Updates made to The Millenium Project in August 2019 – Part 1

Some very bad and sad news (3/8/2019)
After 80 years, Australasian Science magazine has ceased publication. I thoroughly enjoyed writing for the magazine over the last 16 years and never felt that I was wasting my time. I'll miss both the contributing experience and the always interesting content in the rest of the publication. This follows closely on the closure of Embiggen Books, Australia's only bookshop dedicated exclusively to books supporting science and reason. I hope this doesn't mean that a new Dark Age is coming, but the loss of these outlets for sense is not a good sign. Did I mention that a politician near my place has called for schools to "teach the controversy", not only meaning creationism instead of actual science but teaching both sides in the climate change "debate". The fact that there is no debate on either issue among real scientists who know what they are talking about can probably be ignored by the ideologues.

My first ever column for the magazine in April 2003 was a bit of a rush job, because I was called in almost at the deadline when the regular correspondent had run out of time. The title of that piece was "Truth and Fiction" and in a sense that's what I wrote about for the next 16 years. The job of science is separating the two, and it is a job that will need doing until the end of time or we know everything there is to know, whichever comes first. Both are a very long way away.

My final column in the July/August 2019 edition dealt with another recurring theme, conspiracies, where people misinterpret evidence much in the style of religious apologetics, where the evidence is interpreted to support preconceptions and beliefs rather than as telling a true story. We all suffer from confirmation bias, but I've always said that as a skeptic I like my facts to be correct. Sadly, a couple of outlets for facts have been silenced.

The covers of the 108 editions that carried articles by me.
You can read them all here.

Things that should disappear (3/8/2019)
Unfortunately, one of the things that was still hanging around like a neighbour's nasty cat when this site got back from its sabbatical was Stan Burzynski and his continued theft of the life savings of desperate people. Stan's fans are famous for jumping into Twitter and only posting using the hashtag #Burzynski (they post on nothing else) and usually disappearing after a couple of posts. You could almost think the number of actual posters was less than the number of screen names, but that would be impolite. And politeness matters.

Here is an example of the politeness shown by supporters of the crook. It was a drive-by posting to Facebook by something which deleted its profile immediately. (It called itself Woit Zakski.) Usual caveats about the cowardice and uselessness of anonymous posters apply.

Did I mention that Burzynski is a liar and a thief? I wouldn't want anyone to think otherwise.

The power of persuasion (3/8/2019)
When people make jokes about selling ice to eskimos I always think that the job would be made easier if the ice were to be labelled "GMO free" and "Organic". You could then charge more for the ice.

I know this is just some meme invented by an anonymous Facebooker, but the part about the higher price is true. That higher price is just a form of voluntary taxation, a choice made by people who are quite free to spend more than they need to to buy food. The reality is, however, that without the productivity and profitability of modern farming practices we would all be paying far more for our food and there would be a lot less of it to go around.

Anti-vaccination liars maintain the rage. Sane people vomit in response. (3/8/2019)
There's a class of people, including some academics whom one would think would know better, who keep suggesting that some accommodation should be given to anti-vaccine views and comments. Apparently treating the vermin like the vermin they are is unkind and unhelpful. We should listen to their ravings and nod sagely, as if we are listening to something worth hearing.

Here are three examples of anti-vaccination thinking (I use the word loosely) which have come across my desk in the last few days.

The first is a posting to the Facebook page that some friends of mine set up in memory of their child who died of whooping cough. They have been solidly campaigning ever since to raise awareness of the results of not vaccinating (their son was too young), and as a result have been continually targeted with abuse (with even suggestions that their son never existed). This is a mild example of what they have to endure.

I know its name isn't Kell Bell (cowards always hide their names), but I'm happy to publish its real name any time it likes to identify itself.

We have long had to control the gag reflex when anti-vaccination liars appropriate the Holocaust to support their agenda, but this is a new one. Now they want to jump on the civil rights bandwagon. Of course Rosa Parks had no choice about the colour of her skin, unlike the choice people have about vaccination, but even if this fact managed to leak into the atrophied brain of whoever made this meme it would make no difference. And Rosa couldn't lie about her skin colour to get around restrictions.

