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The Sporadic Chronicle
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29 Dec 2008
Eastern Tennessee is being flooded by 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash slurry which escaped from its reservoir. Bizarrely, it seems people have been arrested for photographing this.
29 Dec 2008
Assorted pseudoscience bits:
29 Dec 2008
Assorted science bits:
23 Dec 2008
Further "death by superstition" news as more exorcisms turn fatal, this time in Pakistan:
LAHORE: Two women were killed while one sustained burn injuries after being thrown into a fire by an exorcist on the pretext of exorcising demons in Mirpur Khas, a private TV channel reported on Friday ... Police said the three women had been taken to an amil (exorcist) by their in-laws to get evil spirits possessing them expelled, the channel said. One woman was injured. According to the channel, police had requested the magistrate to order exhumation of the women’s bodies. The exorcist had not been arrested so far.
[Despairing sigh]
23 Dec 2008
Excellent: seven members of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty intimidation gang are waiting to be sentenced for blackmail. The fact that Gregg and Natasha Avery, SHAC's co-founders, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blackmail almost makes me doubt the sincerity of the disclaimer on their website:
It goes without saying that nothing contained on this website or in any SHAC publication is intended to encourage or incite illegal acts. ... SHAC does not encourage or incite any illegal activities.
SHAC does not encourage or incite repetitive, threatening or abusive communications with these companies.

23 Dec 2008
Are you feeling irritable? Angry? How about lethargic or dull? Why, then what you need is a life force generator, to radiate healthy Prana and repair your aura.
Every culture throughout the world has a historical understanding of the reality of this energy and it is known by many names, e.g Prana, Chi, Qui, Life Force, Orgone...
...or, to be strictly accurate, "made-up crap". And you can buy some truly astounding tat to repair your aura. Oh yes. For the low low price of £50 you can be owner of a ghastly "7 Sided Power Pyramid" - a moulded lump of resin decorated by a staunch believer in the "Lots Of Glitter!" school of design. Those with £250 to spare can buy a "Power Wand" ("A very powerful psionic tool for healing or personal protection... It has been demonstrated that this device employs no black magic techniques."), or a wide range of astoundingly tacky pedants can be yours.

What impresses me is that he simultaneously claims to have evidence that his trinkets work, while being careful to post a disclaimer that they're for entertainment purposes only, in case they don't work as advertised.
19 Dec 2008
What would you expect to find at Irrefutable Proof dot com if not irrefutable proof? Irrefutable proof of giant alien cities on the far side of the moon!
This is the absolute, unquestionable proof of extraterrestrial life in the most astounding detail which you can download directly from official sites and verify for yourselves. ... Massive thriving colonies, city structures, water sources and hundreds of crafts within our own solar system which our government has been covertly observing by satellites for nearly 4 decades.
What they've actually got irrefutable proof of is the fact that if you take a digital picture, greatly enlarge it and then tinker with the brightness and contrast, you will see all kinds of blocky rubbish which isn't really there in the original. This is true of any digital picture, in exactly the same way that a film photograph would always look grainy if blown up too far. For example, here's a picture of one of my cats, who I assure you is devoid of any extraterrestrial constructions. On the right is the picture at full resolution, cropped to show only the face.
Cat Detail of cat
Then let's take part of that image - say the area around one of the eyes - enlarge it fourfold and make it black and white. Finally - on the right - mess with the contrast and brightness.
Zoomed detail of cat Increased contrast, brightness.
Vertical and horizontal lines appear, along with squares, rectangles and general blockiness. It is features such as these which the genius behind Irrefutable Proof dot com claims are gargantuan artificial structures on the surface of the moon. Or on my cat... and NASA and the world's governments have certainly been keeping quiet about that all these years.
17 Dec 2008
Rush I've not listened to anything by Rush for years but liked them when I was at university. So imagine my surprise and concern to learn that as well as being progressive rock maestroes they're central to sinister mind control operations targetting "celestial being, psychic, healer" all-round eccentric lady Solaris Blue Raven.
