Ethics, religion, and the right to die

One of my failings is that I never seem to be able to see ethical questions in black-and-white.

Life would undoubtedly be easier if I did.  Humans, myself included, appear to me to be impossibly complex, full of competing motives, attitudes, thoughts, and prejudices, with an incomplete access to the facts (and a fallible machine with which to process those facts).  Given all that, a lot of the time I really don't know how to make decisions on ethical matters -- I can too easily see the arguments from both sides.  All of which makes it all the more baffling to me how people can seem so sure of themselves in (for example) politics.

Maybe it's why I'm comfortable in the realm of science.  There, there's a clear decision-making protocol, and rules of logic that govern it.  Things may not always be simple in science, but they sure are a hell of a lot clearer.

I ran into an especially good example of this yesterday, with the story of the seventeen-year-old Sydney, Australia boy who is fighting in court for the right not to be treated for his probably-curable Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The boy is a Jehovah's Witness, and they believe that you are showing a lack of faith in god if you seek medical care when you're ill.  You should, they say, pray for healing.  If you die, then (1) you didn't pray hard enough, or in the right way, or (2) it was god's will that you died.  Either way, they're insulated against criticism of the claim, which strikes me as pretty convenient.

The case was in the courts in April, and was characterized as a situation of neglectful, ultra-religious parents victimizing an ill child by denying him treatment.  Supreme Court Justice Ian Gzell agreed, stating in his ruling that, ''The sanctity of life in the end is a more powerful reason for me to make the orders than is respect for the dignity of the individual.  X is still a child, although a mature child of high intelligence.''  The boy was ordered into Sydney Children's Hospital, where he began chemotherapy.

But the case jumped back into the news when it was reported that the boy himself is threatening to rip the IV needle out of his arm -- after his father wrote a line from the bible on a whiteboard in the boy's hospital room that allegedly supports the contention that it is against god's will to have a blood transfusion.

A spokesperson for Sydney Children's Hospital said the boy had a ''cocooned upbringing'' and his family had ''little exposure to challenges of their beliefs from outsiders''-- implying that he and his family were simply wrong, and therefore incapable of making a responsible decision.  The boy himself expressed horror at the thought that he might be sedated and treated against his will -- likening it to being raped.

So, what's the answer?  I teach seventeen-year-olds, and a good many of them are highly mature, sensitive, and intelligent.  Some are less so.  Even the less mature ones feel strongly that they should be able to make their own decisions.  In the eyes of the law, however, they are still legally their parents' responsibility.

Then we have the religious aspects.  It's easy enough to ridicule the beliefs of these folks from the outside -- but put yourself in their places.  What if you really, truly believed that death was not final, that your soul lived on -- but that you might end up in eternal torment if you sought out medical care?  You are in pain now, but that's temporary.  Hell, on the other hand, lasts forever.  Wouldn't you choose a few months' discomfort over an eternity in agony?

Then there's the aspect of "brainwashing" -- as it's been widely characterized.  I agree to the extent that the Jehovah's Witnesses' view of the world is unsupported by everything I know about science, logic, and nature.  There is, in my opinion, not a shred of evidence for their claims.  Still -- shouldn't we all be allowed to make those decisions for ourselves?  Why should my reliance on science and logic dictate what someone else does?  I sure as hell would resent that if the situation were reversed -- which it sometimes is.

It's not an easy thing to decide, is it?  It would be different if the boy were younger; but even that is an ethical conundrum, because there's no on/off switch for maturity.  Are you capable of making this sort of decision at sixteen?  Fourteen?  Ten?  In most places, you become the master of your own fate at eighteen, but even that is an arbitrary number.  I know some people who are more mature at fifteen than others are at twenty-five.

So I'm left with a question.  We have a boy who is almost certain to die because of his, and his parents', religious beliefs, and a hospital that is desperately trying to stop that from happening.  And all I can say is that I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make the decision about what is best to do.

The Freedom Festival comes to town

Much was my surprise when I found out that the wingnuts are coming to visit my own home town.

Let me say, at the outset, that my home town is tiny.  It has no stoplights.  Traffic jams consist of times you have to wait for three cars to pass before you can turn into the Shur-Save Grocery Store.  The high point of excitement in my village, and I am not making this up, is the day once a month when the Doug's FishFryMobile parks at the Fairgrounds so you can get takeout fried fish for dinner.

