Fighting visual malware with water

One of the things that baffles me about woo-woos is how they never, ever give up.

When I'm proven wrong, I usually (1) feel pretty embarrassed about it, and (2) retreat in disarray.  Oh, and (3) make sure not to make the same error the next time.  I mean, everyone makes mistakes, so I probably shouldn't overreact to it the way I do; but I like to think that as a writer on science and skepticism, I'm conscientious enough to check my facts and sources.  Otherwise, I'm really no better than the people I rail against on a daily basis.

So getting caught out hits me where it hurts, you know?

Not so, apparently, in the woo-woo world.  You can be laughed into oblivion, and you just keep on moseying on ahead as if nothing was wrong.

As an especially good example of this, remember Dr. Charlene Werner?  She was the star of a viral YouTube video called "Crazy Homeopathy Lady," the title of which you'd think would be devastating enough.  In this video, she attempts to explain homeopathy thusly:

• The mass in the universe is "infinitesimal."  Since mass is the "m" in E = mc2 , she says that this crosses the "m" out, which means that "energy = light."  (The whole effect is accentuated by the fact that she pronounces the word "infant-esimal," which sounds like a descriptor for a really little baby.)
• Something about "Stephen Hawkings" and vibrations and quantum.
• A bizarre analogy wherein she compares homeopathy's effects to a neighbor's dog pooping on your lawn, causing you to throw a bomb at your neighbor's house.

If you've never seen this video, I highly recommend it.  I can say from experience that it's even more fun to watch while drunk, although I won't be held responsible if you laugh so hard you fall out of your chair and spill beer all over your carpet.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So anyhow.  This video has received millions of views, and tens of thousands of comments, most of which were of the "Holy shit, this lady is insane" variety.  So you'd think that any normal human being who got this kind of feedback would sort of vanish from the public eye.  Most of us, in fact, would probably want to crawl under a rock.

Not so Charlene Werner.  She's baaaaaack, on a website called "Simply Healthy Self," wherein she makes statements that very nearly exceed the wackiness of the ones she made in the video.  Here's a sampler:

Imagine your vision system has qualities similar to a computer. The photoreceptors are like your keys on your keyboard. There are approximately 1.2 million of them in each eye. When clicked or activated with light, the data from your 'visual keyboard' relays to your brain. Your brain has characteristics similar to a hard drive with an operating system that runs all the 'software programs' or functions in your body, such as moving your eye muscles, tracking, focusing, and visual memory. Even your heart, kidney, lungs, and all your bodily functions depend on accurate key strokes from your photoreceptors and other sensory input, access to your brain (hard drive), a powerful operating system, and efficient use of software programs.

Yup.  Your kidneys depend on information from your eyes.  Which explains why blind people never have to pee.

Homeopathy then scans your system to eliminate 'viruses' or 'malware', which are often belief systems or programmed patterns that interrupt your system's smooth functioning.

So a bottle of water with no active ingredients is the medical equivalent of Norton AntiVirus?

When we consider the whole of man we can even make a further leap……that mass in the universe by definition is matter, matter is substance, the substance of man is cells, and cells can be broken down into compounds, compounds into elements, and elements into tiny particles of energy called electrons, protons, neutrons, and sub-atomic particles held together by an “invisible” force such that what may look like a physical body is merely energy.

An explanation which is to physics what "The foot-bone's connected to the shin-bone, the shin-bone's connected to the knee-bone" is to medical science.

Then we get bunches of testimonials about how Dr. Werner's treatments have cured everything from rheumatoid arthritis to bad eyesight to being lousy at sports.

Which is pretty impressive, because homeopathy has failed to show measurable results in every controlled study ever done.  Ever.  Clear enough?  What she's proposing is unscientific horse waste, and her "success stories" are the result of the placebo effect at best.

None of which, of course, is going to change a thing.  If the reception her bizarre YouTube video received didn't make her reconsider her position, nothing will.  Unfortunately, there are still people who buy what she's selling (literally and figuratively), although it's to be hoped that the support for such completely disproven modalities as homeopathy is decreasing.