The information Solaris is going to give you here is extremely important to understand. ... In the following video and audio interviews, Solaris describes in detail how she was the victim of black ops and mind control projects, directly operated by the rock group Rush.
Okaaaay...
Sounds incredible? Not after you have heard her testimony. This very intelligent lady has decoded these programs and presents the results in a brand new book, "Eye of the Remote, Black Operations in Areas Beyond 52".
I predict a certain lack of lucidity.
Publishing this material is probably the most dangerous thing I have ever done.
Life on the edge, man... life on the edge.
17 Dec 2008
A plane goes missing in the Caribbean - how long before minor details like the unlicensed pilot are forgotten and it gets adopted into the "baffling vanishings" folklore of the Utterly Inexplicable Bermuda Triangle™?
15 Dec 2008
Okay, I like the Emergence of Advertising in America collection. There's something so direct about calling an insecticide 'Death Dust'.
Death Dust: kills all insects The insect powder in the trade is Death Dust
11 Dec 2008
Actor and audience got more than they expected at the theatre in Vienna:
The audience is said to have applauded what they thought was a stunning special effect, and only realised something was wrong when the actor staggered off stage to receive treatment.
He's okay again now, and I'm sure it's the sort of thing he'll look back on in years to come and have a good laugh about.
10 Dec 2008
The strange tale of the Dugway Sheep Incident, in which the sudden death of thousands of sheep had nothing at all (wink, nudge) to do with the ton of nerve gas the army was spraying nearby.
10 Dec 2008
One of the problems with the world today is you just can't find a good honest psychic to cleanse you of evil spirits:
A San Francisco woman who advertised herself as a psychic has been sentenced to two months in jail for bilking a love-sick customer out of $108,000 and talking her into buying her a sports car in exchange for purifying her of evil spirits, Santa Clara County authorities said Tuesday. [...] Miller convinced the woman that she was cursed and needed "spiritual cleansing," authorities said. The woman gave Miller $108,000 from her checking, savings and retirement accounts as well as cash, jewelry and gift cards. ...
A fraudulent psychic? I'm shocked! Sounds like it was a family business:
The woman finally figured out something was wrong when she read media accounts that Miller's mother-in-law, 56-year-old Lola Miller of San Jose, had been arrested for taking $450,000 in cash and services from a San Jose woman. Lola Miller, who went by the name "Miss Donna," read the victim's fortune, told her that she and family members were cursed and that she would cleanse them of evil for money. She also threatened the victim.
Classy.
05 Dec 2008
In Duke University's magnificent Emergence of Advertising in America collection, we find Prof. Winston's New and Novel Sea-Lion Act.
Prof. Winston's New and Novel Sea-Lion Act advert
I don't know why I like that, but I do.
05 Dec 2008
An important part of parenting in the 21st century is, of course, to remove any evil spirits from the child - with a hammer if necessary:
Blaine Milam and Jessica Carson, 18, were arrested Tuesday on capital murder charges in the beating death of Carson’s 13-month-old daughter during what evidently was an exorcism.
Investigators think the couple used a hammer to "beat the demons out" of the toddler.
Authorities said Amora Bain Carson, was also bitten more than 20 times.
Words fail.
02 Dec 2008
What better way to travel could there possibly be than in an ocean liner built like a zeppelin, as envisioned in the 1930s? Well maybe one planned mode of transport could beat that for grandeur: the Bel Geddes Airliner Number 4 - all 9 decks of it. I love the way the crew was expected to include a librarian, a manicurist and a gymnast.
01 Dec 2008
Writing in the Telegraph, Cassandra Jardine complains that the government insists on the best available protection against infectious childhood diseases and won't pay for parents to use less effective alternatives. Really.