It is not, to put it mildly, a happenin' place.

So I was a bit surprised to find out that we were going to be the hosts of the Finger Lakes Freedom Festival.  Of course, at first, I didn't know what the Finger Lakes Freedom Festival was going to be; from the name, it sounded like it could be anything from a picnic for veterans to a meeting of the local Tea Party members.  The flyer didn't give anything much further in the way of clues:

FINGER LAKES FREEDOM FESTIVAL

Share your passion for freedom!  Learn how to preserve it!

Trumansburg Fairgrounds @ Trumansburg, New York

Saturday, September 28, 2013 10 AM - 10 PM

Movies, Seminars, Info booths, Vendors, Exhibits, BBQ

Enter contests:  Art, Essay, Poetry, Song, and Bumper Stickers!

Still not much to go on.  Could be innocuous, could be... scary.

My first inkling of what was actually happening came from a student of mine, who said, and I quote, "I think these people are insane.  You might want to look into it."  Then a colleague of mine said that he'd been given one of the flyers by a parent, who seemed a little... intense about the whole thing.

So I started doing some research.  And let me tell you, this is a dog-and-pony show of considerably larger proportions than I realized.

Let's look, for example, at the guest speakers.  Starting with:

Tom DeWeese, who is going to be speaking about "Sustainable Development and the Wrenching Transformation of America."  Again, innocent enough title -- could be a talk by a Natural Resources professor at Cornell, from the sound of it.

Nope.  In fact, DeWeese has been flagged by Daily Kos' "Wingnut Watch," who characterizes him as follows:

At the risk of giving him and his organization exposure, I thought it worth putting up a post here so we can be on the watch for him and his message. If you're serious about wanting to deal with major problems the world is facing - growth, energy, climate - you need to know about DeWeese. Because he's bound and determined to keep anything effective from being done. He's a classic case of Libertarian paranoia gone toxic.

If you're someone interested in seeing your local community adopt policies that save energy, conserve resources, and plan for the long run, Tom DeWeese is there to make sure it's not going to happen. He'll turn you into a communist/internationalist/socialist seeking to tell people what they can and can't do. He'll accuse you of brainwashing their kids, trying to take away their guns, driving jobs out of town, and just about anything he can get away with. He'll help organize all of the local low-information, paranoid folks to stop you. And he'll portray it all in terms of doing the Right Thing, the Patriotic Thing, the American Way.

Then we have Sheriff Richard Mack, the Arizona sheriff who gained notoriety by suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for slander, libel, and defamation, and sued the United States itself on the grounds that the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act was unconstitutional.

But Mack seems sane as compared to Rosa Koire, whom the North Coast Journal describes as follows: "[Koire is] a 'forensic commercial real estate appriaser' from Santa Rosa who helped found a group called the Post Sustainability Institute. Koire explains how local governments use something called the Delphi technique to brainwash people into believing in such nefarious concepts as smart-growth, environmental stewardship and energy conservation.  'This is war,' Koire declares."

Then there's Laurie Murray, whose LinkedIn profile reads:

Save lives through education and awareness of suppressed information about the causes, prevention, and recovery from serious chronic diseases such as Mercury Poisoning, Autism, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's, ALS, Diabetes, and other autoimmune and neurological disorders caused by environmental toxins and heavy metals.

That is: chemtrails, anti-vaxx, and so on.

Ultra-right-wing political contributors will include KrisAnne Hall ("The Roots of Liberty and the Bill of Rights"), Michael Chapman ("Our Censored Heritage" and "Education for Sustainable Tyranny"), and Judith Whitmore ("Citizen Vigilance Centers - Holding Elected Officials Accountable to the Constitution").

All in all, it should be good times.

I think what bothers me about all of this is how surreptitious they're being about the whole thing.  The names of the talks don't tell you much; the anti-vaxx, anti-public-education, conspiracy-theorist leanings of these people are being fairly thoroughly smothered under a veneer of respectable-sounding words like "freedom" and "liberty" and "constitutional" and "accountable."  If they aren't trying to hide anything, why don't they come out and be up front about what this "festival" is?

