Tracey Spicer tears into antivaxxer Meryl Dorey on radio

Meryl Dorey [source]

Even the most inflamed blog posts have nothing on this. Listen as Tracey Spicer of Australia’s 2UE radio station briefly interviews Meryl Dorey, President of the anti-vaccine (and, therefore, ironically named) Australian Vaccination Network over the subject of the recent accusations of outright fraud in Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s retracted and thoroughly discredited “MMR vaccines cause autism in children” paper. If it’s a brief interview, that’s because it consists of Dorey trying brazenly to bullshit past Wakefield’s and her movement’s discreditation, and Spicer relentlessly exposes her spin and evasion in beautifully fierce form. She then spends the remainder of the interview (after exasperatedly cutting Dorey off) slamming the AVN. The whole magnificent six-minute-long exchange, below.

It’s only silly that Spicer actually thought that she would hear Dorey finally admit that her movement is based on falsehoods and deception. Why would kooks and cranks who make their living off of selling snake oil to the needy and the sadly uninformed ever admit it?

(via @BadAstronomer)

Friday Canine: The eyes that see all

[source | full size (900×618)]

Inhuman Illustrated | Older Sean and Aki lying in grass (WIP)

This entry has been removed from Preliator and can now be found over at Creativitas. (See here for more info.)

Ted Haggard gets TLC reality show. No, seriously

Ted Haggard

In yet another stupendous indication that society, at least the portion that’s about television, simply won’t stop digging its own intellectual grave:

Ted Haggard is coming to TLC.

The controversial Christian evangelical is getting his own reality project on the cable network. Ted Haggard: Scandalous will air as a one-hour special on the network.

Haggard was the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, leading 30 million followers across 45,000 churches, when he was caught having an affair with a male prostitute. He also admitted he had been using crystal meth.

The revelations generated worldwide headlines and forced Haggard to to leave the NAE. Haggard, his wife, and five children have since been trying to rebuild their family. The pastor speaks out about the TLC special after the jump…

“My family and I endured the darkest hours imaginable in the public spotlight, and have spent the last four years fighting and struggling to rebuild our lives, our faith and our family,” says Haggard in a statement. “Showing the world the new chapter of our lives will hopefully inspire others to find their own path to overcome their struggles and embrace the power of acceptance. The church is open to all, even those who have committed the darkest sins.”

I propose that those who are brave/bored/masochist/lame enough to watch this dreck pull out their stopwatches and measure just how long it takes before the obligatory assertion that, no, poor ol’ Ted is NOT gay! He’s just been mislead and tempted by all that enticing male flesh, that’s all!

(via Right Wing Watch)

Meet Phoenix Jones, real-life superhero

Maybe not quite the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it seems superheroes do exist, insofar as grappling hooks and skin-denting rings are replaced with mace and taser sticks:

Don’t ya just feel safer now?

(via The Agitator)

Two girls prove the US border fence is utterly worthless

About $8 billion to construct (at $4 million/mile on average) and another estimated $6.5 billion to maintain over 20 years, spanning 2,000 miles of USA-Mexico border and demanding the efforts of countless potential workers and patrollers … all to be proven useless by two average young ladies in less than a half a minute.

Sorry, conservatives, but it looks like that danged fence really is as wasteful and worthless as advertised. Imagine that: When people are sufficiently determined to get somewhere, it’s not a stack of wood that’s gonna stop them.

Daily Blend: Thursday, January 06, 2011

Dr. Andrew Wakefield [source]

That’s the last time I’m going to bed at 8 AM … Or probably not.

• About time: Antivaccination movement icon Andrew Wakefield [pictured] accused of fraudulent behavior by online medical journal BMJ for his (retracted) study supposedly linking vaccines and autism.

• American teenager imprisoned in Kuwait without charges, tortured and barred from returning to the US.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Miracle: White House and Pentagon reportedly seeking the biggest military spending cuts since before 9/11.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Least shocking news of the year (so far): New House-controlling Republicans already breaking their promises.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

“Women Deserve Better says PETA abuses defenseless, simple-minded women by forcing them to remove their clothes and participate in humiliating publicity stunts.”

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Publisher removes bad words from Mark Twain compilation

Mark Twain

And the defilement of historical relics in the name of modern caprices continues:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Mark Twain wrote that "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." A new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" will try to find out if that holds true by replacing the N-word with "slave" in an effort not to offend readers.

Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in "Huck Finn" and four times in "Tom Sawyer." He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those "which people praise and don't read."

"It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers," Gribben said.

You know what’s a far bigger shame, Gribben? That fools can decide to desecrate literary masterpieces for the sake of appeasing the lowest common denomination of whiny pissants who apparently can’t stomach the fact that terms like “nigger” were simply how people spoke back in Mark Twain’s day (and until much more recently, too). This is little short of historical revisionism, wherein unpleasant aspects of a people’s cultural past are revised and cleaned up in an effort to appeal to modern audiences, the same as with all those fools who erase cigarettes from photos of past celebrities and the likes. It’s cheap and dishonest, trying to sell a lie about a past that wasn’t.

Thankfully, people have been quick to react to this nonsense. Unfortunately, Gribben is sorely missing the point:

The book isn't scheduled to be published until February, at a mere 7,500 copies, but Gribben has already received a flood of hateful e-mail accusing him of desecrating the novels. He said the e-mails prove the word makes people uncomfortable.

"Not one of them mentions the word. They dance around it," he said.

Saudi Arabia arrests Israeli vulture for espionage

Zionist vultures!

Some of these stories require a lot of effort to not just parody the living hell out of them. Like this latest bit of idiocy out of animal-fearing Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabian officials have reportedly arrested a vulture suspected of being a Mossad spy, after the bird, tagged by Israeli scientists, flew into Saudi territory today.

Haaretz reports:

The bird was found in a rural area of the country wearing a transmitter and a leg bracelet bearing the words "Tel Aviv University", according to the reports, which surfaced first in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

But, according to Haaretz, "residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be a 'Zionist plot.'"

Taking into account their recent “Zionist sharks!” nonsense, one must wonder if they haven’t all been standing in the desert sun a little too long over there.

(via @todayspolitics)

California Supreme Court OKs warrantless cellphone searches

Pictured: A hat (according to the CA Supreme Court)

In which the California Supreme Court rules that the Fourth Amendment evidently makes excellent toilet paper:

The next time you're in California, you might not want to bring your cell phone with you. The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that police can search the cell phone of a person who's been arrested -- including text messages -- without obtaining a warrant, and use that data as evidence.

The ruling opens up disturbing possibilities, such as broad, warrantless searches of e-mails, documents and contacts on smart phones, tablet computers, and perhaps even laptop computers, according to legal expert Mark Rasch.

The ruling handed down by California's top court involves the 2007 arrest of Gregory Diaz, who purchased drugs from a police informant. Investigators later looked through Diaz's phone and found text messages that implicated him in a drug deal. Diaz appealed his conviction, saying the evidence was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The court disagreed, comparing Diaz cell phone to personal effects like clothing, which can be searched by arresting officers.

"The cell phone was an item (of personal property) on (Diaz's) person at the time of his arrest and during the administrative processing at the police station," the justices wrote. "Because the cell phone was immediately associated with defendant’s person, (police were) entitled to inspect its contents without a warrant."

In fact, the ruling goes further, saying essentially that the Diaz case didn't involve an exception -- such as a need to search the phone to stop a "crime in progress." In other words, this case was not an exception, but rather the rule.

Isn’t it amazing how often the Supreme Court rules in a manner that makes even the most legally illiterate commoner facepalm? I’m not exactly sure how they came to the conclusion (other than, perhaps, in their eagerness to convict Diaz) that an electronic device that stores personal information and other sorts of data can be considered “like clothing”. I don’t recall the last time a cop asked a pair of jeans what the suspect who’d recently worn them had been up to recently.

Daily Blend: Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Fake DHS license for fake laws [source | full size (260×180)]

• Detailed recap of 2010 in photographers and videographers wrongly harassed by law enforcement. [fake license pictured]
  (via The Agitator)

• Bloody awesome pic by equally awesome Thierry Legault of the ISS transiting the Sun during a partial solar eclipse.

• It’s not that often I start to get that particular reaction from reading a straight news article.
  (via The Agitator)

• So here’s where our dear Uzza learns about science. *snickers*
  (via Pharyngula)

• Dammit, Eddie, stop staring at me!
  (via @BadAstronomer)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.