A public mass overdose of homeopathic remedies has forced the New Zealand Council of Homeopaths to admit openly that their products do not contain any “material substances”. Council spokeswoman Mary Glaisyer admitted publicly that “there´s not one molecule of the original substance remaining” in the diluted remedies that form the basis of this multi-million-dollar industry.
The NZ Skeptics, in conjunction with 10:23, Skeptics in the Pub and other groups nationally and around the world, held the mass overdose in Christchurch on Saturday to highlight the fact that homeopathic products are simply very expensive water drops or sugar/lactose pills. A further aim was to question the ethical issues of pharmacies, in particular, stocking and promoting sham products and services.
I feel like I am repeating myself a lot today, but here goes again: there is no controversy, homoeopathy is not science, it doesn’t work, it has no effect and if you think about it just a little, makes no sense. It, is, a, sham.
Look, I would be the first to admit that I will happily sell you a litre of water for $100 any day of the week but you must realise, that is exactly what a homeopath is doing, even if he firmly believes his exceedingly clean water, lacking in everything but water, is going to cure you of anything except, possibly, dehydration.
My special water is very good for you, and it has extra dihydrogen monoxide that is exceptionally good for you. Without the proper amounts of dihydrogen monoxide you may die, in three days or less. It is essential to life and my product contains plenty of it.
Buy my dihydrogen monoxide enriched water instead of homoeopathic remedies; My product is guaranteed to work if used for the purpose for which it was intended. Seriously.
According to Juan Ignacio Molina the Dutch captain Joris van Spilbergen observed the use of chiliquenes (a llama type) by native Mapuches of Mocha Island as plough animals in 1614
I have to admit, I miss George Carlin and I have no idea what brought that up. Whilst considering what to post about, I just though, George Carlin, he was nice, I miss him, pity he’s dead. His kind of humour certainly wasn’t for everybody but I loved that bitter, sour old bastard. He was famous for his black humour and his views on politics, religion, American life and culture and a whole list of taboo things. He placed second in Comedy Central’s list of 100 greatest comedians at one point.
George was (luckily? unluckily?) born to Roman Catholic parents of Irish descent in New York City. This seems to have displeased him somewhat. (something about Irish Catholic in New York?).
Carlin’s material falls under one of three self-described categories: “the little world” (observational humor), “the big world” (social commentary), and the peculiarities of the English language (euphemisms, doublespeak, business jargon); all sharing the overall theme of (in his words) “humanity’s bullshit”, which might include murder, genocide, war, rape, corruption, religion and other aspects of human civilization.
He appeared in several films throughout his career, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Scary Movie 3 and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (as well as Bogus Journey) among others. He was also in a bunch of TV shows. The George Carlin Show being one of them. Coincidence? Perhaps.
George Carlin died on June 22, 2008 at 5:55pm from heart failure and the world has been a poorer place since. Thank god (heh) for YouTube; through it, people like George Carlin may never really die.
I enjoy what the guy said and I really enjoyed how he said it, he was amusing. Anyway, here are some of my favourite Carlin comedies:
I have come across a bit of a collection of… strange artifacts of madness and insanity. You just can’t believe the shit that’s out there. If I have not managed to make fun here of your particular beliefs, do not feel left out, I will probably get around to you next week. Unless you don’t actually believe anything strange…
For the first prize this week, a Mormon video (wonder if I should credit the person through whom I found it. If you think I should, drop me a mail or a tweet or something and I’d be happy to add you):
Alright, ok, I know it’s not ‘official’ Mormon doctrine and you shouldn’t take it too seriously, and that getting your information from a cartoon is perhaps not the best idea but you have to admit, it’s wack, funny as shit and somebody cared enough about what’s in it to make it in the first place.
Now, behold, for your viewing pleasure, this winner of a fanatic (ok, I know, you’ve already seen the picture, if you haven’t, er, I hate to say it, but get your damn eyes tested). In my youth, as a… very weighty rock music enthusiast I have seen some interesting things scratched onto arms. Never before have I seen a man do it with so much… gusto:
Jesus, a real pain in the arm
Ah, The Family. What can one say about the family? I love those guys. They go out of their way to prove just how seriously screwed up people can be. Their antics do amuse me though. What you need to consider is that they get their instructions from the same book as the Methodists, Catholics, Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Misunderstand the manual much? Ok, you should go read the link below, you really should, it is… enlightening to say the least. I have taken the liberty of quoting one or two lines for you who are disinclined to follow a link and read:
The following list of sexually explicit expressions was published by Karen Zerby as examples her followers could use when making love to Jesus, during masturbation or intercourse.