The answer, of course, is that they want to (1) get lots of people to show up who don't know what's going on, in the hopes of catching them off guard and convincing them; and (2) avoid hecklers.  While I can understand (2), (1) really pisses me off, because it smells of being disingenuous.  These flyers are being handed out all over my school, and kids are considering going without knowing the level of propaganda this represents -- and that isn't even addressing the political slant.  As I've mentioned before, I'm neither qualified nor inclined to comment on politics most of the time, but I do know science -- and the claims of these people that are scientific in nature are simply bogus, unsupported, and irresponsible.

I'm probably not going to attend, however.  For one thing, I'm not into seeking out conflict, especially in my home town.  I have to live here, after all.  For another, I don't think anything I say is going to convince any attendees who aren't already convinced.  But I do think it's important to know what you're getting into, if you are a local who's trying to decide whether to attend.

What seems certain is that the agenda is going to have to do with a lot of other things besides "freedom."

Magnets, politics, and preconceived notions

Two stories showed up just in the last couple of days that are interesting primarily in juxtaposition.

First, we had a scholarly paper published in PLOS One, entitled "Copper Bracelets and Magnetic Wrist Straps for Rheumatoid Arthritis – Analgesic and Anti-Inflammatory Effects: A Randomised Double-Blind Placebo Controlled Crossover Trial."  In it, we find out what most skeptics suspected from the get-go -- that magnetic and copper bracelets and anklets and necklaces and shoe-sole inserts and so on are a complete non-starter when it comes to treating disease.

These claims have been around for years, and usually rely on pseudoscientific bosh of the kind you find in this site, wherein we have the following "explanation:"

Life developed under the influence of the earth's geomagnetic field.  We are surrounded by a sea of magnetism.  The human body, its individual organs and each of the millions of cells making up the organs and the body bathed by this sea are magnetically charged.  Cell regulation, tissue function and life itself are controlled by internal electromagnetic currents.  In disease states, these electromagnetic potentials are altered but fortunately can be favorably influenced by the external application of magnetics...  Used correctly, Electro-Magnetic Energy Fields are a proven therapeutic modality.  Research and clinical experience has established that the very gentle, EULF, low power pulsed magnetic energy improves the repair of damaged tissue and reduction of pain, improved oxygen transport in the red blood cells, increased nutrient and oxygen uptake at the cellular level.  Greater elasticity of blood vessels, changes in acid/alkaline balance, altering of enzyme and hormone activity, all play an important role in the return to good health...  Negative magnetic fields oxygenate and alkalize by aiding the body's defense against bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which thrive in an acid medium.  In degenerative diseases, calcium is found deposited around inflamed joints, bruised areas on the hell, and in bones and kidney stones.  Infections occur because they function well in an acidic, oxygen deficient state.

Which, in my opinion, should win some kind of award for packing the most bullshit into a single paragraph.

So the whole copper-and-magnet thing never did make much sense.  But don't take my word for it; here's what Richardson, Gunadasa, Bland, and MacPherson said, after having run a double-blind efficacy test on magnetic bracelets:

The results of this study may be understood in a number of ways. The most obvious interpretation is that they demonstrate that magnetic wrist straps, and also copper bracelets, have little if any specific therapeutic effects (i.e. beyond those of a placebo) on pain, inflammation, or disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis...  The fact that we were unable to demonstrate... a difference for the primary outcome measure on its own, nor indeed any of the other core measures employed, strongly suggests that wearing magnetic wrists straps, or copper bracelets, in order to minimise disease progression and alleviate symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis is a practice which lacks clinical efficacy.

But as I said, this is hardly a surprise to skeptics, who doubted the whole thing pretty much from the outset.

The second story at first seems to connect to the first in only a tangential fashion at best.  Chris Mooney, a skeptical writer of well-deserved high reputation, wrote about it this week in Grist in a piece called "Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to do Math."   In Mooney's article we hear about a study by Dan Kahan and his colleagues, of Yale Law School, in which two groups of people were asked to solve the same (rather difficult) mathematical problem -- but one group was given the problem in the context of its being about "the effectiveness of a new skin cream for rashes," and the other group that it was about "the effectiveness of a new law banning private citizens from carrying concealed handguns in public."

