Beanie protection

Worried about aliens and/or the Illuminati and/or Bill Gates beaming secret subconscious orders directly into your brain?  Want to protect yourself from evil external influences?  Tired of running down to the supermarket every other day to buy a new roll of Reynolds Wrap?

Have I got a product for you.

I was gonna add, "Do you have no idea how electronic technology works?" but then I decided that (1) it was redundant because "no idea about technology" probably overlaps pretty completely with people who answered "yes" to the preceding three questions, and (2) I'm no electrical engineer myself.  But I do know enough to feel relatively confident that no one is trying to 5G my brainwaves or whatnot every time I turn on my phone.

Now, I'm not saying that the tech corporations aren't trying to hack your preferences in non-woo-woo ways.  It's no big secret that all you have to do is to search once for something online, and you will immediately be crushed to death under a million advertisements for the product on every social media platform known.  Sometimes, just saying it is enough; if your phone is on (or, for that matter, Alexa, EchoDot, or Siri), you can assume you're being listened to.  It's not by the Illuminati, though.  Trust me, the Illuminati don't give a flying rat's ass what you are fixing for lunch.  Advertisers, though, do; they care deeply.  In an incident I swear I am not making up, my wife and I were in the car laughing about people who dress their dogs up for Halloween, and I commented that with our dog's long legs and lanky frame, we should get her a Star Wars AT-AT Walker costume.  When I got home, I turned on my computer, got onto Facebook, and...

... the first thing I saw was an advertisement for AT-AT costumes for dogs.

So if they're listening in, it's not to turn you into a mindless automaton, it's to get you to pull out your wallet and order useless shit online.

Which, now that I come to think of it, aren't all that different.

I've also seen claims suggesting that humans are way more perceptive about subliminal messages than they actually are.  A guy on Twitter wrote a sinister post pointing out that the letters in "delta omicron" (the names of two of the COVID-19 variants) can be rearranged to spell "media control," and how that was highly significant.  Because using Greek letter names isn't something scientists do all the time, or anything.  I responded that you could also rearrange "delta omicron" to spell "cilantro mode," "doom clarinet," "erotic almond," and "retail condom," so what's your point?

He responded by blocking me.  You can't win.

In any case, my point is that even if they were able to beam subconscious commands directly into your cerebral cortex (which they can't), they don't need to.  We do the big corporations' bidding just fine as it is.  But in case you're still worried, and even after buying a ridiculous costume for your dog you still have more money than sense, allow me to direct your attention to a site where you can buy...

... an electromagnetic-field-blocking beanie.

[Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of photographer Andrew Neel]

The site describes the beanie as follows:

WaveStopper™ uses a proprietary concept that includes a tight mesh of SilverFlex™ fibers carefully woven to create an electromagnetic shield.  The conductivity of SilverFlex™ mesh cancels out the magnetic field of EMFs and as a result reflects the radiation outside the garment.  WaveStopper™ is tested in military-grade laboratories and certified to be blocking over 99% of EMFs including cellphone, 4G, 5G WiFi, and Bluetooth radiation.

In case the guys in my readership think that you're also getting commands beamed directly into your testicles, they also sell Faraday Cage Boxer Briefs.  You probably know that a Faraday cage is a mesh of conductive material that shields what is inside it from electromagnetic fields; they're used routinely to protect electronic equipment from powerful EMFs nearby.  As far as the low-level EMFs we're exposed to daily, the current research strongly supports the fact that they have no harmful health effects.  The World Health Organization has the following to say:

In the area of biological effects and medical applications of non-ionizing radiation approximately 25,000 articles have been published over the past 30 years.  Despite the feeling of some people that more research needs to be done, scientific knowledge in this area is now more extensive than for most chemicals.  Based on a recent in-depth review of the scientific literature, the WHO concluded that current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low-level electromagnetic fields.

The upshot of it is that you don't have to worry about Faraday-caging your junk unless you're considering placing it inside a microwave oven and turning it on.

Like I said before, it's not that I am unaware that big corporations are constantly finding new ways to hack your preferences for their own purposes (as are political parties; witness the Cambridge Analytica scandal).  It's just that they're not doing it by 5G-ing your brain.  We give them our information all the time, voluntarily and often without a second thought.  Besides doing Google searches for stuff, we get suckered every day by ploys like the seemingly silly and lighthearted posts that pop up regularly on Facebook and Twitter.  "Your rock band name is the color of your underwear + the last thing you ate for a snack."  "If you reversed the digits of your age, how old would you be?"  "What was the #1 hit song when you were twelve years old?"  "Your stripper name is your grandma's first name + the street you grew up on."  Some of these are clearly fishing for information that is commonly used on security questions; but even the more innocuous ones are trying to find out your demographics, your preferences, and your habits.  Let me put this bluntly: you should never answer questions like these.  Ever.  Maybe some of them are just goofy posts from people wanting to bump up their interaction rate on Twitter, but enough of them are sketchy that you should avoid them all.  Even answering them "I'm not answering this because it's trying to do data mining" just clues in the originator that they have someone who will take the time to answer... and as a result, you'll see more and more such posts.

But about the high-tech fabric to protect your brain and/or balls, my advice is: save your money.  We have much, much bigger things to worry about.  And if you're still concerned about media control (or, for that matter, doom clarinets and erotic almonds), I have a suggestion:

Close the damn social media, shut off your computer and your phone, and go for a long walk.  That'll clear your mind nicely, even without a protective EMF-repelling beanie.

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I've mentioned before how fascinated I am with the parts of history that still are largely mysterious -- the top of the list being the European Dark Ages, between the fall of Rome and the re-consolidation of central government under people like Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.  Not all that much was being written down in the interim, and much of the history we have comes from much later (such as History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, chronicling the events of the fourth through the eighth centuries C.E. -- but written in the twelfth century).