Yes, seriously. I shit, you, not.
Excerpts:
Come to Me, Jesus! Be here with me and love me. Let’s hold each other and say words of love to each other.
Come to my bed, come to my arms, come to my kisses, to my lips!
Jesus, You’re the Lover of all lovers.
You’re beautiful, Jesus, and so sexy–sexier than I ever dreamed–so handsome, so naked and so hard!
Jesus, I’ll do anything for You. I’ll do anything to give You pleasure. Let me satisfy You. Teach me what You like best.
I crave You, Jesus. I’m hot for You! My legs are spread to receive Your penis! Enter into me! Give me Your seeds.
Yea, look, I could carry on quoting but lets face it, we’re both getting a little uncomfortable with that list of winners. I do wonder if there is an age restriction attached to those gems…
Mathematics does not seem to be high up on the list of priorities of this winner. Nor, it seems, is actually understanding how evolution works but I’ll let him go on that, people like Ray Comfort have built an entire industry around ‘Not Understanding How A Very Simple Thing Like Evolution Works’, you can’t expect other people to start paying attention if their leaders are unable to grasp simple concepts:
This one isn’t strictly speaking ‘wack’ but just to illustrate how it is possible to arrive at the above conclusion; this is pretty much what it’s like for a scientist to talk to a creationist. If you agree with the creationist, however, I insist that you tell me at great length why (except holyfire23 because I’ve had enough of speaking to that lost cause):
This last one, while I do sympathise with the children (it’s not their fault) and I don’t like seeing bad things happen to kids who could not control the situation, I have a hard time feeling much for the adults. The irony gets me however…
Some 50 people were poisoned in the east Siberian city of Irkutsk which the local consumer watchdog said on Monday could have been caused by “holy water” taken from wells during religious ceremonies of Epiphany.
The regional Investigation Committee, which is looking into the mass poisoning, said all the victims complained of “symptoms of acute intestinal infection” and high temperature, and 40 of them, including 22 children, have been hospitalized.
The consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said water the victims took from two wells near a church on January 19, when the Orthodox Church celebrated the baptism of Christ, or Epiphany, could be the source of infection. Water is believed to become holy and have healing properties during Epiphany.
“All the victims are known to have taken water from two wells near the Archangel Michael Church and from an ice hole made in a nearby lake,” the regulator said.
No other details and comments are currently available.
Many people believe any water – even from the taps from the kitchen sink – poured or bottled by Christians on Epiphany becomes holy. The water sanctified in churches is often stored by believers for long periods.
No matter how hard you wish guy, the natural laws of the universe just do no get suspended especially for you, regardless of how important you believe you are.
The height of a full-grown, full-size llama is between 1.7 meters (5.5 ft) and 1.8 meters (6 ft) tall at the top of the head. They can weigh between approximately 130 kilograms (280 lb) and 200 kilograms (450 lb). At birth, a baby llama (called a cria) can weigh between 9.1 kilograms (20 lb) and 14 kilograms (30 lb).
If you had been paying attention, you will know that I am a Red Bull fanboy. I love (and live on) the 200ml of delicious caffeinated goodness and Fridays call for a special celebration (because it’s Friday and you survived another bloody week…).
Also, it does help that Red Bull is such a freaking cool company and I like freaking cool, a lot. They sponsor a lot of extreme sports and insanely crazy shit. How crazy? Take this little project for example:
Basically, Red Bull and Felix Baumgartner have put together a plan to skydive from, wait for it, 120 000 feet. One hundred and twenty thousand feet or about 36 576 meters. To put that number into perspective, that is 4.5 times higher than Everest, four times higher than a commercial airliner flies, about the distance between Johannesburg and Pretoria, straight up. They take a huge helium balloon up to altitude and then Felix just… steps off into the dead quiet. The only way Felix will be able to tell if he’s falling in the deafening silence is the receding balloon…
The free fall portion is expected to last for about 5 minutes 35 seconds and the entire trip about 15 minutes from when he steps off till he touches down. The planners expect his maximum speed to pass 1 100km per hour, or Mach 1.0
How, freaking, cool, is, that? Very freaking cool. Very.