What Kahan's study found was that when the problem involved the relatively emotionally-neutral context of a skin cream, your ability to solve the problem correctly depended upon only one thing -- your skill at math.  In other words, both Democrats and Republicans scored well on the problem if they were good at math, and both scored poorly if they were bad at math.  But when the problem involved handguns, a different pattern emerged.  Here's how Mooney explains the results:

So how did people fare on the handgun version of the problem? They performed quite differently than on the skin cream version, and strong political patterns emerged in the results — especially among people who are good at mathematical reasoning. Most strikingly, highly numerate liberal Democrats did almost perfectly when the right answer was that the concealed weapons ban does indeed work to decrease crime...  an outcome that favors their pro-gun-control predilections. But they did much worse when the correct answer was that crime increases in cities that enact the ban... 

The opposite was true for highly numerate conservative Republicans: They did just great when the right answer was that the ban didn't work... but poorly when the right answer was that it did. 

Put simply: when our emotions and preconceived notions are involved, data and logic have very little impact on our brains.

This is a profoundly unsettling conclusion, especially for people like me.  Every day I get up and write about how people should be more logical and rational and data-driven, and here Kahan et al. show me that all of the double-blind studies in the world aren't going to convince people that their magnet-studded copper bracelets aren't helping their arthritis pain if they already thought that they worked.

It does leave me with a sort of bleak feeling.  I mean, why test wacko claims, if the only people who will believe the results are the ones who already agreed with the result of the experiment beforehand?  Maybe this justifies the fact that I spend as much time making fun of woo-woos as I do arguing logically against them.  Appeal to people's emotions, and you're much more likely to get a result.

On the other hand, this feels to me way too much like sinking to their level.  I live in hope that the people who are convinced by what I write -- and maybe there have been a few -- have been swayed more by my logic than by my sarcasm.

But given human nature -- and Kahan's experiment -- maybe that's a losing proposition.

Aquatic cryptid update

It is amazing to me, after all of these years of having a (rather guilty) fascination with cryptozoology, that I still can run into cryptids that I've never heard of.  This week, for example, I discovered two that were new to me -- one veritably in my own back yard.

The first came up because it's the 25th anniversary of its alleged appearance.  Back in 1988, farmers in Rhyader, Wales, began to report that their large animals -- especially sheep -- were being killed by "a single bite to the sternum."  One farm, owned by the Pugh family, lost over three dozen of its sheep to the attacker.

The article summarizing the events of a quarter-century ago states that the townspeople initially attributed the attacks to a "black panther."  This is somewhat amusing given that the only black panthers in Wales are in zoos, and if one went missing, the zookeeper would probably have noticed.  On the other hand, reports of giant marauding felines in Britain are common enough that the phenomenon has its own Wikipedia page, so I guess if we Yanks can have our Bigfoots, then the Brits can have their panthers.

Be that as it may, the Ginormous Kitty Theory received a serious credibility blow when it was found that the evidence left behind by the Beast of Rhyader, as it came to be known, showed that the creature had not been walking on four legs -- but had, instead, slithered up from the River Wye.  So rather than modifying their guess to the Ginormous Aquatic Legless Kitty Theory, the townspeople settled on a new model, namely the Ginormous Aquatic Serpent Theory.

Not an actual photograph of the Beast of Rhyader

The author uses the term "Lovecraftian" to describe the beast, which is apt only in that it killed things.  Most of the creatures in Lovecraft's stories also sucked out their victims' souls, ate their faces, or converted them to puddles of sticky goo.  So I think we can say that the resemblance, if any, was purely coincidental.

In any case, the attacks suddenly ceased of their own accord in December of 1988, never to be repeated, and the mystery was never solved.


But if that's scary enough, little did I know that there was a similar beast only a few miles away from me.  In Cayuga Lake, a long, narrow glacial lake that's only five miles (as the crow flies) from my front door, there is a creature called "Old Greeny" that resembles the Beast of Rhyader in that (1) it's aquatic, (2) it's reptilian, and (3) it almost certainly doesn't exist.  But this last isn't going to stop the reports from coming in, one of them from an "unnamed resident of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania," who was visiting our fair region back in 2009, and had the following to say:

I’ve been face to face with Old Greeny; not more than 100 feet away from me as I stood on the northern shore of Lake Cayuga looking south across the lake; eight or nine years ago. It raised its triangular-tooth-filled jaws with aquatic plants hanging from it’s half-open mouth to break surface for only about three seconds before once again submerging. I will never forget that large, unblinking eye staring to the west at nothing in particular; never acknowledging my presence. Don’t let anyone tell you I saw a floating log or a beaver! I know I saw an animal that is not supposed to exist!  By what I observed I can tell you it was standing on the bottom when it raised its head for me to see; not swimming; but stationary!

