You Can’t Cure Stupid – Page 46

Beware of Snake Oil Salesmen

Yesterday it was announced that the first diagnosis of Ebola infection in the United States has been reported. Obviously it was brought across the unprotected border by illegal Islamic immigrants working for the Islamic State drug cartel (I’m sure that accusation will be making the rounds soon enough)! Sure enough wherever there is fear there are people ready to exploit it. There is also a notable overlap between libertarians and the alternative medicine crowd (and I wouldn’t have it any other way because I love being in a movement that takes in the oddballs). That means I’m being subjected to people screaming about how we need to start taking colloidal silver to stave off Ebola. What is colloidal silver. I happen to know somebody with a chemistry background and I asked him. Hoping for a zany answer I was disappointed when he explained that colloidal merely means particles suspended in a substance. In other words colloidal silver is nothing more than tiny particles of silver suspended in a solution.

Surprisingly there are no scientific papers describing tests that demonstrate colloidal silver being an effective treatment for Ebola virus. But we all know those testing labs are in the pockets of Big Pharma (that’s what my alternative medicine advocate friends tell me). So where are the claims that colloidal silver is effective against Ebola virus? From companies selling colloidal silver. Shocking, I know.

But I’m here to tell you that you’re being scammed. Colloidal silver is not the treatment you should be seeking. As a person who has read a great amount on the history of alchemy I feel it is important for me to explain how diseases work and why colloidal silver is ineffective.

Aristotle explained that there are four elements: earth, wind, water, and fire. These four elements have specific qualities. Fire is primarily hot and secondarily dry. Air is primarily wet and secondarily dry. Water is primarily cold and secondarily wet (yup, water is wet secondarily). Earth is primarily dry and secondarily cold. The human body is in perfect health when all four qualities are in balance. If one quality becomes more than another there is imbalance and that is how illnesses occur. The name for the cold derives from the fact that it is an imbalance due to an increase amount of cold in the human body^[1]. Therefore treating illnesses requires restoring balance to the human body.

You’re probably wondering what causes imbalances in the human body. The answer to that is simple, impurities. How does one counteract impurities? By introducing purer substances. It is well know that silver, due to its low reactivity, is a fairly pure metal. But there is an even purer metal and due to how severely imbalanced a human body must be to become ill with Ebola we will need the purest substance there is. Gold just so happens to be that substance. It is the purest of all substances, which is demonstrated by its low reactivity. As it is the purest metal people should be looking to take colloidal gold instead of colloidal silver. I know, I know, gold is really fucking expensive. But that is mostly due to a combination of its scarcity and purity. Luckily for you I have a solution for this problem as well. We must cease funding all other research and divert those resources to relearning the art of creating philosopher’s stones. With philosopher’s stones we can take an abundant but impure metal such as a lead and transmute it into gold. Once we regain that ability we will cure humanity of all ailments. In other words I just explained how to save the entire human race from Ebola virus. You can thank me later.

Most of you who read this probably recognized it as bullshit. The theories of alchemy based on Aristotle’s four elements have long ago been disproved. But the diatribe I spewed above is no less scientifically sound than the claim that colloidal silver cures Ebola virus. At least what I wrote above was, at one time, scientifically sound based on the available knowledge at the time.

When I wrote this one of my friends jokingly remarked that I was in the pocket of Big Alchemy (which is now my tagline). Meanwhile the people advocating colloidal silver mocked me and said that my claim was bullshit and not based on any scientific research. Talk about irony. But what really irks me about this whole mess is the predatory nature of these colloidal silver peddlers. They have a bogus product and use fear to convince people to buy it. In that way they are similar to the state. And that’s downright irritating.

^[1] Unlike most of this article, this claim isn’t bullshit. The name for the common cold originally comes from the belief that it was caused due to an increase in the cold quality. This was due to too much water element, which was believed to be responsible for symptoms such as a runny nose. You can read about this and other interesting facts regarding the history of alchemy in The Secrets of Alchemy, which is an excellent historical book and not some zany new age shit claiming to teach alchemy.

Republicans Don’t Have a Monopoly on Voting Related Conspiracy Theories

Here in Minnesota the Republican Party has been banging on the Voter ID drum since they started losing some very high profile elections by pretty narrow margins. If you listen to their claims the Democrats supposedly have buses full of people that a driven from precinct to precinct so they can claim to be new voters and vote for Democrat candidates. Of course when pushed for evidence to support these claims the most you receive are anecdotes. They all know somebody’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate who saw these buses in operation and even followed them around to a couple of precincts but were somehow prevented from recording the escapade or calling the police (because shit like that is pretty illegal).