The chance of convincing Dr. Werner, however, is "infant-esimal."

A risk too far

Assessing risk is a complicated thing.  The technical definition of risk -- that it is equal to the statistical probability of exposure multiplied by the statistical probability of harm -- seems simple enough.  But in practice, calculating those probabilities is far from straightforward.  And when you throw in questions like, "Are the people exposed to the risk the same ones as the ones who are benefiting from it?" and "What if the people involved in the risk assessment are very likely to be lying to you?", it becomes damn near impossible to determine.

Such is the situation we find ourselves in, here in upstate New York.  The current controversy that is polarizing the region surrounds the benefits and risks of hydrofracking and storage of natural gas and liquified petroleum gas (LPG) in salt caverns underneath Seneca and Cayuga Lake.  You see signs in front of houses saying "Ban Fracking!" and "Friends of New York State Natural Gas" in almost equal numbers.

So let's roll out some facts, here, and see what you think.

Hydrofracking well in the Barnett Shale, near Alvarado, Texas [image courtesy of photographer David R. Tribble and the Wikimedia Commons]

Hydrofracking involves the use of sand, salt, and surfactant-laden water to blow open shale formations to release trapped natural gas.  The gas is pumped back up, along with a toxic slurry of "fracking fluid" that then has to be disposed of.  The gas itself is transported down a spider's web of pipelines, some of which pump the pressurized gas down into the abandoned salt mines that honeycomb our area.

In upstate New York, the permission to build the infrastructure for this massive project was granted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last year, in a move that brushed aside objections from geologists and ecologists, and which appears to many of us to be a rubber-stamp approval of corporate interests over safety and clean drinking water.  Now, Crestwood Midstream, a Texas-based energy company, wants to expand the current salt-cavern storage to include LPG.

So let's see what we can do to consider the risks involved in this project.

The first piece, the risk of exposure, involves looking at the history of fracking and gas storage, to see if comparable facilities have experienced problems.  So here are a few accidents that have occurred in such sites:

• A blast that killed one and injured two in Weld County, Colorado.
• A blowout in North Dakota that released 10,000 gallons of combined oil and fracking fluid into a local creek system until the leak was sealed two weeks later.
• A second spill in North Dakota of three million gallons into the Yellowstone/Missouri River watershed that has yet to be contained.
• An illegal wastewater injection site in California that contaminated local agricultural and drinking water aquifers with three billion gallons of fracking fluid.
• Four separate accidents in Ohio, one involving a huge methane leak from a fracking site, a fracking well leak that spilled 1,600 gallons of drill lubricant into a river, an explosion and spill that leaked 25,000 gallons of various chemicals into a tributary of the Ohio River, and a well rupture in Guernsey County that required the evacuation of 400 families from their homes.
• An explosion of a gas well that required the evacuation of an entire town in Wyoming.
• A spill of an "unknown amount of brine" near California, Pennsylvania, "some of which left the containment site."

What I haven't told you, however, is the time scale involved with these events.

All of them occurred within the past twelve months.

Kind of puts a new spin on the gas industry's claim that fracking is safe for humans and for the environment, doesn't it?

What seals the deal is the question of what happens after these accidents occur.  The answer is: not much.  The question is, honestly, not so much "what is done?" but "what could be done?"  And the answer is still: not much.  Such accidents are nearly impossible to remediate completely, and leave behind fouled ecosystems and contaminated drinking water that won't be useable for generations.

So as you can see from the above list, accidents really are more of a matter of "when," not "if."  This leaves it to the local residents to consider what the response would be if the unthinkable happens.  The result would be the salinization of a huge amount of water in the south end of Seneca Lake, which would likely be permanent as far as human lifetimes are concerned, given Seneca Lake's depth and slow rate of flushing.  Aquifers would become too saline to use for drinking water or agriculture, which would destroy not only local farms but the multi-million-dollar winery industry that has become a mainstay of the economy.