Not an actual photograph of Old Greeny

The same story reports that a local resident, one Steven Griffen, was bitten on the arm so hard by Old Greeny in 1974 that it broke his arm.  This might actually discourage me from swimming in Cayuga Lake if I was actually willing to swim in it in the first place, given that our climate is not exactly conducive to running around outside clad in nothing but swim trunks (this year, summer occurred on a Thursday).

But even so, I'll keep my eyes peeled when I'm down near the lake, and report back here if I see anything that is definitely not a beaver.

I'll also make sure that I'll listen for reports of local sheep being killed by "a single bite to the sternum."  That's gotta hurt, even if the attacker doesn't turn out to be "Lovecraftian."

Life in the ozone layer

Some woo-woo ideas are at least understandable.  You can see how people might, through a combination of wishful thinking, dart-thrower's bias, confirmation bias, and the like, decide that the stars guide your future, that good luck charms (or evil curses) work, that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and El Chupacabra exist, that aliens regularly visit the Earth.

Other claims, however, leave me wondering how the ones making them have not been taken out by natural selection decades ago.

Consider, for example, the idea that has recently been making the rounds of social media -- that the road to good health comes through breathing ozone.

I've started seeing this pop up all over the place.  I even know someone who bought an "ozone generator" for his house.  Here's the claim:

The therapeutic properties of ozone can be astounding. Organized Medicine, the FDA, and above all the Pharmaceutical giants have been actively suppressing information about ozone therapy for the better part of this century. Officially, the FDA list ozone as a toxic gas, an utter and contemptible falsehood. Many healers, including licensed MD's and chiropractors have been jailed and viciously harassed for treating (and healing) patients with ozone. Why? It works and the pharmaceutical houses, along with their puppets in the FDA and local medical boards don't want you to know that it works! That's why.

So right from the get-go we have the pro-ozoners claiming that reputable scientists publishing in peer-reviewed journals (such as Mohamed Mostafa of UCLA, author of "The Biochemical Basis of Ozone Toxicity," and William A. Pryor et al. of LSU, authors of "The Cascade Mechanism to Explain Ozone Toxicity") are shills who are lying to you.

But it gets better.  Wait till you hear how they want you to get the ozone inside you, because it turns out that just breathing the stuff isn't good enough.  And let me say, at the outset, that I'm not making any of these up, and if you don't believe me, you can check the link I posted above.  So, here goes, in order of increasing weirdness.

1. You can drink water that has been infused with ozone.
2. You can smear ozonated olive oil on your skin.
3. You can have the doctor take out a pint of your blood, bubble ozone through it, and put the blood back in.
4. You can have the doctor blow ozone into your ear.
5. You can have the doctor blow ozone up your ass.
6. You can take off all your clothes, get into a plastic bag that ties at the neck, and have the doctor (or a friend) inflate the bag with ozone.
7. You can have the doctor inject ozone gas directly into a vein.

This last one seems to me to be a good way of inducing a gas embolism and dying, but the pro-ozoners say this never happens.  Why?  Because ozone GOOD, that's why.  Stop asking questions.  (In fact, the site says about the potential for gas embolism, "Do not allow this bogus fear tactic to keep you from investigating this highly effective and safe therapy!")

What, exactly, are they claiming that ozone does for you?  Well, it's not entirely clear, but here are the basics:

Ozone is an unstable, but highly beneficial molecule. It's the tri-atomic form of oxygen: Instead of the normal arrangement of 2 atoms of oxygen (O2), ozone is comprised of 3 atoms of oxygen (O3). Ozone, however, doesn't want to stay in that tri-atomic state very long and unless held in check or bound by other molecular couplings, ozone will usually break down from O3 to O2 + O1 within 20 minutes of so (at atmospheric pressure at least). O1 is called a singlet oxygen atom and it's HIGHLY REACTIVE. with just about any substance that should NOT be in the human body including all pathogens (virus, bacteria, etc.) and synthetic compounds or their metabolites such as drugs and their  metabolite residues.

