5G fantasies

A week ago, I got my first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.  I was lucky enough to have the opportunity because I work part-time for a home health agency providing companion care to homebound seniors, and even though I'm currently furloughed because of the pandemic I still qualified -- and I certainly wasn't going to turn it down.  I'm happy to say that all I had as a side effect was some very minor arm soreness the next day, but otherwise, it was no big deal.

However, my mentioning this to a friend prompted an immediate concerned eyebrow-raise.  "Didn't you hear that the vaccine is being used to implant 5G surveillance microchips?" she asked me.  "You're not worried?"

I reassured her that no, I wasn't worried, and in any case if the FBI wants to surveil me, they can knock themselves out because it would be the most boring surveillance job ever.

First FBI Agent: What's he doing now?

Second FBI Agent: Same thing as for the last five days.  He's sitting at his computer drinking coffee and watching funny dog videos.

First FBI Agent: I thought this guy was a writer? 

Second FBI Agent: Supposedly he is.  Have you seen him actually write anything?

First FBI Agent: Well, four days ago he added three lines to his manuscript, deleted two of them, then told his wife that evening he'd been "very productive."

Secondly, even if I was up to no good, I'm not really that confident the FBI would catch on.  These are the same people who had several days before the Capitol riots where the far right was posting stuff all over Parler like, "Wow, that's really some riot we have planned for the Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, isn't it?" and "Here's a list of the people who are signed up as drivers when we go to the riot where we intend to break into the Capitol and threaten lawmakers" and "Here I am in my home at 512 Swamp Hollow Road, East Bunghole, Tennessee, planning to riot in the Capitol!  I bet the FBI will never know!" and still claimed they didn't have enough warning to prevent it.  And they took days afterward to start arresting people despite the fact that numerous rioters took selfies and videoed themselves breaking shit and vandalizing the place, and then posted them online.

Of course, the fact that the rioters did that sort of thing points to general low intelligence on their part, too.  I'm not saying I'm any kind of genius, but I do know that if I was inclined to break the law, I would not video myself with my phone and post it to my Twitter with the hashtag #CriminalActivityFTW. 

Anyhow, I tried to explain to my friend that there's no way you could inject a microchip via a vaccine, and she said she'd "seen it online" and that "they said it was possible."  So I said as gently as I could that it was an unfounded conspiracy theory, but that I'd look into it, and with a very small amount of digging found out that one of the most widely-circulated claims showed a circuit diagram alleged to be of the top-secret injectable microchip, but turned out to be the circuit diagram for a Boss Metal Zone MT-2 guitar distortion pedal where they'd cropped out words that would have been a dead giveaway, like "treble" and "bass" and "volume" and "footswitch."

Just for the record, I can vouch for the fact that the nurse who gave me the COVID-19 vaccine did not inject me with an electric guitar pedal.

You know, what strikes me about all this is that the caliber of conspiracy theories has really been going to hell lately.  They're not even trying to make them plausible any more.  Back in my day, you had your Faked Moon Landing Conspiracy and your Hollow Earth Conspiracy and your Roswell Alien Conspiracy and your The CIA Killed JFK Conspiracy, which were quality.  Now?  With QAnon in charge of our conspiracies, we're being told that a pizza parlor with no basement has a pedophilia ring operating out of its basement.

So I'm issuing a challenge to you yahoos to up your game.  I mean, really.  Is this the best you can do?  Because if it is, I want a refund.

But now I better wind this up and get back to watching funny dog videos.  This novel isn't gonna write itself, and besides, I gotta make the guys in the FBI surveillance van earn their paycheck.

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As a biologist, I've usually thought of myself as immune to being grossed out.  But I have to admit I was a little shocked to find out that the human microbiome -- the collection of bacteria and fungi that live in and on us -- outnumber actual human cells by a factor of ten.

You read that right: if you counted up all the cells in and on the surface of your body, for every one human cell with human DNA, there'd be ten cells of microorganisms, coming from over a thousand different species.

And that's in healthy humans.  This idea that "bacteria = bad" is profoundly wrong; not only do a lot of bacteria perform useful functions, producing products like yogurt, cheese, and the familiar flavor and aroma of chocolate, they directly contribute to good health.  Anyone who has been on an antibiotic long-term knows that wiping out the beneficial bacteria in your gut can lead to some pretty unpleasant side effects; most current treatments for bacterial infections kill the good guys along with the bad, leading to an imbalance in your microbiome that can persist for months afterward.

