Make a Difference
The Stupidity and Ignorance of Anti-vaxxers Never Ceases to Amaze
Yep, garlic will totally knock the crap out of that extra chromosome.
Every time I think anti-vax stupidity has reached its maximum depth, anti-vaxxers find a way to dig even deeper.
This dumb is so dumb we need an new word for how dumb this is.
” … potential human pathogens were recovered from plates exposed to hand dryer air whether or not a HEPA filter was present, and from bathroom air moved by a small fan. Spore-forming colonies, identified as B. subtilis PS533 averaged ∼2.5-5% of bacteria deposited by hand dryers throughout basic research areas examined regardless of distance from the spore forming laboratory, and these were almost certainly deposited as spores. Comparable results were obtained when bathroom air was sampled for spores. These results indicate that many kinds of bacteria, including potential pathogens and spores, can be deposited on hands exposed to bathroom hand dryers, and that spores could be dispersed throughout buildings and deposited on hands by hand dryers.
Importance: While there is evidence that bathroom hand dryers can disperse bacteria from hands or deposit bacteria on surfaces, including recently washed hands, there is less information on: i) the organisms dispersed by hand dryers; ii) if hand dryers provide a reservoir of bacteria or simply blow large amounts of bacterially contaminated air; and iii) if bacterial spores are deposited on surfaces by hand dryers. Consequently, this study has implications for the control of opportunistic bacterial pathogens and spores in public environments including healthcare settings. Within a large building, potentially pathogenic bacteria including bacterial spores may travel between rooms, and subsequent bacterial/spore deposition by hand dryers is a possible mechanism for spread of infectious bacteria including spores of potential pathogens if present.”
I have always detested them; useless, noisy things.
“Dried moringa leaves are a storehouse of concentrated nutrition, so even a small daily dose can help correct imbalances in the body, add concentrated nutrition to your diet and help you reach the recommended daily dietary targets of fruits and vegetables.”
This claim was made by an Indian company; Organic India Private Limited. In 2015 the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) upheld a complaint against the company for this advertisement, finding its claims were unsubtantiated.
If it were just a matter of comfortably-off people buying supplements that don’t contain anything useful, and wouldn’t help most people even they did (the only time a dietary supplement is helpful is if you are deficient in some particular nutrient, in which case you should seek advice from a medical doctor), then it wouldn’t matter too much. People will always find silly things to spend money on, and it is no one’s business but their own.
That does not excuse the sellers of these products, who generally know that what they are selling is useless. Even if they do not have the skills to analyse the claims made by the parent company, the methods employed should be a dead giveaway. For example, in the case of one multi-level marketing Moringa company, agents are given scripts which they are told to claim as their own stories, to share with potential clients and on social media. They generally go like this:
I was feeling x (fat, ugly, tired, sleepless, lacking energy, etc). Nothing else worked, so I decided to try y (the moringa product). I was sceptical, but after two weeks, the difference was amazing. I was z (slimmer, more energetic, sleeping better, dating Brad Pitt, etc, etc). The next time I went to the doctor, he/she was amazed. I told him/her about y, and showed him/her the list of nutrients it contains. He/she was so impressed he/she asked where he/she could get some for him/her self.
Any company that suggests it is appropriate to tell invented histories, ie lies, to family, friends, and customers, is not a company whose claims you should be taking at face value. That is bad enough.
But when extravagant claims are made for weight loss, or for cures for cancer or diabetes or other acute or chronic illnesses, then selling such products crosses a line from being merely unethical to being illegal. Or even where not illegal, monstrous. It is wrong to take advantage of people who are poor, who are ill, who are desperate.
You would hope people would be well aware by now that every few years some new miracle supplement, superfood, or therapy appears, promising weight loss, new youth, and social success. Bai-lin Tea, Cal-Ban, Herbalife, are all earlier examples. But sadly not.
Moringa is just the latest in a long line of supplement scams.
Don’t fall for these scams. Don’t buy these products.
I have gay family members, and have had gay friends all my life; people who are dear to me, whose feelings I value, and whose opinions I respect. I have been to gay bars, events and festivals with gay friends, been propositioned by men more times than I can remember, and am happy to greet my gay friends with a kiss on the cheek. In the same way as my other friends, they deserve my love, loyalty and support.
Nonetheless I will be voting No.
These are some of the issues:
1.We are told that if Australia does not legislate to redefine marriage we will be falling behind other civilised countries.