"Dark Ages," though, may be an unfair appellation, according to the new book Matthew Gabriele and David Perry called The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.  Gabriele and Perry look at what is known of those years, and their contention is that it wasn't the savage, ignorant hotbed of backwards superstition many of us picture, but a rich and complex world, including the majesty of Byzantium, the beauty and scientific advancements of Moorish Spain, and the artistic genius of the master illuminators found in just about every Christian abbey in Europe.

It's an interesting perspective.  It certainly doesn't settle all the questions; we're still relying on a paucity of actual records, and the ones we have (Geoffrey's work being a case in point) sometimes being as full of legends, myths, and folk tales as they are of actual history.  But The Bright Ages goes a long way toward dispelling the sense that medieval Europe was seven hundred years of nothing but human misery.  It's a fascinating look at humanity's distant, and shadowed, past.

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

Mind over matter

Once a week, my Critical Thinking classes are required to find an example in the media of one of the concepts we've covered -- logical fallacies, biases, arguments (good and bad), pseudoscience, and ethical issues.  Over the course of the semester, my students become pretty good at ferreting out bad thinking, not to mention digging up all sorts of goofy stuff in newspapers, magazines, and online.

And this week, one of my students found a doozy.  It's a set of step-by-step instructions for learning...

... telekinesis.

Yes, telekinesis, the skill made famous in the historical documentary Carrie wherein a high school girl got revenge on the classmates who had bullied her by basically flinging heavy objects at them with her mind and then locking them inside a burning gymnasium.  Hating bullies as I do, I certainly understand her doing this, although it's probably a good thing this ability isn't widespread.  Given how fractious the current political situation is, if everyone suddenly learned how to move things with their minds, the United States as viewed from space would probably look like a huge, whirling, debris-strewn hurricane of objects being thrown about every time something about the President-elect appeared in the news.

But if you'd like to be able to do this, you can learn how at the aptly named site HowToTelekinesis.com.  But to save your having to paw through the site, I'll hit the highlights here.  You can try 'em out and afterwards report back if you had any success in, say, levitating your cat.

Polish spiritualist medium Stanislawa Tomczyk levitating a pair of scissors that totally was not connected to a piece of thread tied to her fingers [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Step one, apparently, is that you have to believe that there is no external reality, because otherwise "your logical mind will be fighting your telekinesis endeavors every step of the way."  I know this would be a problem for me.  The author of the website suggests that you can accomplish this by studying some quantum physics, because quantum physics tells us the following:

Everything we see, hear, feel, taste and smell is light and energy vibrating at a fixed frequency.  This energy is being projected from within, both individually and collectively.  Our energy projection is reflected back and interpreted and perceived as “real” via the mind through our five senses.  That is the condensed version of reality.

The problem is, quantum physics doesn't say any such thing, as anyone who has taken a college physics class knows.  Quantum physics describes the behavior of small, discrete packets of energy ("quanta") which ordinarily only have discernible effects in the realm of the submicroscopic.  It is also, in essence, a mathematical model, and as such has nothing whatsoever to do with an "energy projection (being) reflected back and interpreted and perceived as real by the mind."

But anyhow, apparently if you're inclined to learn telekinesis, you can interpret the findings of physics any way that's convenient for you.

Oh, and we're told that it also helps to watch the woo-woo documentary extraordinaire What the Bleep Do We Know?, which was produced by J. Z. Knight, the Washington-based loon who claims to channel a 35,000 year old guy from Atlantis named "Ramtha."  The author waxes rhapsodic about how scientifically accurate this film is, despite the fact that damn near everything in the film is inaccurate at best and an outright lie at worst.

Step two is understanding your "telekinesis toolkit," which includes "empathy, mindset, and energy."  They explain it this way:

Imagine feelings being the words spoken on your phone, and empathy is the signal or wire connecting you.  Your mindset is the phone itself and energy is the electricity used to run it. You have to have a phone, signal and power to communicate.  A lame phone, weak signal or low battery will make doing telekinesis nearly impossible.

I daresay it will.

Step three is finding a good mentor.  Since these mentors aren't free, let's just say that I had a sudden "Aha" moment when I got to this point.  The website tells us that the best mentors are at the Avatar Energy Mastery Institute, where we can learn the following:

You will learn all about energy, chakras, clairvoyance, out of body travel, mind and soul expansion, healing, higher-self, time travel, lucid dreaming and pretty much everything else a seeker could hope for.  I also know that Ormus from www.SacredSupplements.com really enhances psychic abilities and speeds the learning process.

When I saw "Ormus," something in the back of my brain went off.  I knew I'd seen this before.  And sure enough, a year ago I did a post on Ormus, which is an acronym standing for "Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements."  And yes, I know that spells "ORME" and not "ORMUS," but since we're kind of disconnected from reality here anyhow, we'll let that slide.  Evidently the believers in Ormus think that taking this stuff can do everything up to and including (I am not making this up) changing your inertial mass, and I don't mean that you got heavier because you just swallowed something.  They claim that taking Ormus makes your inertial mass smaller, which would be surprising for any supplement not made of antimatter.

And taking antimatter supplements has its own fairly alarming set of risks, the worst of which is exploding in a burst of gamma rays.

So anyway.  I'm thinking that if you do all of this stuff, telekinesis is still going to be pretty much out of the question, as much fun as it could be.  But feel free to give it all a try.  Let me know, though, if you're planning on lobbing any heavy furniture my way.  The hate mail I get on a daily basis is bad enough.

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.