, the Anus Maximus Award. Unless Joe Mercola's followers send more money of course. The award citation read:
[see above]
Please feel free to publicise your award and display the award logo on your web site. If you wish to collect the physical prize (a tube of haemorrhoid cream and a wire brush applicator) you can do so at your own expense, but please give me sufficient notice so that I can organise the location for the public application of the cream and the accompanying media coverage.
You can see the other award winners at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2009/2009awards.htm
Jonathan Emord – Emord & Associates
It takes it takes a strong mixture of hide, gall and chutzpah for a lawyer who prides himself on a total commitment to free speech and even advertises this on his web site to take on a case where the single objective is to punish someone for speaking out and to silence their voice. You might say that lawyers are supposed to take on any case that comes along and perform the best advocacy that they can for the client, but in this case we have a lawyer who is so closely identified with the anti-vaccination liar movement that we can only assume he is performing this hypocrisy by choice. And we all know what that makes him.
Dear Mr Emord,
Congratulations. Your web site was Highly Commended in the 2009 Millenium Awards presented by The Millenium Project. The judges felt that the award was a suitable recognition of the way you have put your client's needs ahead of your personal principles by acting for Barbara Loe Fisher in her defamation action against Dr Paul Offit et al. The award citation read:
[see above]
Please feel free to publicise your award and display the award logo on your web site. If you wish to collect the physical prize (a tube of haemorrhoid cream and a wire brush applicator) you can do so at your own expense, but please give me sufficient notice so that I can organise the location for the public application of the cream and the accompanying media coverage.
You can see the other award winners at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2009/2009awards.htm
You take an old trick that scamsters have been doing for eons, dress it up with some pretty design and some sciency sounding words and then get yourself into gymnasiums and convince the sweaty denizens that your magic plastic wrist band can make them stronger and have better balance. Once you have the money rolling in from that (and at $60 each for bangles that probably cost less than a dollar to make it rolls in fast) you convince a television show to give you some free publicity. When that publicity backfires a little and causes some questioning of the product you run away and hide, cutting off all communication with critics because you can't justify the claims you make. The one thing stopping this site from being a candidate for an Anus Maximus Award is that the only damage done to victims is financial and even then $60 is not a great deal of money. Taking it from people without offering anything of benefit in return is naughty, but most people don't die just because someone came along and took their money.
Dear Mr O'Dowd,
Congratulations. Power Balance was Highly Commended in the 2009 Millenium Awards presented by The Millenium Project. The judges tried some of the wristbands on and they unanimously agreed that the bracelets certainly increased the strength of their laughter. The award citation read:
[see above]
Please feel free to publicise your award and display the award logo on your web site. If you wish to collect the physical prize (a tube of haemorrhoid cream and a wire brush applicator) you can do so at your own expense, but please give me sufficient notice so that I can organise the location for the public application of the cream and the accompanying media coverage.
You can see the other award winners at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2009/2009awards.htm
Encouragement Awards
Australian Vaccination Network
2009 wasn't a good year for the AVN. It got off to a bad start when some AVN members thought that it would be a good idea to abuse the parents of a baby girl who died of whooping cough at the age of four weeks. The parents were less than amused by this and went to the media, resulting in some less than flattering coverage for the AVN and its child-endangering activities. No longer seen as the experts on vaccination, suddenly the organisation was being asked to justify its actions, something that could only be done by denigrating and abusing their opponents. Later in the year they came to the attention of the authorities for collecting money without a current charitable organisation registration and then found themselves being investigated by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission. To make matters worse it was discovered that they had not been telling the truth to advertisers in their magazine (one advertiser said that they didn't want to be involved with "deranged" people like the AVN) and had been claiming an association with a charity when no such association existed. They closed a couple of Facebook pages when people started asking questions, purged their email mailing list, took their magazine out of newsagents and naturopaths' waiting rooms and begged for money several times to keep the doors open. The President of AVN, Meryl Dorey, won the Australian Skeptics' Bent Spoon Award for 2009.
The purpose of this award is to encourage them to continue as they are because this means that they might soon disappear completely, thus making a positive contribution to public health and particularly the health of children.
Dear Ms Dorey,
Congratulations. The Australian Vaccination Network won an Encouragement Award in the 2009 Millenium Awards presented by The Millenium Project. While this might not be as pleasing to you as the Anus Maximus Award that the AVN won in 2001, the judges felt that after the year of bad publicity that the AVN received in 2009 you need some encouragement. The award citation read:
[see above]
Please feel free to publicise your award and display the award logo on your web site. If you wish to collect the physical prize (a tube of haemorrhoid cream and a wire brush applicator) you can do so at your own expense, but please give me sufficient notice so that I can organise the location for the public application of the cream and the accompanying media coverage.
You can see the other award winners at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2009/2009awards.htm
Poor Kent Hovind really needs some encouragement. While he rots in prison people are laughing at his PhD thesis. As if that isn't enough, the "university" that awarded him his PhD came out and admitted that degrees from there might be worth the paper they are printed on but not much more. In effect, they said that Kent can put "PhD" after his name if he wants to but he doesn't really have the qualification. But we all knew that, having chuckled, chortled, guffawed and giggled at the document over the last few years.
Atlas Orthogonal Chiropractic Australia and chiropractic ierano
These sites get an Encouragement award because of the bizarre antics of their owner. Not content with being an Atlas Chiropractor, the sort that makes normal chiropractors look almost reputable by comparison, Joe Ierano decided to report the Australian Skeptics to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission for reproducing an article from a British newspaper. What Joe didn't notice (or didn't care about) was that he was a candidate for HCCC attention himself because of some ludicrous claims on his web site. Try harder next time, Joe, and at least read your own published material before you start pointing your very strong thumbs at anyone else.
Dear Mr Ierano,
Congratulations. Your two web sites won a collective Encouragement Award in the 2009 Millenium Awards presented by The Millenium Project. The judges felt that you needed some encouragement after your dismal failure to get the Health Care Complaints Commission to take your complaint against Australian Skeptics seriously in 2009 . The award citation read:
[see above]
Please feel free to publicise your award and display the award logo on your web site. If you wish to collect the physical prize (a tube of haemorrhoid cream and a wire brush applicator) you can do so at your own expense, but please give me sufficient notice so that I can organise the location for the public application of the cream and the accompanying media coverage.
You can see the other award winners at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/history/2009/2009awards.htm
Joint winners
CreationWiki and Conservapedia
There is not enough humour in the world of irrational and uncritical thinking these days, so it was exceptionally pleasing to see not one but two sites which promise hours of fun. Both Conservapedia and CreationWiki are based on the wiki platform, thus ensuring enormous amusement as competing anonymous parties make changes, undo the changes, make the changes again, undo again and so on. The two sites should be encouraged to continue building their respective stores of nonsense and pseudoscience so that the world's supply of laughter can be continually replenished.
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