But even though the risk of long-term complications [from Measles] is low, parents in Britain shouldn’t have to gamble with their children’s health. The vast majority of us only do so because we aren’t offered single vaccinations which - rightly or wrongly - we believe are less risky than injecting three live viruses at once into a small child’s immature immune system.
Single vaccines require more trips to the doctor and take more time to to be completed than the 3-in-one MMR, so making leaving the child more vulnerable to infection. There is no - I repeat - no actual evidence that the MMR vaccine is responsible for autism, bowel disease or anything apart from preventing measles, mumps and rubella. What's more, there is good evidence that it's both effective and safe. Jardine's complaint above makes exactly as much sense as someone saying, after deciding not to strap their children into car seats because of an unfounded rumour that seatbelts cause cancer...
...although the risk of actually suffering injury from a car accident is low, parents in Britain shouldn’t have to gamble with their children’s health. We only do so because we aren't instead allowed to swaddle our children in bubblewrap which - rightly or wrongly - we believe is less risky than using a seatbelt.

01 Dec 2008
It's good to see that while financial collapse, precarious fuel supplies, terrorism, climate change and war might distract some, a few MPs can focus on what's really important.
29 Nov 2008
The staff at the Unity Brook Inn in Kearsley saw some fuziness and speckles on their CCTV recordings, so naturally enough got people in to exorcise the evil spirits. Presumably eager to confirm the building's hauntedness, the ghost-hunters "encountered spooky goings-on during their investigation" - specifically, their camera batteries ran out and the pub toilets were cold. Hmmmm... how compellingly supernatural. I mean, really - pub toilets were cold? In November? That must be ghosts! But it ended well because the chief ghost-chaser is "confident that through neutralising the energy using my own power and salt and water, the ghost has gone." Bravo, Mr Psychic, you've exorcised the cold pub toilet and got some free publicity in the local newspaper. Brilliant. Truly brilliant.
28 Nov 2008
Thanks entirely to the baseless scaremongering against the MMR vaccine, measles is steadily on the rise in Britain. Urgh. In the BBC's Have Your Say section, 'Eddie D' of Burnham on Crouch is typical of those who completely miss the point:
I am a little confused. When I was a kid, getting measles, chicken pox, etc was part of growing up. You got it, your parents cared for you for a week or so, you went back to school. No panic, no mass vaccinations. Is it that we are breeding weaklings now?
No, it's not that we're breeding weaklings - it's that we're making great global progress against a highly infectious and often fatal or disabling disease, so having it flare up again in a country from which it had been eradicated is deeply depressing.

Eddie D's contribution also lacks some important words, which I've added below in italics:
You got it, your parents cared for you for a week or so, and if you didn't die of it you went back to school.
It's easy to forget that bit. Please don't.
28 Nov 2008
Sadly not in the shops in time for Christmas: the Alien Abduction Lamp.
28 Nov 2008
Pravda - very possibly the world's most credible former mouthpiece of the Soviet Communist Party - reliably informs us that Killer UFOs Hide In Lakes!. The evidence for this consists of some legends of people seeing fire in the sky near a lake. Mmmm, compelling. Oh, and there's this:
A strange incident took place in October 1994 on John D. Long Lake in South Carolina. A young woman named as Susan Smith was convicted of murdering her two little sons. Susan left the boys, 3-year-old Michael and 14-months-old Alexander in her car and let it roll into the lake drowning the boys.
Waaaah, it's killer aliens! Or someone not applying the handbrake. You decide which is more likely. Oh, and...
...Several dozens of cars drowned in Lake Whitney in Texas. All of the cars with passengers inside rolled into the lake from piers. Divers found some of the cars of the bottom of the lake, although they never found any human remains.
Local police officers say that many of those cars could not roll into the water because they were on a parking brake.