And whose responsibility would it be if a problem did occur?  The answer is, "Not Crestwood's."  They are not insured against accidents of this scale.  To quote directly from their own 10K report:

These risks could result in substantial losses due to breaches of contractual commitments, personal injury and/or loss of life, damage to and destruction of
property and equipment and pollution or other environmental damage. These risks may also result in curtailment or suspension of our operations. A natural
disaster or other hazard affecting the areas in which we operate could have a material adverse effect on our operations. We are not fully insured against all risks inherent in our business. In addition, we are not insured against all environmental accidents that might occur, some of which may result in toxic tort claims.

If there was a salt cavern collapse similar to one that happened in the 1960s, the result would be nothing short of a catastrophe for the local residents, because there would be no compensation forthcoming in the way of insurance money.  The only recourse would be a "toxic tort claim" against Crestwood, which would result in costly litigation that would be far too expensive for an average resident to pursue.

And Crestwood is planning on taking the same cavern that experienced a 400,000 ton roof collapse fifty years ago, and filling it with pressurized natural gas.

So if the whole thing blows up in our faces, literally and figuratively, Crestwood can cut their losses and go home to Texas.  We don't have that option.

This hasn't stopped the pro-gas voices from characterizing the risk as minimal, and the people who are speaking out against Crestwood as crazy tree-huggers who have "drunk the Kool-Aid" and who are the victims of "imaginary delusions."  These last phrases are direct quotes from one David Crea, an engineer for U.S. Salt, a company that is now owned by Crestwood.  Responsible, intelligent people, say Crea, couldn't possibly be against gas storage in salt caverns; and he points out that a lot of the people who have been protesting the Crestwood Expansion are from the eastern half of Schuyler County, not the western half, where the facility is located.

Because, apparently, you have to live right on top of a disaster before you're allowed to have an opinion about it.  This kind of illogic would claim that the objections of a woman in Oregon to the siting of a pesticide factory 400 yards away from an elementary school in Middleport, New York are irrelevant because "she doesn't live there."  (I didn't make that up; read about the situation here, which resulted in dozens of children suffering from permanent lung damage.)

So sorry, Mr. Crea; it's not the concerned locals who have "drunk the Kool-Aid."  There's not that much Kool-Aid in the world.  It's the citizens you and your ilk have hoodwinked, and who now sit on top of a site that has a ridiculously high likelihood of catastrophic failure.  And if you multiply all of those risk factors together, you come up with a figure so large that you would have to be on Crestwood's payroll to consider it acceptable.

ConCERNed

There's a fundamental distrust of science and scientists on the part of a large number of Americans.  I think it's probably a left-over trope from the depiction of scientists as crazy sociopaths in a lot of science fiction movies; or, perhaps, the trope itself comes from a deeper and older mistrust, generated by watching the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and wondering what other awful weapons the researchers might be working on next.

Of course, the paranoia can be blown away by a little bit of effective science education.  But as we've seen over and over again, effective science education isn't really all that common.

So instead, we end up with people like the prolific YouTube contributor "BPEarthWatch," who is "Dedicated to Watching the End Time Events that Lead to the Return of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Comets, Asteroids, Earth Quakes, Solar Flares and The End Time Powers."

I ran into this fellow because of my son, Nathan, who sent me a link to the following video:

In it, BPEarthWatch informs us that the research out at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) is going to screw up the magnetic field of the Earth and kill us all.

We're put on notice that the narrator may be a little shaky in his understanding of physics when he informs us that (1) it's a problem that the Earth's magnetic field lines are squiggly "like spaghetti," and that (2) Mars "lost its magnetic field and its atmosphere because of a close pass with a comet."  I realize that understanding planetary magnetic fields as generated by the rotation of a solid magnetic inner core within a fluid outer core is kind of complicated, but when I run into something that is complicated, I take some time to figure it out instead of just blathering on as if I knew what I was talking about.

Not so our friend BPEarthWatch.  Armed with his squiggly spaghetti and his scary talk about Mars, he goes on to tell us that the scientists at CERN are going to fire up the Large Hadron Collider, and it will "open up a stargate" and "destroy the magnetic field of the Earth" which will cause us to be bombarded by "ultraviolet x-ray radiation and other type [sic] of solar and galactic proton burst."