Democrats have no issue making fun of Republicans over this and rightfully so. But Republicans aren’t they only people who have conspiracy theories related to voting. As it turns out the Democrats have some real whoppers of their own. Take this one for example:

A militia group in Wisconsin is planning to target African-American Democrats at polling places in order to suppress the vote and keep Republican governor Scott Walker in office.

Ah yes, a nebulous militia is not only going to intimidate Democratic voters but African-American Democratic voters! Like the Republicans, the Democrats have ironclad evidence to support their claims:

Here is a Twitter exchange where the group details their plan:

There’s no way to refute that! Not just anybody can make an account on Twitter and post whatever the hell they want. If somebody on Twitter claims to be a member of a militia group in Wisconsin that is planning to intimidate African-American Democratic voters then that is absolutely what is going to happen.

It continues to amaze me how much time people waste on bitching about voting. Voting is the most meaningless thing to argue about. Your vote doesn’t even count. And the only options available on any ballot are people who want lord over you. Since there’s no option to abolish a position you are simply voting for the master you would prefer to submit to out of a small list of potential masters. Considering that fraud is irrelevant because no matter who wins you lose.

California Finally Addressed One of the State’s Most Important Issues

California has a lot of issues. It has a notably high unemployment rate, getting a carry permit is entirely at the mercy of whatever tyrannical sheriff you’re unfortunate enough to live under, its tax rates are absurdly high, and San Fransisco is there. But there is one major problem that has affected the lives of every citizen of that forsake stretch of land that gone unaddressed… until now!

The California Assembly on Monday passed legislation that would ban the state from selling or displaying the Confederate flag, or any similar image, with Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly casting the sole vote in opposition.

Thank almighty Cthulhu that that’s finally been taken care of! But I noticed that the prohibition suspiciously doesn’t apply to the Nazi flag. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.

If You Call Yourself a Sheepdog Then You’re Probably Not a Sheepdog

Of all the posts on this blog none has garnered me more hatred than my criticism of Grossman’s sheepdog, sheep, and wolves analogy. Seriously, just read some of the comments and see how many people base their self-worth on the idea that they’re some kind of protector of humanity. Over two years later I not only find myself still believing that Grossman’s analogy is flawed but I also believe that almost everybody who subscribes to that analogy and believes themselves to be a sheepdog isn’t.

In Grossman’s analogy the sheepdog is the thin barrier that lies between the weak, pathetic, ignorant sheep and the vicious wolves that lurk around every corner. I find the analogy flawed because it implies that a person is either a protector of humanity, a stupid sheep who will get eaten in time, or an asshole wolf who exists solely to kill the sheep. I mean, come on, just read this tripe:

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath–a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

What if you have the capacity for violence but care only to use it to protect yourself? Or you have the capacity for violence but care only to use it to protect you and yours? How about those people who have a capacity for violence yet refrain from using it? And what about those who have a capacity for violence, use it against nonviolent individuals, and carry a badge? Reality is far different than what Grossman implies. People don’t fit nicely into tidy categories and most of the self-proclaimed sheepdogs aren’t considered what Grossman implies to be sheepdog.

If you go on to read the analogy you will see, for example, that Grossman considers police officers to be sheepdogs. I fail to see how modern police, who exist primarily to prey on the populace by extorting wealth from them, are defenders of anybody. But what’s really annoying is that many people outside of the police and military who consider themselves sheepdogs share many of the wolfish tendencies of a lot of modern police officers. The worst of which is the “Just give me an excuse, boy!” personality trait. People who exhibit this personality trait are the ones who are looking for any excuse to bring violence against somebody. For example, one of Baton Rouge’s finest who wanted somebody to pull a Ferguson in his town so he could thump some skulls.

Many of the people I know, both in real life and on the Internet, who consider themselves sheepdog are also hoping somebody will do something, anything, that will give them an excuse to go all Judge Dredd on their ass. The only thing keeping them from shooting bad guys, and by bad guys I mean basically anybody they dislike, is that they are lowly beta wolves. Sheepdogs, more often than not, are actually wolves and there are two types of wolves. Most self-proclaimed sheepdogs outside of law enforcement are lowly beta wolves and the police are the alpha wolves. Beta wolves want to go all Judge Dredd on people but the alpha wolves don’t like it when beta wolves challenge their monopoly on violence. So the alpha wolves keep the beta wolves relegated to just wishing for the day that they get a reason to prove their sheepdog claims to be more than bluster. This isn’t heroic behavior and the people who hold this attitude aren’t the defender of humanity.