And then there's just the simply batshit crazy.

I've been accused of hurting the feelings of anti-vaccination liars by calling them liars, so it's probably a good time to remember this image which was presented to a court by a professional liar (she does it for a living) as an example of my harassing behaviour.

Speaking of writing for magazines ... (3/8/2019)

See more Red Meat here.

I had a week off because I had to spend some time in hospital (nothing serious, just a check up) and I also got a bit distracted by the weather, which required much photographing for local media outlets.

View from my front door.

When I reported the heaviest snowfall in my town for many years I received the inevitable "Ha ha, global warming hoax" comments from climate change deniers. At this time three years ago it was almost constantly raining, but right now we are in the middle of a drought. The snow is less frequent and more erratic than it was even just a few years ago. On the day that the photo was taken there were bushfires burning in another part of the state, and the official start to the fire warning season has been brought forward because the weather pattern over the last year wasn't like the year before (or the one before that).

But deniers gotta deny, I suppose. What else can they do in the face of all that science and observation?

See more from The Logic of Science here

Chiropractors are not happy. This makes everyone else happy. (17/8/2019)
I had to wait until after Saturday to build this update because I had to wait until I could get a recording of Channel 7's Sunday program. The word on the street was that the show was going to look at some of the excesses of the "medical specialty" known as chiropractic, and my friend Mr (he's a surgeon) John Cunningham would be there to provide some sense.

The whinges and complaints were many. One of them was that the noise of cracking a baby's back had been added by the show's producers, but in reality the scenes at the start of the program came directly from a video made by a chiropractor and included the sounds of the torture. It was publicity raised by this video some months ago that drew the attention of authorities to chiropractors endangering babies with useless and potentially dangerous "manipulations". Of course, chiropractors mistreating children is not anything new and action was promised by the professions "regulatory body" back in 2013, but as could be reliably predicted at the time nothing was done, because regulation of the industry is done by the people who need regulating. I predict that there will be more smoke and murmurs of concern from the Chiropractic Board of Australia and in a few short years from now we will again be shocked by chiropractors doing things that have no science backing them to treat medical conditions which chiropractic has no plausible way of curing.

As a side note, how can any profession take itself seriously when Mr (he's a chiropractor, not a doctor) Billy DeMoss is lauded as a spokesman for the industry? The man is either barking mad or an actor in the Olivier class. Oh, and he sells cannabis oil to cure things, although this would seem to suggest that there are things that chiropractic can't cure and which need chemicals. Oh, wait – CBD oil is chemical free. Just ask an expert.

The gift that keeps on giving (17/8/2019)
The disgusting cancer quack Mr William P O'Neill of the now extinct Canadian Cancer Research Group might have died in 2013, giving the world cause to celebrate, but his footprints are still out there like the Peluxy "dinosaur and man" tracks in Texas. The Internet never forgets.

While looking for something else this week I came across this entry at a now fossilised web site that allowed people to report spam. No footprints, but mentions of indictment (that's what the "in" means in the list of codes) are the fingerprints of the Gutless Anonymous Liar. And we all know who that really was.

I can now add Nazi to my list of qualifications and memberships, which include the CIA (which I can neither confirm nor deny), the Illuminati (I'm saying nothing), the Masons (you don't seriously want me to say anything, do you?), Mossad (perfect foil for being a Nazi), Australian Skeptics (oh, look – a hit) and a highly paid shill for Big Pharma (and I have a Monsanto hat so Big Farmer too). I'm surprised I've got time for anything else after I go to all the meetings.

A shilling with a picture of a sheeple.

They let these people breed, vote and drive cars (17/8/2029)

And this is my comment – the only essential oil that anyone needs.

It's the 50th anniversary of Woodstock this weekend (17/8/2019)

See more from Dan Piraro here

Go to Part 2