Part of the detector array for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You have to wonder why he doesn't consider the fact that scientists, when they're not cackling wildly over their bubbling flasks and lightning-producing wires, have families and lives and hobbies and homes and so forth, and would not really have all that much incentive to do something that would leave the Earth without a magnetic field (or atmosphere).  He makes it clear that this isn't just scientific overreach and an ignorance of the consequences; he states outright that the CERN scientists know perfectly well what they're doing, and don't care that they're going to make the planet uninhabitable in the process.

Of course, his delivery style doesn't help matters.  It was also Nathan who pointed out that BPEarthWatch sounds exactly like the character Harlan Pepper in Best in Show:

Be that as it may, BPEarthWatch is still better than the guy who wrote a piece because he was freaked out by the potential of the Large Hadron Collider to create a black hole, and throughout the whole thing called it the "Large Hardon Collider."

It's really not that difficult, folks.  Learn some science.  Find out what the scientists at CERN are actually doing.  (It's cool stuff, I promise.)  Just because science can be a little complicated at times doesn't mean that scientists are "out of control... like mad scientists in an ol' Frankenstein movie."

On the other hand, I wouldn't object if the scientists could come up with a stargate.  Getting from one planet to another in seconds would be awesome.  I'd definitely volunteer to go through it, even if it means hanging around with Kurt Russell and meeting the Egyptian god Ra, who turns out to be a creepy shirtless teenage boy with glowing eyes.

A bear of a question

What never ceases to astound me is the way woo-woos use minuscule amounts of evidence to support claims that under most circumstances would qualify a person for serious medical supervision.

It's a combination of confirmation bias (accepting slim support for beliefs you already accepted) and completely ignoring the ECREE principle (Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence).  And it never fails to baffle me, however often I run across it.

I ran into an especially good example of this maddening tendency just yesterday, with a claim that humanity is currently in an alternate time line.  And the evidence that we live in a bizarro world comes from...

The Berenstain Bears.

Yes, the annoying, moralistic cartoon bears, intended to entertain kids with their antics and simultaneously hammer into their brains important lessons such as Be Nice To Your Siblings and Your Parents Are Always Right and Strangers Are Scary and Pay Attention In School Or You Are Bad.

And how, you are probably asking, do said Bears show that we have side-slipped into an alternate universe?

It's because recently, people have been spelling their name "Berenstein" instead of the correct spelling,"Berenstain."

I'm not making this up.  In a post called "The Berenst#in Bears Problem," writer Rob Schwartz tells us why this constitutes proof:

…somehow, at some time in the last 10 years or so, reality has been tampered with and history has been retroactively changed. The bears really were called the ‘BerenstEin Bears’ when we were growing up, but now reality has been altered such that the name of the bears has been changed post hoc…In 1992 they were “stEin” in 1992, but in 2012 they were “stAin” in 1992... we moved to the stAin hexadectant, while our counterparts moved to our hexadectant (stEin). They are standing around expressing their confusion about the ‘Berenstein Bears’ and how they all remember “Berenstain Bears” on the covers growing up.

 So my first question about this, besides the obvious question of "What the fuck?", was, "what is a 'hexadectant?'"  When I looked it up, I found this:

The "universes" of my theory are region of a 4D complex manifold that split along lines of real/imaginary. They're really more like "pockets" than universes, or as I call them... "hexadectants." Obviously we don't observe complex spatial dimensions. The most obvious explanation is simply that spacetime isn't complex. Yet if (if) spacetime is complex, then why don't we? Well, maybe it's due to splitting along real/imaginary components to the dimensions. So, in our pocket things are (1,1,1,i), but in another they might be (1,i,1,1) or (i,i,i,1). But then what's going on in the other pockets? Well, maybe there's people there, just like us, experiencing the exact same special relativity but with a different sign convention. And then what if somehow our Euler-phase changed and we wound up in one of the other pockets? 

I don't think it's a crazy proposal.