As people wanting nothing more than to wield violence most self-proclaimed sheepdogs spend a vast majority of their time training to do exactly that. Something that always amazes me when it comes to the sheepdog crowd is their emphasis on training for some of the most retarded gun fighting scenarios, in regards to people living in the United States, every conceived. They drill for multiple attackers invading a mall and taking hostages, entrenched terrorists who are firing on the sheepdogs’ position and can only be advanced on by leapfrogging so that one sheepdog can provide covering fire to another sheepdog as he moves towards danger (because sheepdogs only ever move towards danger), and counterinsurgency after a foreign army has successfully invaded and taken over their hometown. What they seem to never drill for are scenarios where the mugger gets the jump on them and at gun point demands their wallet, a shooter opening fire in a mall causing most of the people to run chaotically in a panic and thus have made finding and engaging the attacker almost impossible, or two individuals engaging in a fight that’s impossible to ascertain who initiated it and who is simply defending themselves. If you want to consider yourself the defender of stupid sheep then you should at least practice for scenarios that may actually happen. Or, you know, learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

It’s true, some self-proclaimed sheepdogs are very competent with a firearm (but most aren’t). Anybody who spends every weekend practicing to engage the entire Mongol horde should have developed at least some competency with a firearm. But those people often suck at deescalation techniques (again, they want to get into a fight so deescalation is counter to their goal), employing the minimum force necessary to resolve a situation, and having a conversation lasting more than ten minutes that doesn’t devolve into ranting about how pathetic sheep are and how awesome they and their fellow sheepdogs are. The best fights are the ones that don’t happen and if you are actually interested in defending people you should start by learning to how deescalate a situation. Likewise not every situation requires a gun. Sometimes you can resolve a situation by restraining somebody long enough for them to cool down. And when things do go completely south and you need to use a firearm you will almost never have an AR-15 with a chest rig full of loaded magazines. Instead you’ll have a concealed handgun and maybe an extra magazine or two. Again most self-proclaimed sheepdogs seemed prepared for war not for defending members of their community from bad things that may actually happen.

The only people that I have ever heard use the sheepdog analogy unironically are those whose egos need regular stroking and the only stroking they find pleasurable are images of themselves being heroes. Meanwhile the people who actually protect members of their community; emergency medical technicians (EMT), people who know CPR, people who walk other people to their car at night so they don’t get harassed, etc.; usually aren’t bragging about how they are the thin line that rests between sheep and wolves. That’s probably because they’re actually helping people instead of talking about it. But a lot of people have latched onto Grossman’s analogy because it allows them to fantasize about being a hero as well as gives them a reason to feel superior to anybody who doesn’t spend every weekend preparing to fight off the Mongol horde.

The Terrorists aren’t Planning to Attack via Mexico

Let me just take a moment to stroke my own ego and point out that I’m not the only one calling bullshit on Judicial Watch’s report about terrorists planning to attack from Mexico. Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, called bullshit as well:

The United States’ senior counterterrorism official said on Wednesday that there is “no credible information” that the militants of the Islamic State, who have reigned terror on Iraq and Syria, are planning to attack the U.S. homeland. Although the group could pose a threat to the United States if left unchecked, any plot it tried launching today would be “limited in scope” and “nothing like a 9/11-scale attack.”

[…]

But Olsen, whose organization was set up after 9/11 to assess terrorism intelligence and “connect the dots” about potential attacks, painted a more measured picture of the fundamentalist group. “ISIL is not al Qaeda pre-9/11,” Olsen told a Brookings Institution audience on Wednesday, Sept. 3. Osama bin Laden’s network had covert cells in European countries and Southeast Asia, as well as a home base in Afghanistan. The Islamic State is “not there yet,” Olsen said. There is “no indication at this point of a cell of foreign fighters operating in the United States.”

If you look up Judicial Watch, the organization cited by the fear mongering article on Allen West’s site, you’ll notice that it’s a neoconservative watchdog group. More often than not neoconservative watchdog groups peddle fear whenever neoliberals are in power in an attempt to scare Americans into believing that the military isn’t strong enough, the police aren’t well armed enough, and the border isn’t enough of a fortress.