So I see this as basically characterizing ozone as some kind of chemical superhero that seeks out and destroys bad guys in your body, but doesn't damage your own honest, law-abiding cells.  It flies in, wearing a cape festooned with "O3," kills pathogens and "synthetic compounds" (because we know that natural = good and synthetic = bad), and then flies away in triumph, leaving all of your organs happy, safe, and secure.

The truth, of course, is that ozone is toxic, and that using an ozone generator (or getting the stuff into your body via some more unorthodox route) is potentially dangerous.  An EPA report on the use of ozone generators to "clean household air" has this to say:

The same chemical properties that allow high concentrations of ozone to react with organic material outside the body give it the ability to react with similar organic material that makes up the body, and potentially cause harmful health consequences.  When inhaled, ozone can damage the lungs... Relatively low amounts can cause chest pain, coughing, shortness of breath, and, throat irritation.  Ozone may also worsen chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma and compromise the ability of the body to fight respiratory infections.  People vary widely in their susceptibility to ozone. Healthy people, as well as those with respiratory difficulty, can experience breathing problems when exposed to ozone.  Exercise during exposure to ozone causes a greater amount of ozone to be inhaled, and increases the risk of harmful respiratory effects.  Recovery from the harmful effects can occur following short-term exposure to low levels of ozone, but health effects may become more damaging and recovery less certain at higher levels or from longer exposure.

Ah, yes, the EPA.  Yet another bunch of shills for Big Pharma, right?

Of course right.

What I find mysterious about all of this is how anyone ever came up with this idea.  Ozone has long been known to be a constituent of photochemical smog, and most people have learned the general rule that "smog is bad" well enough that you'd think no one would suddenly think, "Hey, I know what would work!  Let's concentrate the stuff in smog and then breathe it!  That'll improve our health!"

But apparently that's exactly what has happened here.

So I'm kind of at a loss about this one.  There doesn't seem to be any reasonable explanation for how this started, nor why anyone believes it.

All I know is that based on what I've read, no one is getting near any of my orifices with an ozone tube.

God particle jewelry

It's simultaneously amusing and frustrating to see the woo-woos trying to incorporate the latest scientific findings into their wooism.

Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, there was a great deal of babbling about "etheric bodies" -- basically, their conception of the soul, which could project through time and space and which survived the physical body after death.  The "etheric body" was, supposedly, made of "ether," the mysterious substance suggested by scientists as the medium through which light waves propagated in the depths of space.

Because, after all, if the "etheric body" is made of "ether," then if the scientists say that the "ether" exists, the "etheric body" must, too.  Right?

Of course right.

But then the Michelson-Morley experiment and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity demonstrated conclusively that the "ether" didn't exist, and unfortunately, the woo-woos of the time didn't use the reverse logic, and conclude that souls didn't, either.  They just changed the name to "astral body" and kept right on blathering.

Bait-and-switch, that's the ticket.

The master of this technique these days is the inimitable Diane Tessman, who uses scientific words incorrectly so often that someone should design a drinking game based on her writings.  (It is not recommended that you take a shot whenever she uses the word "quantum," however.  I'd prefer not to have any of my readers end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.)

Yesterday, though, I ran into the pinnacle, the epitome, the crowning glory of this technique.  If you know of a better one, I don't want to hear about it, because this one caused so many faceplants that I'm already going to have to go to school this morning with an icepack strapped to my forehead.

Most of you probably have heard of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle whose existence was proposed by Peter Higgs way back in 1964 as the manifestation of the Higgs field, which permeates space, interacting with matter and giving it the property of mass.  Higgs, now age 84, was fortunate enough to live to see his theory vindicated.  In March of 2013 an experiment in CERN generated traces of a high-energy particle that most physicists believe was the Higgs.

Unfortunately, twenty years earlier, physicist Leon Lederman had given the elusive particle the nickname "the God Particle" -- apparently because his publisher wouldn't let him use his first choice for a nickname, which was "the goddamned particle."