Righty-o.  The Berensta/e/in Bears prove that we're in the universe's alternate pocket, or something.  Not crazy at all.  As a science-type, though, I object to his calling this a "theory;" a theory makes predictions that are testable, and this one says that somewhere else in an alternate universe there's another Gordon who is British and calls this blog Sceptophilia, but you can't visit that universe because it's in a different pocket, and therefore, somehow, q.e.d.

Because the whole Bear issue couldn't have been caused by people misspelling their name, or anything.  It's not because virtually every Germanic name with an ending pronounced that way spells it "-stein," so a lot of people get confused and remember the "-stain" wrong.

No.  If there's a common spelling error, it has to be evidence of an alternate universe.

So anyway.  I wonder if the alternate me has a headache right now?  Because I certainly do, given the number of faceplants I've done while researching and writing this.  I think I'll sign off here, to see if I can find some ibuprofin or asperin or tylanol.

Cats from space

One of the students in my Critical Thinking class said yesterday, "Did you know that there is a claim out there that cats are actually aliens?"

My response was that it didn't surprise me.  Pretty much any crazy statement you can make will turn out to have at least a few people who fervently believe it's true.  Here at Skeptophilia we've run into people who think that The Lord of the Rings is factual history, that three hundred years of the Middle Ages never happened, and that Keanu Reeves is an undead vampire.  So color me unsurprised that there are people who think that cats come from another planet.

Also, there's the issue that I own a cat.  Well, "own" is the wrong word.  The cat in question, Geronimo, condescends to sharing a roof with me.  Personally, I would not be shocked to find out that Geronimo was actually an alien, if the alien planet he came from was hostile and evil.  Here's a photograph of Geronimo and my son, Nathan:

Geronimo communicating the alien message, "PUT ME DOWN."

Geronimo meows constantly, and it's not one of those adorable little kittenish mews you sometimes hear from cats.  This is a nasal, deep throated "MRRRROOOW."  We have decoded this much of his alien language; it means "Fuck you."  So conversations between ourselves and Geronimo go like this:

"Hey, Geronimo, do you want some food?"

"Fuck you."

"Come up in my lap and I'll skritch your ears!"

"Fuck you."

"Who's a pretty kitty?"

"Fuck you."

So my general feeling is that if Geronimo is an alien, he got sent here as a punishment for some wrongdoing on his home planet and is decidedly unhappy about the whole thing.  And the situation isn't helped by the fact that my dog, Grendel, thinks that Kitties Taste Yummy and so every time Geronimo comes to a full stop, Grendel trots over and licks him in the face.

But there are people, apparently, who seriously believe that it isn't just Geronimo; all cats are aliens.  More specifically, they're alien spies, sent to gather information about us humans and relay it back to the home world.  We get "evidence" for this "theory" that includes the tried-and-true "Egyptians worshipped cats as gods" thing, conveniently ignoring that 90% of the Egyptian gods had heads of various animals, and no one is suggesting that cows, for example, are engaging in extraterrestrial espionage.

We're also told that there is no record of the existence of cats on earth prior to 4,500 years ago, that they are capable of disappearing at will, and that if you pull a cat's ears back, it looks "exactly like a Grey."

All I can say is, I'd like to invite any conspiracy theorists to come to my house and try that last-mentioned move with Geronimo.  We'll see how well they can participate in their loony internet forums after their eyes are clawed out.

Oh, and there's also a thing about how cats will go from a relaxed state to jumping up and running out of the room in a matter of seconds.  According to the "theory," this is because the cat got an urgent message from the mothership and has to dash off to somewhere that there's good reception, or something.

As far as I can tell, though, there's not much else going for this claim.  Apparently someone even asked a paleontologist at the University of Wyoming, Ryan Haupt, about the statement that there were no cats on Earth prior to the Egyptians, and he said that it was bogus.  But you know those scientists.  Always engaging in disinformation campaigns.  My guess is this guy knows the truth perfectly well but has cats of his own, and he's afraid that if he rats them out, Mrs. Fluffums and Tigger will disembowel him one night in his sleep.

