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It is always amazing to witness the clueless try and defend what is indefensible. Water has no “memory” and will not cure you of any sort of disease that requires actual medicine, say for instance Polio. The video on the CBC site had a mother suggest that a homeopathic vaccine for Polio was ‘protecting’ her child. After I stuffed my cortex back into my skull (it runs away from white-hot stupidity) I realized that it was time for another post on the current round of homoeopathic ratbaggery . Please see the science blog Respectful Insolence for more homoeopathic loonery exposed.
I did find a previous video on Youtube from CBC Marketplace on colon cleansing which is another money-sink for ignorant people. Enjoy –
Update: Thanks to Intransigentia for getting the links to the CBC Marketplace show on Youtube. Also see Orac’s generally favorable analysis of how the CBC treated the woo-meisters.
It is most unfortunate that Ms.Gabor need to have her right leg amputated because of a stubborn infection that would not heal, even with the help of antibiotics. Ms. Gabor is 93 years old and as most people her age, her health is in decline. The twilight of Ms. Gabor’s life is not really the focus of the post. Her reaction to the media is.
“Gabor has used a wheelchair since she was partially paralyzed in a 2002 car accident, and she had a stroke in 2005.
She retreated from the spotlight after the accident and stroke. She liked staying home and watching soap operas, game shows and old movies, husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt told reporters in July.
She detested having her picture taken by the paparazzi while she was in her wheelchair. “She wants people to remember her as she was years ago,” von Anhalt has said.”
Of course, Ms. Gabor is a star and in the Hollywood game, image is everything, especially for women as their talent is often evaluated on a secondary, even tertiary basis when compared to their physical appearance.
The crazy looking glass that is Hollywood can sometime focus our attention on how our society systematically undervalues and denigrates women based solely on whether they are easy on the eye. Is it right to blame Ms. Gabor for trying to desperately avoid the media so “people [can] remember her as she was years ago”? I think not, as she understands the rules of the game all too well.
We’re an evolving species, with each generation being honed by the forces of natural selection to become more efficient… Until you meet people like this:
GREAT FALLS, Mont. – “Authorities say a man who had three outstanding warrants for his arrest gave officers a false name during a traffic stop — but ended up in custody anyway because that man was also wanted.
Court records say that during a traffic stop Monday in Great Falls, Jonothan Ray Gonsalez, of Box Elder, told police that his name was Timothy Michael Koop Jr.
The officer learned a man by that name was wanted in Hill County and arrested him.”
Giving an alias that also has a warrant attached to it is a new low of stupidity. I’m thinking we should let more people run with scissors at early age, as stories like this break my brain.
People riot over the prices of food and cooking oil on the streets of Algeria.
What ruins societies? The maldistribution of wealth between the very rich and the very poor. Inequalities that are magnified by state apparatus that legislates for and caters to the the class that holds the power. This particular drama is being played out in Algeria.
“Algerian authorities have vowed to punish those responsible for nationwide food riots in which at least four people were reported killed and more than 800 injured.
Press reports on Sunday quoted Dahou Ould Kablia, interior minster, saying that troublemakers “will not go unpunished”.
It is important to mobilize the coercive agents of the state to keep the people in line. The status quo, after all, needs defending.
“The government on Saturday said it will cut taxes and import duties on some staple foods, amid a series of deadly riots that have killed at least three people.
According to state media, a meeting of ministers in the capital Algiers agreed to measures which would reduce the price of sugar and cooking oil by 41 per cent.
“Nothing can cast doubt on the resolute will of the state, under the direction of the president of the republic, to intervene whenever necessary to preserve the purchasing power of citizens in the face of any price increase,” a government statement said.
Algeria has seen three days of unrest over the rising costs of living and unemployment, which government figures show standing at about 10 per cent, but which independent organisations put closer to 25 per cent.
Layachi Ansar, professor of sociology at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera that the cutting of food taxes and duties was “a superficial measure” that doesn’t address “the deep crisis” going on in Algeria, connected with the “unequal distribution of wealth – this wealth is spoilt by corruption, by bad governance and lack of accountability of government officials and state civil servants”.