The world’s highest skydive is something I have been interested in and that I have followed for… a long time, almost as long as I wanted to skydive, which must have been since around the time I started to walk. My chance to try skydiving came around when I was about 19 or 20. I did 13 jumps before money and bad weather took the wind from my canopy and I can honestly say that jumps number two and thirteen were the most terrifying things I have ever done. Jump number two because you then know what’s going to happen and number thirteen because it was my third jump on that day and my first free fall. Besides for sky diving, I love roller coasters, flying, jumping, hiking, climbing and the idea of everything extreme.
I’ve always had the dream to have the record for the highest skydive and I guess I still have a bit of time left. If Felix manages 120k feet, I guess I’ll just aim for a 140k feet. Right? Right.
Anyway, I hope he does manage it, because it’s freaking cool and I like it when people do freaking cool things, especially dressed in blue, silver and pink.
Drink Red Bull – It’s freaking cool.
Seriously go check out the site, there is a lot of interesting information about the suit, the balloon, the guy, the tech: http://www.redbullstratos.com (You need to have Silverlight installed though)
Commonly unknown, llamas do not have eyelashes. However, their cousin the alpaca does.
I have just purchased a packet of Boots-brand 84 arnica homeopathic 30C Pills for £5.09, which Boots proudly claim is only 6.1p per pill. Their in-store advice tells me that arnica is good for treating “bruising and injuries”, which gives the impression that this is a very cost-effective health-care option.
Unlike most medication, it didn’t list the actual dose of the active ingredient that each pill contains, so I checked the British Homeopathic Association website. On their website it nonchalantly states that to make a homeopathic remedy, they start with the active ingredient and then proceed to dilute it to 1 per cent concentration. Then they dilute that new solution again, so there is now only 0.01 per cent of the original ingredients. For my 30C pills this diluting is repeated thirty times, which means that the arnica is one part in a million billion billion billion billion billion billion.
The arnica is diluted so much that there is only one molecule of it per 7 million billion billion billion billion pills.
It’s hard to comprehend numbers that large. If you were to buy that many pills from Boots, it would cost more than the gross domestic product of the UK. It’s more than the gross domestic product of the entire world. Since the dawn of civilisation. If every human being since the beginning of time had saved every last penny, denarius and sea-shell, we would still have not saved-up enough to purchase a single arnica molecule from Boots.
Then the process of consuming enough pills to get that one molecule also boggles the mind. You can try imagining Wembley Stadium completely filled with people, all drinking pints of medicine at the rate of two an hour. For just one of these people to eventually consume one molecule, you would need a million Wembley Stadiums all at full capacity with people who have drinking pints constantly since the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Oh, and you’d need 737 million such Earths.
I have just purchased a packet of Boots-brand 84 arnica homeopathic 30C Pills for £5.09, which Boots proudly claim is only 6.1p per pill. Their in-store advice tells me that arnica is good for treating “bruising and injuries”, which gives the impression that this is a very cost-effective health-care option.
Unlike most medication, it didn’t list the actual dose of the active ingredient that each pill contains, so I checked the British Homeopathic Association website. On their website it nonchalantly states that to make a homeopathic remedy, they start with the active ingredient and then proceed to dilute it to 1 per cent concentration. Then they dilute that new solution again, so there is now only 0.01 per cent of the original ingredients. For my 30C pills this diluting is repeated thirty times, which means that the arnica is one part in a million billion billion billion billion billion billion.
The arnica is diluted so much that there is only one molecule of it per 7 million billion billion billion billion pills.
It’s hard to comprehend numbers that large. If you were to buy that many pills from Boots, it would cost more than the gross domestic product of the UK. It’s more than the gross domestic product of the entire world. Since the dawn of civilisation. If every human being since the beginning of time had saved every last penny, denarius and sea-shell, we would still have not saved-up enough to purchase a single arnica molecule from Boots.
Then the process of consuming enough pills to get that one molecule also boggles the mind. You can try imagining Wembley Stadium completely filled with people, all drinking pints of medicine at the rate of two an hour. For just one of these people to eventually consume one molecule, you would need a million Wembley Stadiums all at full capacity with people who have drinking pints constantly since the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Oh, and you’d need 737 million such Earths.
Dammit man, Hemant said to make the posts shorter but I can’t bloody help myself. I CAN’T leave out the 737 million Earths bit, I just can’t.
Save a sheep, love a llama. (No, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.)