So there you have it.  Feline extraterrestrial spies, in your own home.  I decided to risk my own safety in the name of journalism, so I went and confronted Geronimo about the matter.  "Okay, bud," I said in a stern tone, "it's time for the truth to come out.  Are you, or are you not, an alien espionage agent, relaying information about us back to your evil overlords on another planet?"

Geronimo thought about it for a moment, and then replied, "Fuck you."

The naked and the dead

There's a general rule that there is no belief so bizarre that people can't alter it to make it even weirder.  And a corollary of that is that when they do, it's often motivated by profit.

You're probably aware of all of the various ghost-hunting "reality" shows that have cropped up in the last few years.  I use the word "reality" advisedly, and only in the sense that the people doing the ghost hunting actually exist.  But given that these shows are now becoming a little clichéd, producers are casting around to try to find a concept to spice up the old chasing-after-troubled-spirits trope.

And they found one.  There's going to be a series wherein the ghost hunters pursue their quarry...

... while naked.

I'm not making this up.  It's called Naked and Afraid, and the idea is that somehow spirits will be more likely to show up if the people hunting them are "vulnerable."  Says casting agent Chrissy Glickman:

This show is not about putting a bad light, causing drama or making fun of the paranormal.  This idea was brought to our company after research on paranormal investigation teams in history doing it in the nude and we want to see if their reasoning for doing it in the nude really does get spirits to communicate easier.

Righty-o.  There's no part of this that has anything to do with attracting viewers because the people on the screen aren't wearing clothes, and because (face it) most folks like looking at naked people.  This is all about scientifically-sound research about the paranormal.

What if the ghost is clothed, and the investigators aren't?  How awkward would that be?  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And don't worry, she says.  All of the people on the show will have their "private parts blurred out."  Which is a relief.  I mean, if ghosts are attracted to naked people, it could cause trouble when you watched the show.  We wouldn't want poor Jeb Hickenlooper, of East Bucksnort, Tennessee, sitting there watching television, and an episode of Naked and Afraid comes on, and there is no blurring of the actors' naughty bits, and suddenly he finds his living room filled with the horny spirits of the dead.

Adding another amusing filigree to all of this is the response from the community of paranormal investigators.  They object to the whole idea, they say.  It's exploitative, salacious, and only about making money.  Which objections, of course, could be applied to 80% of the content currently on television.

But they're not going to take this lying down.  A group called "Professional Paranormal Investigators" has started an online petition to stop Naked and Afraid from airing.  The petition, which I post here with spelling and grammar verbatim, states:

Please help us to put a Stop to a new Paranormal Series that is set to be aired on a Major Cable Network by a LA based Production Company called Matador. The cast members would be doing the show in the Nude! There theory behind this is to see if a person would be more vulnerable to the spirit world if they are not wearing any clothing at all. All serious Paranormal Investigators know that regardless if you are wearing clothing or not the spirits will still communicate with you if they should decide to do so and it does not make you any more vulnerable than you already are if you are not wearing clothing. This production company is making a Mockery of Ghost Hunting! This in no way will benefit the paranormal community and it will not change peoples views of the seriousness and dedication that is put into this field by Professional Paranormal Investigators. Please help us to stop this from being aired by signing this petition and circulating this to as many people as possible the more signatures we get The Louder and Stronger Our Voices Will Become!!

So there you are, then.

I'm not sure how I feel about all of this, frankly.  My general opinion is that ghost hunting is pointless, given that there's been zero success thus far (in terms of scientifically admissible evidence, in any case; there are lots of anecdotal reports of communication).  I'm perfectly okay with someone having a pointless hobby, however, even if it's also a little odd; and in that regards, ghost hunting has an advantage over (for example) stamp collecting in that it at least gets you out of the house.  I also have no issues with people running around naked, although it's inadvisable at the moment where I live.  Running around naked in upstate New York in January is just asking to freeze off body parts that most of us are fairly attached to.

In any case, Naked and Afraid will almost certainly turn out to be one of those short-lived series that everyone has forgotten about in six months.  Because once you see episode one, what more can happen?  "Episode twelve: more naked people, and still no ghosts."