Throw them some crusts and curds and hope they ignore the lavish feast going on in the background.
“Mohamed Zitout, a former Algerian diplomat, told Al Jazeera: “It is a revolt, and probably a revolution, of an oppressed people who have, for 50 years, been waiting for housing, employment, and a proper and decent life in a very rich country.
“But unfortunately it is ruled by a very rich elite that does not care about what is happening in the country – because they did not give people what they want, even though the government has the means to do so, the people are now revolting.”
Young people clashed with police in Algiers and several other towns across the country on Friday despite appeals for calm from imams. In Annaba, 600km west of the capital, rioting broke out after Friday prayers in a poor neighbourhood of the city and continued late into the night. A local government office was ransacked, according to witnesses. Protesters also cut down electricity poles during the night, cutting off power to the working class suburb of Auzas.”
Breaking points are reached, the poor majority finally can take no more of a country being run for the benefits of a small segment of society. Will it be popular revolution or even more repression when it comes to Algeria? It is too soon to make a prediction.
Qualia Soup has a flair for making videos and patience that must be well above the norm as he takes time to answer claims against his first video on Irreducible Complexity.
We have many interesting ideas floating around about how capitalism works and its benefits. I would like to focus on just one small aspect of capitalism with regards to how it is implemented in the world and how it applies to difference classes.
One economic fact that escapes many proponents of the ‘free market’ is that for an country’s economy to grow strong, high tariffs and decidedly protectionist measures are required to protect sovereign industry from competition. State intervention in the economy is necessary for the economy to prosper an grow. The pattern has been repeated several times in recent history.
Starting with Britain and her industrialization and capitalization of her economy. To foster the domestic cotton industry, that in the beginning had no hope of competing with a superior product from India, Britain raised tariffs on Indian products and well, brutally conquered India, kicking there textile industry back into the stone age. Imperial solutions for economic problems were easier back then as we could take the role of ‘bringers of civilization’ to the unruly barbaric masses.
Flash forward to today; the economic imperatives remain the same. Protectionism for us and free market discipline for the rest of world. The mailed fist is still omnipresent, but not so blatant as public opinion of the generally benevolent masses must not be stirred from their slumber to protest the injustices being wrought in their name. One of notoriously sublime moves our business classes made in North America was the North American Free Trade Act, which more aptly should be called the North American Free Investing Act giving enormous power to private business and severely curtailing the power of the states involved to intervene in their economies. Mexico, being the weakest signatory to NAFTA, has suffered the most.
Unable to control the flow of goods into the Mexican domestic economy, Mexico’s society has steadily been devolving under the weight of cheap imported products, especially foodstuffs, that have undercut and essentially destroyed the local economy. What has replaced industry in Mexico is the narcotics industry, given the huge market in the US for drugs, narcotics trade and trafficking has become the new Mexican domestic economy.
The Mexican state, not strong to being with, can do little to quell the illegal drug industry, as people have to work and eat. However, the resulting narco-state is not particularly stable or safe as recent headlines have illustrated.
“The bodies of 15 young men, 14 of them headless, were found Saturday outside a shopping centre in the Mexican resort of Acapulco, police said.
Police believe the victims, all appearing to be in their 20s, were killed and their bodies stuffed into five vehicles by drug cartel members. Investigators say handwritten signs were left with the bodies, a common calling card for the country’s cartels.
This was the largest single group of decapitation victims since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against cartels more than four years ago.”
Not exactly something you want to put in your tourism brochures.
So Mexico is currently embracing the free market and devolving (has devolved?) into a narco-state to feed demand in the US and Canada. Thanks NAFTA.
If we were to apply the same free market prescriptions the IMF and the World Bank do to other countries to ourselves, we might get a small taste of why we and our trumpeted economic system are not welcomed with flowers and open arms.
There are really quite a few gems to be found at Subnormality. Here is another. Do we have the courage to make the right choice in our lives. Certain people do, even at great cost. This is a story of two people and two choices.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…