In The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life, microbiologist Rodney Dietert shows how a lot of debilitating diseases, from asthma to allergies to irritable bowel syndrome to the inflammation that is at the root of heart disease, might be attributable to disturbances in the body's microbiome.  His contention is that restoring the normal microbiome should be the first line of treatment for these diseases, not the medications that often throw the microbiome further out of whack.

His book is fascinating and controversial, but his reasoning (and the experimental research he draws upon) is stellar.  If you're interested in health-related topics, you should read The Human Superorganism.  You'll never look at your own body the same way again.

[Note:  if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

A side of chips

One of the most chilling tropes in my all-time favorite television series, The X Files, was the idea that the individuals involved in the conspiracy between the government and the evil aliens had simultaneously taken DNA samples and implanted microchips into our bodies when we were given vaccinations against smallpox.  The DNA was kept in a huge deep-freeze vault (the same place, I recall, that Mulder saw his first frozen alien baby), for a variety of nefarious purposes -- alien/human hybridization experiments amongst them.  Scully, at first a non-believer, finds out that Mulder was right when her doctor locates, and removes, the microchip in her own body -- with the unexpected result of her developing terminal cancer.

It's a terrifying idea, isn't it?  We're marked, tagged like animals in some kind of wildlife study, for reasons beyond our ken.  The whole thing is what we in the field technically refer to as "Some Seriously Scary Shit."

But, of course, being fiction, The X Files isn't real.  A distinction that apparently has sailed right past one Sherry Shriner, who claims that microchip implants are everywhere, and in everyone, and she knows they are because god told her so, a conclusion she tells us all about in her web page entitled "How To Detect and Nullify Chip Implants."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Shriner thinks the government has us all microchipped, and that microchips are present in all of the following:

• vaccines
• dental fillings
• any kind of implanted medical device (e.g. pacemakers)
• surgical pins, rods, or plates
• transplanted tissue

Not only that, we have probably been microchipped even if we never go to the doctor or dentist, Shriner tells us:

If you are ever in a crowded store and you feel a sudden sting, like you got bit by a insect... [c]hances are you got zapped by a chip gun.  Yes, there are actually morons with chip guns who purposely go around implanting people.

Apparently the lord told Shriner all about this, and that not only are the chips for tracking people, They (the big "They") use the chips to control our behavior:

Our government has been knee deep in one particular area over the past 60 years and that has been to learn how to manipulate and control people.  Biblical theology would refer to as witchcraft but it is seen as advancement and technological breakthroughs by a government that on the backside serves Lucifer and is preparing the way for his rise and manipulation of the entire earth. 

Are serial killers and assassins today under government influence as lab rats to see how effective mind manipulation and control is?  I would say so.  Most of these involved with hideous crimes have recounted stories of chip implantations, missing time, or hearing voices which is typical of being a MILAB or military lab rat. 

What I have found in the Bible Codes about implantable chips in these last days is that they are 2-way transistor radio type chips.  Over the years they have perfected them from being tracking devices to being able to influence people by speaking to them directly through these chips and influencing their actions.  Through these chips they can read your thoughts, hear what you are saying, even see what you are seeing (depending on the chip, like a video chip they have and can implant you with).

We have some recourse against all of this nasty stuff, though, and fortunately, it's simple enough.  These ultrasophisticated high-tech super-secret microchips are only vulnerable to one thing, and we're lucky that it's the one thing the brilliant evil scientists that the government hired would never have thought of...

... magnets.

I have found that rare earth magnets called Neodymium magnets will nullify chips.  I bought some Neodymium magnets online from a retailer, the kind that can lift 10lbs of steel and run about .70 cents a piece and I used band aides to hold them in place.  I put magnets on the back of each ear lobe, on the side of each arm where I have received shots, on both sides of my jaws where I had wisdom teeth removed, and under each heel where I had been purposely implanted by my mother's doctor shortly after I was born.  Also on my stomach where I had a cesarean. I am finding that most people are implanted by their navels as well.  If you have had any type of surgery put a magnet near the scar for about 24 hours. 

When you use the magnets be sure to have the north side of the magnet facing your skin.  A compass will tell you which side of the magnet is north.  For newer chips or chips closer to the surface like your ears or jaws leave them on for about 12 hours.  For older chips such as vaccinations leave them on for about two days.  The Lord will lead you as to how long to keep them on or when it is deactivated and you can take the magnet off.  Just listen for His guidance in your Spirit if you are one of His. 