2. We are told redefining marriage is a matter of justice and equality.
3. We are told that nothing else will change. The only thing that will be different is that gay couples will now be allowed to marry. It won’t affect anyone else, so no one else has any right to have a say.
4. We are told there is no “slippery slope,” that no further changes to the definition of marriage will be made after this.
5. We are told there is no connection between same sex marriage and the teaching of gender fluidity.
Let’s consider these claims.
1. The fact that some other society is doing something is not in itself a reason for us to do it. Even if it were, so far approximately ten percent of the world’s nations, representing less than ten percent of the world’s population, have legislated to change the meaning of marriage. This is a long way from an overwhelming or compelling majority.
2. To claim that redefining marriage is a matter of justice is to prejudge, to take for granted, what is being discussed. To say something is just is to say it is right. That is exactly what is at issue.
Things can be equal in different ways. People are equal in dignity and value, regardless of gender, race, intelligence or physical ability. But that is not to say they are same in every way. Men and women are different. People have different levels of intelligence, different abilities, different interests. It is entirely reasonable and fair to distinguish people on the basis of these factors. If you are short and slow, you probably won’t get picked to play basketball. If you have never sat down at a piano in your life you probably won’t be invited to perform a piano concert at the Sydney Opera House.
Marriage has varied from society to society, for example in the permissible difference in ages, the degree to which the partners may be related, or sometimes, the number of people involved. What has never changed is that it is a permanent bond between male and female. Even in societies with a high degree of tolerance for homosexual acts, it has never been suggested until twenty years ago that a relationship between two men or two women was identical to a life-long commitment between a man and a woman with openness to new life, or that it had the same meaning to society.
Recognising this difference, that these two things are not the same and therefore not equal, is not unfairly discriminatory any more than saying a dog cannot be a cat, no matter how much it wants to be, or that a square cannot be a triangle.
This not to suggest that same-sex relationships cannot be as loving, as stable, as worthy of respect as a marriage, but simply simply to note that they are different things. This is similar to the argument employed by some of the many same sex attracted opponents of the re-definition of marriage. “We know our relationships are different,” they say, “so why do we need to appropriate hetero-sexual institutions to feel validated?” Not better or worse, just different. It is ignoring reality to insist they be called by the same name.
3. Since the early 2000s a number of countries have redefined marriage to include same sex partnerships. Of these, only Ireland has made the change as the result of a vote by the people. In all others it was changed by judicial fiat, as in the United States, or by government without direct reference to the people, as in New Zealand and the UK. Fifteen years is not a long time over which to study impacts on society, but some things have become clear.
The first is that redefining marriage does not change what same sex attracted people can do. In Australia, same sex partnerships have exactly the same protections under law as marriages. The have the same rights in relation to superannuation, succession, taxation and government benefits. Same sex attracted people can find a celebrant, get dressed in white, invite their friends, go through a ceremony, and say they are married. They can claim their relationship is exactly the same as a relationship between a married couple, and means the same thing to wider society. The legalisation of “same sex marriage” does not change that at all. What does change is that everyone else is now obliged to agree.
The promised protections for conscience and free speech in Ireland have been undone two years later. The US has seen a seemingly never-ending targeting of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim bakeries, florists, venue operators, printers, photographers, etc, etc, etc, or anyone who still believes about marriage what everyone believed until twenty years ago. No one is permitted to disagree. Last year there were demands that Fixer Upper, a popular house renovation TV show, be taken off the air because activists had discovered that the couple who made the show went to a church whose pastor had expressed the view that marriage was between a man and woman. In 2014 the CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich, was forced out of his position after it was discovered that he had made a donation in support of the traditional view of marriage. In Denmark Lutheran pastors are now forced by law to conduct marriage ceremonies for same sex couples.
Redefining marriage changes nothing that same sex people can do, or the protections they have under law. It simply forces everyone else to comply.
4. Once the essence of the meaning of marriage – a lifetime commitment between male and female – is removed, It is difficult to see how further changes can be avoided without cries of unfairness and discrimination. This story sent to me by a friend sums up the situation:
Good morning. We want to apply for a marriage license.”
“Names?” said the clerk.
“Tim and Jim Jones.”
“Jones?? Are you related? I see a resemblance.”
“Yes, we’re brothers.”
“Brothers? You can’t get married.”