But far be it from the woo-woos to let an objection like "it's just the nickname, for cryin' in the sink!" stand in their way.  Because now we have someone is selling jewelry made from ball bearings pilfered from CERN...

... and claiming that they are infused with God Particles, and that wearing it will bring you divine guidance.

Here's the pitch:

The God Particle, which was recently discovered by our colleagues in CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, forever the Holy Grail of particle physics and nuclear research. The God particle is regarded as one of the fundamental forces of the cosmos. Many religious philosophers believe it constitutes the very ground of being, while others assert that it is the fabric of creation upon which the tapestry of the universe is woven. There are some who refer to the God particle as the clay of existence, whereas the Shaivites of India know it as Brahman and regard it quite reverently as sacred supreme Consciousness.

We still don't know if one of these theories is true, or maybe they all are. What we do know is that you are on the verge of a once in a lifetime opportunity of letting this infinite power into your life.

You deserve God's help, you deserve God's particle.

So these people apparently pilfered bits of scrap from CERN -- although frankly, they could just as well be steel ball bearings they picked up from Home Depot for $0.99 each, there's no way to tell for certain -- and made them into jewelry.

And are selling them for two hundred bucks each.

But the bullshit doesn't end there.  Oh, no.  These people are way more sophisticated than those "etheric body" yokels from the 19th century.  Read on, and be amazed:

Samples from the parts exposed to the surge of energy which showed substantial evidence of having the God Particle were sent to the leading universities and research centers in the world.

According to preliminary evidence found thus far by researches in the medical field, the energy of the God Particle has some amazing effects on migraine prevention, on treating different kinds of skin conditions, up to a surprising improvement among those who ailing from sexual dysfunction disorders. All those among a long list of other medical conditions.

The effects of the God Particle is also tested in the field of mental health and in this field the patients are also getting some surprising improvements in a wide range of medical cases, for example treating phobias and depressions of different kinds.

One of the theories being researched by the scientists is that the God Particle doesn't really cure the listed conditions but provides the human body with the energy needed to normalize and cure itself.

All those researches are performed in scientific methods demanding them to comply with a strict criteria before publication.

Therefore all the above should not be taken as a scientific fact, but should only be understood the way it is, a positive influence of material exposed to the God Particle on treating and preventing a wide range of medical problems.

The results of the researches are still censored. But there is an increasing assumption in the scientific community that in the future, when it becomes less expensive to produce the particle, it will completely change the face of modern medicine.

I especially love the penultimate paragraph, which to my ears reads like the woo-woo alternative-medicine's "Not intended to treat, cure, or diagnose human illness" that appears in microscopic print on things like herbal remedies.

And how did these folks come by chunks of one of the most famous pieces of scientific apparatus in the world, you might ask?

We are a part of a maintenance team in CERN. Among our responsibilities is to replace some of the worn out parts inside the collider.

We notices that something amazing was happening to many people during those days, and when we were summoned for tests by the research groups we realized that we were not the only ones who felt that way.

When the moment came to replace some of the parts around the center of the collision, we felt that we cannot dispose this material as waste. Instead, we started collecting the remaining bearings from the section which is under our responsibility. This material was exposed to the most powerful energy.

After the remaining bearings are collected, we remove them from the compound and later from the country, back to our countries of origin. Initially we gave small spheres which came from the collected bearings to our relatives and friends. In a short period of time the spheres started to leave their mark, and along with great responses we were flooded with requests from other acquaintances who heard about the amazing experience.

Which is either an outright lie, or else illegal, since profiting off of materials taken secretly from a scientific research facility is usually considered theft.  Of course, given that they are also making fraudulent claims about what said ball bearings can do, there are so many ethical angles from which you could attack this website that I almost wouldn't know where to begin.

So I think, instead, that I'm just going to stop here and leave it up to your consideration.  For one thing, in doing the research for this post, I did such a colossal headdesk that I think I jarred a Higgs boson loose from my skull, and my etheric body needs some time to recover before I go to work.

Sylphs to the rescue!

So, I have good news for those of you who are afraid of chemtrails.