Seek the Lord on where you have them and He will guide your thoughts and lead you where to put the magnets.

Well, alrighty, then.

Just for the record, though, I'm not letting any neodymium magnets anywhere near my skin, because those things are freakin' powerful, and I'd rather not get a sensitive body part pinched between two of 'em.  Given the choice, I'll stick with the microchips.

Because that's just it, isn't it?  If Shriner is right, and we all have these microchips in us, the government is monitoring and controlling something like 314 million people, minus the half-dozen or so who take Shriner and her ilk seriously and have stuck magnets all over their bodies.  Can you imagine the amount of data we're talking about, here?  The government can't even seem to manage to have an error-free list of voters, and that's just managing a list of names and addresses.  Can you imagine the chaos if government officials were not only monitoring us constantly -- our conversations, what we were looking at, what we were hearing -- but were actually controlling our actions?  Like, with radio transmitters to move us around, or something?

It would be like a 314-million-player game of blind man's bluff.  We'd all be walking into walls, in front of trains, off cliffs, and so on, not to mention the fact that the drivers in Boston would be worse than they already are.

So I doubt that Sherry Shriner is right, honestly.  I haven't heard a thing about this from the lord (or any other reasonably credible source), so I'll just go on ahead living my life and assuming that the Men In Black don't give two shits what I had for dinner this Monday.  (A nice t-bone steak, steamed asparagus, and a glass of red wine, if anyone's curious, not that it matters.)  And if you do find a microchip in your smallpox vaccination scar at some point, my advice is to leave it there.  Scully took hers out, and damn near died.

Microchipping Napoleon

When one of my loyal readers sent me an email asking if I'd heard about the alien microchip implanted in Napoleon's skull, I knew this was gonna be good.

I mean, you don't just combine the mortal remains of major historical figures with alien supertechnology, and not get something fantastic.

So I did a search for it, and man... well, let's just put it this way: I don't know how the hell I missed this one.  There were hits all over the place, a bunch of them just recently on conspiracy-type sites.  Here's a typical one, from earlier this year, courtesy of Bubblews, wherein we get the gist of the story:

While working on a grant from the French government to determine if a pituitary gland problem was the cause of Napoleon Bonaparte's small stature, one Dr. Andre DuBois claims to have discovered a half-inch long microchip implanted in the deceased ruler's skull...  DuBois suggests that, due to the bone growth around the chip, he believes it was implanted when he was very young.  Furthermore Dr. DuBois is quoted as saying, "Napoleon vanished from sight for a period of several days in July 1794, when he was 25.  He later claimed he’d been held prisoner during the Themidorian coup – but no record of that arrest exists.  I believe that is when the abduction took place."

So, we have a pretty amazing claim here, and a possible explanation for why Napoleon liked to stick his hand inside his shirt.  He was clearly adjusting the controls on bionic implants in his belly button.

Anyhow, I started trying to backtrack, and figure out where the story originated.  I found an earlier version (September of 2011) that had more information:

Scientists examining the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte admit they are "deeply puzzled" by the discovery of a half-inch long microchip embedded in his skull.  They say the mysterious object could be an alien implant — suggesting that the French emperor was once abducted by a UFO!

"The possible ramifications of this discovery are almost too enormous to comprehend," declared Dr. Andre Dubois, who made the astonishing revelation in a French medical journal.  "Until now, every indication has been that victims of alien abduction are ordinary people who play no role in world events.  Now we have compelling evidence that extraterrestrials acted in the past to influence human history – and may continue to do so!"

Dr. Dubois made the amazing find while studying Napoleon’s exhumed skeleton on a $140,000 grant from the French government.

"I was hoping to learn whether he suffered from a pituitary disorder that contributed to his small stature," he explained.  But instead the researcher found something far more extraordinary: "As I examined the interior of the skull, my hand brushed across a tiny protrusion. “I then looked at the area under a magnifying glass – and was stunned to find that the object was some kind of super-advanced microchip."

Righty-o, then.  A doctor is given $140,000 by the French government to determine whether Napoleon, who was five-foot-seven, was a pituitary dwarf, and instead the doctor finds that the Emperor had an alien implant.

That's... believable.

So, I tried to track it further back.  Both "Andre" and "Dubois" are common French names, so it was nearly impossible to narrow it down that way.  But I found a version of the story from 2010, and followed the lead from there, and ultimately it led back...

... to The Weekly World News.