Notice how the writer makes it easy for people to find out whether this is true or just some kind of urban legend by not mentioning any sources for this, and not even telling us what decade it happened in. But even if it's true that some kind of freakish mass car-drowning happened at a lake in Texas, how does that imply that extraterrestrials were involved? If Pravda is to be believed - and that's a decision everyone has to make for themselves - these aliens are really up to no good. Not only are they hiding in our lakes, but they're also greatly interested in human sperm and ovules. Waaaah!
19 Nov 2008
The membership list of the British Union of Fascists has been published, raising all sorts of legitimate and deeply serious issues about privacy and politics which I don't intend to go into. What tickles me is the BNP is trying to squash the publication partly by using the Human Rights Act (please note, people of Britain, that threats are wrong: the correct response is mockery). This would be the same Human Rights Act (nausea alert: following link is to BNP website) which the BNP described just two weeks ago as "surely one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation ever passed by the mother of Parliaments".
19 Nov 2008
"Pirates: plucky but stupid" could be the subheading to this report of pirates trying to outgun an actual warship. The Indian navy's frigate Tabar came upon a pirate vessel near Yemen and then...
...The navy said the pirates on board were armed with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers.
When it demanded the vessel stop for investigation, the pirate ship responded by threatening to "blow up the naval warship if it closed on her", the statement said.
Pirates then fired on the Tabar, and the Indians say they retaliated and that there was an explosion on the pirate vessel, which sank.
Well, quite.

Meanwhile in a deeply silly letter to the Telegraph, a UKIP MEP blames piracy on the EU:
A month ago MEPs in the European Parliament adopted, with a huge majority, a proposal to downgrade piracy (report, November 18) from an act of war to a simple criminal act.
Once implemented it means that a naval vessel will not be allowed to blow pirates out of the water, as they deserve, but will have to arrest them and send them off to an international court, where, no doubt, they will plead "human rights"...
..which clearly hasn't prevented the Royal Navy from shooting people where necessary, or from sending prisoners to trial. And in the scuffle described above the Indian Navy, unrestrained by any EU decision, gave chase when the pirates fled their sinking ship but didn't "blow them out of the water". Derek Clark MEP continues:
Two months ago the Parliament enthusiastically adopted a report which will require all ships in EU waters to carry an electronic tag to record their movements and cargos. This information, relayed by the Galileo satellite, will be electronically stored in an EU data centre. ...
Just one corrupt operator and the pirates will have all they need to sort out the richest pickings, instead of relying on chance.
The important words there are "all ships in EU waters". The astute reader will notice that pirate blackspots like the Somali coast and the Malacca Straits aren't in EU waters.
18 Nov 2008
The Bible UFO Connection is a very special website, offering a guide to flying vehicles and advanced technology in the Bible including "the largest published collection of biblical verses, revealing the highly advanced nature of the beings of the Bible". Oh yes, yes indeed:
There are hundreds of descriptions by credible witnesses from Moses to John of glowing flying objects, mechanical devices, a huge fleet of invading super vehicles, hyper-advanced weapons, and unearthly technology
For example, clouds:
Perhaps the most important reference to clouds is that Jesus will return with an army in the clouds. If these clouds are not the fluffy kind, but very sophisticated flying craft, as the Bible records, then this would seem to have relevance to properly identifying that army. When Bible text says that Yhovah rides a swift cloud, are we to believe that he is literally sitting atop a cloud speeding through the sky?
You've got to admire that. The Bible isn't saying that God physically rides around on actual clouds, because that would be silly... but it's somehow quite sensible for it to be an accurate depiction of vehicles driven by some kind of super-advanced alien race. Some might think a more likely explanation is being overlooked.

The site is wonderfully strange, like something resulting from a collision between Eric Von Daniken and a television evangelist.
15 Nov 2008
Deary me, long time no posting - sort of got out of the habit. Let's see what's going on in the world... Fighting monks, pirates and awesome space news: I think that's enough for now.
Jan 2008 - Nov 2008. Sept - Dec 2007. April - August 2007. November 2006 - March 2007. November 2006 - March 2007. Archive.