So my guess is that the whole thing, even if the petition fails, will turn out to be an, um, flash in the pan.

Warning: DNA is everywhere!

In yesterday's post, I stated that I hated hoaxes worse than I hate outright scientific ignorance.  In response, a loyal reader sent me an article referencing a survey in which 80% of respondents said they favored mandatory labeling of foods that contain DNA.

[image courtesy of the National Institute of Health and the Wikimedia Commons]

I kept looking, in vain, for a sign that this was a joke.  Sadly, this is real.  It came from a study done last month by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics.  And what it shows, in my opinion, is that there are people out there who vote and make important decisions and (apparently) walk upright without dragging their knuckles on the ground, and yet who do not know that DNA is found in every living organism.

Or maybe, they don't know that most of what we eat is made of cells.  I dunno.  Whatever.  Because if you aren't currently on the Salt, Baking Soda, and Scotch Diet, you consume the DNA of plants and/or animals every time you eat.

Lettuce contains lettuce DNA.  Potatoes contain potato DNA.  Beef contains cow DNA.  "Slim Jims" contain -- well, they contain the DNA of whatever the hell Slim Jims are made from.  I don't want to know.  But get the picture?  If you put a label on foods with DNA, the label goes on everything.

Ilya Somin, of the Washington Post, even made a suggestion of what such a food-warning label might look like:

WARNING: This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The Surgeon General has determined that DNA is linked to a variety of diseases in both animals and humans. In some configurations, it is a risk factor for cancer and heart disease. Pregnant women are at very high risk of passing on DNA to their children.

Despite the scary sound of Somin's tongue-in-cheek proposed label, there's nothing dangerous about eating DNA.  Enzymes in our small intestines break down the DNA we consume into individual building blocks (nucleotides), and we then use those building blocks to produce our own DNA every time we make new cells.  Which is all the time.  Eating pig DNA will not, as one of my students asked me a few weeks ago, "make us oink."

But this highlights something rather terrifying, doesn't it?  Every other day we're told things like "30% of Americans Are Against GMOs" and "40% of Americans Disbelieve in Anthropogenic Climate Change" and "32% of Americans Believe the Earth is 6,000 Years Old."  (If you're curious, I made those percentages up, because I really don't want to know what the actual numbers are, I'm depressed enough already.)  What the Oklahoma State University study shows is:  none of that is relevant.  If 80% of Americans don't know what DNA is, why the fuck should I trust what they say on anything else even remotely scientific?

But it's the voting part that scares me, because as we've seen over and over again, dumb people vote for dumb people.  I'm not sure why this is, either, because you'd think that there'd be a sense that even if a lot of voters are dumb themselves, they'd want smart people running the country.  But maybe that'd make all the dumb people feel inferior.  Or maybe it's because the dumb people want to be reassured that they, too, could one day hold public office.

Either way, it's why we end up with public office being held by people like:

Mitt Romney:  "I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love." 

Louie Gohmert:  "We give the military money, it ought to be to kick rears, break things, and come home." 

Rick Perry:  "The reason that we fought the [American] Revolution in the 16th century — was to get away from that kind of onerous crown, if you will." 

Hank Johnson:  "Guam is an island that is, what, twelve miles from shore to shore?  And on its smallest level, uh, smallest, uh, uh, location, it's uh, seven miles, uh, between one shore and the other...  My fear is that (if US Marines are sent there) the whole island will become so populated that it will tip over and capsize." 

Diana DeGette: "These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available." 

James Inhofe: "Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there.  The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

Henry Waxman:  "We're seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point.  Because if it evaporates to a certain point - they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn't ever sail through before.  And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there's a lot of tundra that's being held down by that ice cap."

The whole thing is profoundly distressing, and brings to mind the quote from Joseph de Maistre:  "Democracy is the form of government in which everyone has a voice, and therefore in which the people get exactly the government they deserve."

And as far as my claim yesterday that deliberate hoaxes are worse than outright ignorance, I respectfully withdraw my statement.  Ignorance is worse.  Especially when ignorance has crossed the line into outright stupidity.