I've posted more than once recently about the increasingly widespread claim that the government is lacing jet fuel with a variety of bad stuff, so that when the fuel goes through the engine, the bad stuff comes out in the exhaust and then settles out on us unsuspecting sheeple.  Some bad stuff that is supposedly thus dispersed:

• toxic chemicals containing barium, aluminum, and manganese
• pathogenic viruses
• hallucinogenic and/or mind-controlling drugs
• dessicated blood

If you are asking yourself how any of these things could (1) survive the combustion process in the engine, and be (2) in sufficiently high concentrations afterwards even to be detectable, much less to cause health effects, all that shows is that you have already been exposed to the mind-controlling drugs and are now a helpless pawn of the Illuminati.

However, all hope is not lost for you, my dazed, glassy-eyed friend.  Because the dirty work of the Evil Government Chemtrailers is now being counteracted and cleaned up...

... by benevolent spirits called "Sylphs."

As with many of the topics I stumble across, at first I thought this was a joke, intended to ridicule the people who believe in chemtrails, or perhaps just to calm them down and get them to go back inside and take their meds.  Sadly, it is not.  There is a whole subset of the chemtrail people who now believe that "Air Elementals" -- i.e., good fairies -- are getting up there and taking care of the evil nasty chemtrails for us.

Because clearly there is nothing like a nonexistent supernatural being for dealing with nonexistent bad guys.

As an example from the site I linked above, we have the following letter excerpt from a woman in Las Vegas, identified only as "Sarah C.:"

This morning I woke up hacking horribly and my daughter came to me and said she couldn't breath [sic] very well. So I went outside and sure enough they were spraying all over the place...  They made a huge mess of the sky.  When I first went out it was a clear day with blue skys [sic].  After 30 min of spraying the sky was covered in chemtrails.  I decided to use the power of intention and call on some Sylphs.  I don't think my intention alone was enough, but I think some of them came and did some clean up. In one of my pictures I think there is a Sylph in the shape of a bird...

I think there are some Sylphs cleaning the mess up.  It's been about an hour and a half and the sky is still blue but you can still see the remnants of the chemtrails, they look like smooshed cirrus clouds.   I also took a quick video of the spraying in progress.  I am really horrified that this is going on and no one is pitching a fit.

As proof, Sarah C. includes the following photograph:

 See the Sylph right there in the middle?  See it?

No, neither do I, but it's probably because of all of the mind-altering drugs I've inhaled from jet fuel.  You know how that goes.

Another person, "Bram," wrote in to say that he's helping things along because he built a machine that makes Sylphs:

I built a cloud-buster a couple years, ago....and have been enjoying Sylphs big-time, on a regular basis.  I was on the beach (a few blocks away) yesterday, and just happened to looked up. The sky was filled with these Friends.  It was very heartening.

Oh, I'm sure it was.  And I hope you and your "Friends" are very happy together.

A writer from Edinburgh, Scotland named "Ruth" also said that she'd photographed a Sylph.  Here's the original picture:

This looks to me less like a "Sylph" than it does like a "cloud."  But once she started editing, cropping, and otherwise monkeying around with the photograph, Ruth found out that what looks like a cloud to the rest of us is actually a Sylph who has shown up to clean up air pollution.  Ready for the edited version that proves her point?

To me, this doesn't look like a benevolent Air Elemental, this looks like Lord Voldemort.  But what do I know?

Not much, apparently, according to Ruth.  Here's what she has to say about it:

Today, for a brief spell, the clouds above us cleared away and I spotted a fingerlike sylph pushing back the clouds, quite literally.  This was after I'd asked them to come and clear away a heavy black cloud over my garden!!

Shortly after this I was indooors [sic] and spotted a face in one of the remaing [sic] clouds, but it was a bit like some of your ghostlike faces, which I find quite alarming (my camera battery was low and so I also didn't get a picture).  Because of this, I asked it to smile and I sent it a smile and as I did so, the mouth space immediately turned upwards and the eye holes narrowed as they would when you smile!!  However, the face faded away almost immediatley [sic] after, as though I had hurt its feelings!!  How bizarre.... all very intriguing!!

Ha ha!  Yes, very intriguing!  Now please excuse me, while I back away slowly, keeping my eyes on you the whole time!

So, this once again indicates the truth of something I've commented on before, namely, that there is no claim so ridiculous that someone can't modify it so as to make it way more ridiculous.  Now, excuse me, but I have to go focus my attention on calling up some Fire Elementals, because it's cold in here.