 You'd think by this time I would just assume that this was the case.  After all, the same thing happened with the story of the alien burial site in Kigali, Rwanda, the story about how the Earth was about to be invaded by aliens from the planet Gootan, and the story about how there are glass pyramids under the Atlantic Ocean.  Apparently, there is an "all roads lead to Rome" rule about this phenomenon that goes something like, "all bullshit leads to The Weekly World News."

(By the way, for readers who check links -- the link I posted to The Weekly World News story on Napoleon is dated March of 2012, but that must have been an update or repost, because some of the comments on that link go back to 2009.  This really does appear to be the earliest iteration of the story available online.)

So, anyhow, there you have it: Napoleon is highly unlikely to have been an alien abductee.  A pity, really.  That sort of thing would make history class so much more interesting.  But I guess we'll just have to settle for the Peninsular War and the Battle of Leipzig, and try to make do with that.

Microchips, Obamacare, and the Mark of the Beast

Well, another election season is over, and Barack Obama has been given another four years to enact his vision of where the United States should head.  He won't have much time to rest on his laurels -- he's got a lot of work to do if he's going to achieve his chief goals, including creating one million new manufacturing jobs, recruiting 100,000 new science and math teachers, reducing oil imports by half, reducing the deficit, ending US involvement in Afghanistan, and implanting the Mark of the Beast on every American citizen so that he can initiate the End Times as predicted in biblical prophecy.

Well, okay, the last one isn't one of his stated goals, per se.  But you'd think it was, to listen to Paul Begley, the evangelical preacher who in a video clip entitled "Americans!  Prepare to Be Microchipped!" claims that there is a provision in Obamacare to implant RFID chips in everyone, and that corresponds to the Mark of the Beast described in Revelation 13:16-18: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.  Here is wisdom.  Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

The fact is, Obamacare contains no such provision; there is a provision to microchip pacemakers and other implantable medical devices, so that a patient's medical information could be quickly accessible via a scan if the device fails.  But Begley says that no, this isn't all, that this is just a smokescreen for the actual intent of the bill, which is to tag everyone in the US, and ultimately, everyone in the world.

The whole "Mark of the Beast" thing is mighty popular with evangelicals.  It's been discussed by biblical literalists for decades, resulting in speculation that it corresponds to credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, GPS tags in cellphones, UPC codes on items in stores, scannable chips in passports, and a variety of other things.  And once they get the wind up about this stuff, they tend to get awfully suspicious.  One guy I know seriously believes that the DMV is using a microchip implanted in your driver's license to follow your every move, as if (1) they had the staff and technology actually to accomplish this for every person in the US who has a driver's license, (2) the workers in the DMV actually cared where you are on a minute-to-minute basis,  and (3) they didn't have better things to do, such as attending surliness training seminars and taking important coffee breaks when the line for license renewal gets too long.

In any case, the key point, to evangelicals, is that some person will end up getting the number "666" as his/her Mark, and that person will be the Antichrist, or the Beast with Seven Horns, or the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, or possibly all three at the same time.  It's hard to be sure, frankly.  I've read the Book of Revelation more than once, and my general impression is that it sounds like the result of a bad acid trip, so I'm not entirely certain I understand the finer details.  Be that as it may, the evangelicals take the whole 666 thing pretty seriously, to the point where a worker in Georgia last year refused to wear a badge for a day that said "666 days without an accident" for fear that he would be nabbed instantaneously by Satan and dragged off to hell.  (He was fired, sued the company, and was then rehired with back pay.)

Paul Begley, though, thinks he has the whole thing figured out, and that the End Times will start in March 2013 with Obamacare mandating chip implantation in everyone.  (If you looked at the link, note the highly alarming picture of someone using a barcode reader on a blank-eyed guy's forehead.  If that doesn't convince you... well, don't make me use the word "sheeple" in your general direction.)

So, anyhow.  I hope all of you people who voted for Obama knew what you were getting into.  If you don't, you'll figure out all too soon -- March 2013 is right around the corner.  That is, of course, provided we survive the Mayan Apocalypse on December 21, 2012, an event I am positively looking forward to.  (I'm thinking of getting a shirt to wear on December 21 that says, "The Mayans Had An Apocalypse, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.")  So I guess this gives us something to look forward to after the Apocalypse is over -- at least those of us who aren't eaten by zombies, or whatever other special offers the Mayans have in mind.  Me, I'm already considering my strategy, and I think I have a good one, which I have outlined below.