“Why not? Aren’t you giving marriage licenses to same gender couples?”
“Yes, of course, that’s the law. But we haven’t had any siblings. That’s incest!”
“‘Incest?’ No, we are not gay.”
“Not gay? Then why do you want to get married?”
“We love each other. Besides, we don’t have any other prospects.”
“But we’re issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples who’ve claim they’d been denied equal protection under law. If you are not gay, you can get married to a woman.”
“Wait a minute. A gay man has the same right to marry a woman as I have. But just because I’m straight doesn’t mean I want to marry a woman. I want to marry Jim.”
“And I want to marry Tim, Are you going to discriminate against us just because we are not gay?”
“All right, have it your own way. Here’s your license. Next.”
“Hi. We are here to get married.”
“Names?”
“John Smith, Jane James, Robert Green, and June Johnson.”
“Who wants to marry whom?”
“We all want to marry each other.”
“But there are four of you!”
“That’s right. You see, we’re all bisexual. I love Jane and Robert, Jane loves me and June, June loves Robert and Jane, and Robert loves June and me. All of us getting married together is the only way that we can express our sexual preferences in a marital relationship.”
“But we’ve only been granting licenses to gay and lesbian couples.”
“So you’re discriminating against bisexuals!”
“No, it’s just that, well, the traditional idea of marriage is that it’s just for couples.”
“Since when are you standing on tradition?”
“Well, I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere.”
“Who says? There’s no logical reason to limit marriage to couples. The more the better. Besides, we demand our rights! The law guarantees us equal protection.”
“All right, have it your own way. Here’s your license. Next.”
5. If men and women are different, then a relationship between two men or two women is different from a relationship between a man and a woman. Claiming equality between same sex relationships and marriage can only be maintained if men and women are interchangeable. This depends on the claim that gender is fluid, can be changed, and is largely a matter of choice. A man can become a woman, or a woman a man, because there are no essential differences between the two.
Once marriage is redefined to include same sex relationships, general acceptance of gender fluidity becomes a necessity. This needs to be taught. And taught it will be. In the UK, couples who believe marriage is between a man and a woman are no longer considered suitable to act as foster parents. But in an astonishingly hypocritical policy, children can be taken from ordinary English families which are in trouble, and sent to be fostered with Muslim families, despite the fact that under Sharia law homosexual acts are punishable by death. In Canada children can be removed from families which do not support their children’s gender choices, or facilitate gender transitions if desired. California is currently considering legislation which makes it a jailable offence to call someone by other than their preferred pronouns.
To summarise:
I love my gay friends and family members. I would oppose any legislation which gave them less protection under law, or limited their choices.
Demands to redefine marriage are not about tolerance for homosexual acts, or for same sex attracted people. Their relationships already have equal status in every way relating to succession law, benefits and taxation, etc.
If same sex attracted people want to say their relationships are exactly the same as a life-time commitment between a man and woman, and mean the same thing to society, most people would not be bothered about this.
If they want to go through a ceremony and say they are married, most people would wish them well.
But if they want to get the government to force everyone to agree with them, that moves over the line from the rightful and realistic expectation of tolerance, to Stalinist enforcement of compliance.
The campaign to redefine marriage is not about letting same sex attracted people do what they want. They already can. It is about demanding the government create a society in which no one is permitted to disagree. That is not tolerance and freedom. It is the exact opposite.
Don’t let Facebook decide what you see and what you can post.
Blissyoo means no censorship of posts, freedom of speech, videos, music, groups, pages, news, and soon, revenue sharing.
Visit, join, invite your friends.
Isopropyl alcohol, H2O, sodium hydroxide, acetic acid, …. Nope, no chemicals there. Sometimes I wonder if people can really be that stupid. And then I think, yep, they obviously can!
Lots of chemicals in these chemical free wipes!
Andrew Wakefield, disgraced researcher, failed doctor, scam artist.
That is the subtitle of Paul Driessen’s powerful book describing how Western “green” restrictions on the cheap energy the West demands and takes for granted result in suffering and death in the world’s poorest nations:
It could just as well be the tile of Brendon Pearson’s article “Carefree ignore consequences of limiting supply of fossil fuels” in The Australian a few days ago. This is just a few paragraphs. Read the whole thing.
“The response from green advocates is that the emissions from coal and fossil fuels are different — they can be replaced by renewables. Let’s do the maths. Last year wind and solar energy produced the equivalent of nine days of global primary energy needs. Coal produced 109 days and fossil fuels combined produced 313 days of the world’s annual primary needs. Despite all these power sources, 1.3 billion people still missed out on electricity and a further 1.7 billion only had partial access.
To put this problem into context — the energy used by Christmas lights in the US in an average festive season is more than the national electricity consumption of many developing countries, such as El Salvador, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nepal or Cambodia.
Halting or limiting coal or fossil fuels output will simply mean that those with no or partial access to electricity would have to wait much longer in the dark.
That is an uncomfortable but incontrovertible fact. If you limit something or make it more expensive to the poor then you are delaying or denying that access. Not just for weeks, months or years, but generations. Hundreds of millions of people will live shorter, more miserable lives as a result of the choices of the comfortable and warm.”
That is it exactly. The cost of cozy green self-righteousness is that hundreds of millions of people will live shorter, more miserable lives.
I don’t usually copy and paste entire articles, but this, by John Stossel on his hospital experience, is just too accurate to ignore:
I write this from the hospital. Seems I have lung cancer.
My doctors tell me my growth was caught early and I’ll be fine. Soon I will barely notice that a fifth of my lung is gone. I believe them. After all, I’m at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. U.S. News & World Report ranked it No. 1 in New York. I get excellent medical care here.
But as a consumer reporter, I have to say, the hospital’s customer service stinks. Doctors keep me waiting for hours, and no one bothers to call or email to say, “I’m running late.” Few doctors give out their email address. Patients can’t communicate using modern technology.
I get X-rays, EKG tests, echocardiograms, blood tests. Are all needed? I doubt it. But no one discusses that with me or mentions the cost. Why would they? The patient rarely pays directly. Government or insurance companies pay.
I fill out long medical history forms by hand and, in the next office, do it again. Same wording: name, address, insurance, etc.
I shouldn’t be surprised that hospitals are lousy at customer service. The Detroit Medical Center once bragged that it was one of America’s first hospitals to track medication with barcodes. Good! But wait — ordinary supermarkets did that decades before.
Customer service is sclerotic because hospitals are largely socialist bureaucracies. Instead of answering to consumers, which forces businesses to be nimble, hospitals report to government, lawyers and insurance companies.
Whenever there’s a mistake, politicians impose new rules: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act paperwork, patient rights regulations, new layers of bureaucracy…
Nurses must follow state regulations that stipulate things like, “Notwithstanding subparagraph (i) of paragraph (a) of this subdivision, a nurse practitioner, certified under section sixty-nine hundred ten of this article and practicing for more than three thousand six hundred hours may comply with this paragraph in lieu of complying with the requirements of paragraph (a)…”
Try running a business with rules like that.
Adding to that is a fear of lawsuits. Nervous hospital lawyers pretend mistakes can be prevented with paper and procedure. Stressed hospital workers ignore common sense and follow rigid rules.
In the intensive care unit, night after night, machines beep, but often no one responds. Nurses say things like “old machines,” “bad batteries,” “we know it’s not an emergency.” Bureaucrats don’t care if you sleep. No one sues because he can’t sleep.
Some of my nurses were great — concerned about my comfort and stress — but other hospital workers were indifferent. When the customer doesn’t pay, customer service rarely matters.
The hospital does have “patient representatives” who tell me about “patient rights.” But it feels unnatural, like grafting wings onto a pig.
I’m as happy as the next guy to have government or my insurance company pay, but the result is that there’s practically no free market. Markets work when buyer and seller deal directly with each other. That doesn’t happen in hospitals.
You may ask, “How could it? Patients don’t know which treatments are needed or which seller is best. Medicine is too complex for consumers to negotiate.”
But cars, computers and airplane flights are complex, too, and the market still incentivizes sellers to discount and compete on service. It happens in medicine, too, when you get plastic surgery or Lasik surgery. Those doctors give patients their personal email addresses and cellphone numbers. They compete to please patients.
What’s different about those specialties? The patient pays the bill.
Leftists say the solution to such problems is government health care. But did they not notice what happened at Veterans Affairs? Bureaucrats let veterans die, waiting for care. When the scandal was exposed, they didn’t stop. USA Today reports that the abuse continues. Sometimes the VA’s suicide hotline goes to voicemail.
Patients will have a better experience only when more of us spend our own money for care. That’s what makes markets work.
© 2023 Qohel