The fact that the news of terrorists supposedly planning to team up with drug cartels to invade the United States came from Judicial Watch should have been the first red flag. Red flag two should have been the claim that Mexican drug cartels were working with the Islamic State (IS). Mexican drug cartels don’t want somebody like the IS in power because it would likely punishes drug producers and consumers far more harshly than the current regime. Neoconservatives and neoliberals spend a lot of time trying to make it appear as though Mexican drug cartels want to kill all Americans but the fact is Americans are those cartels’ biggest customers. This becomes apparent when you look at most of the violence committed by drug cartels and see that it’s mostly aimed at threats to its business. In other words drug cartels are just like states in that they use violence to hinder competition.

As a general rule if I see an article that paints a very scary picture I label it bullshit unless some concrete evidence proving the article truthful is available. Fear is the favorite tool of tyrants. When somebody is telling you to be scared then they are most likely trying to get you to kowtow to them.

It’s Hard Being a Gun Nut and Technology Enthusiast

Do you know what’s difficult for gun nuts and technology enthusiast to do? Turn on the news. Most of the gunny readers of my blog are used to the glaring idiocy emitted by reporters when they attempt to talk about firearms. You get ridiculous assertions like the word magazine being interchangeable with clip, every rifle being an AK-47, every handgun being a Glock, and Uzis being high-powered firearms:

The girl was being shown how to use a high-powered Uzi sub-machine gun at an Arizona shooting range when the recoil caused her to lose control of it.

Emphasis mine. Unless there is an Uzi model chambered in .308 (and if there is please tell me, I fucking want that for reasons) it is not high-powered. Uzis, as far as I know, are commonly chambered in 9mm with a few other models available that fire other pistol calibers. Pistol calibers, no matter how you look at them, aren’t high-powered. In fact they’re usually considered anemic, which is why military personnel usually carry rifles.

When media outlets report on topics related to technology we get similar levels of stupidity. The news that nude pictures of several celebrities have been obtained form their compromised iCloud accounts has received wall to wall coverage from several media outlets. And with great coverage comes great stupidity. Here we have a CNN talking head speculating on the nature of 4chan:

In the wake of the massive leak of hacked celebrity nude photos now known as celebgate, CNN—the most trusted name in news—is on the case. The cable news pioneer put its best tech analyst Brett Larson on the job and he speculated in wildly unhelpful fashion on Tuesday about just who this 4chan guy is, anyway.

“He might be a system administrator,” Larson suggests.

I guess the top tier research team over at CNN couldn’t be bothered to do a Google search. If they had they would have gotten the website 4chan at the top hit and a Wikipedia article entry on 4chan as the second hit. In other words a few simple keystrokes would have informed anybody capable of reading (I know, that’s expecting a lot from the research team over at CNN) that 4chan isn’t a person, it’s a website.

Because of my interests in guns and technology I feel as through I’m receiving a double dose of stupid every time I turn on the news or open a news site. I can only assume that the media’s coverage of basically everything else is just as ill-informed.

Collectivist Thinking and Bigotry are a Dangerous Combination

The the collectivist viewpoint, where individuals are seen as nothing more than a cog in the great collective machinery, and bigotry, and unwarranted hatred of a group of individuals, often go hand in hand. When one fails to see individuals and instead focuses on collectives it becomes much easier to despise entire groups with little or not reasoning. This leads people who think collectively to get very upset about individual action that doesn’t affect anybody else.

A recent story of a transgender teen not being allowed to attend school as a woman generated some outrage. Many neoliberals, social activists, and libertarians were outraged by the fact that her actions affect nobody else and therefore no ground exists for the prohibition. On the other side of the isle are the neocons and social conservatives who, well, basically echo this dude I came across on Facebook:

The opening of his final paragraph really takes the cake. According to his collectivist viewpoint the entire female population of the school will suffer if this transgender teen is accommodated. Earlier he stated “…think about a man dressed as a girl who wants to use the same bathroom your daughter is using…”, which demonstrates that he fears transgender individuals since he doesn’t want one of them in the same bathroom as another person’s daughter (it also demonstrates that he enjoys appealing to emotion when attempting to drum up support for his bigotry). It also demonstrates another common problem with collectivist thinking: failing to understand the target of one’s bigotry. A transgender individual isn’t somebody who simply wears the clothing of the opposite gender. The term for that is cross dresser. Transgender individuals have software running on the wrong hardware.

Not understanding the target of one’s bigotry is almost as common as collectivist bigotry itself. Think of the neocons who hate Muslims. Most of them have a very warped understanding of Islam that is almost entirely shaped by cherry picking facts that fit their bias. Sexists and racists have the same issue. These misunderstanding usually lead to fear and hatred.

In the case of the dude whose comment I screen captured appears to view transgender individuals as sexual predators (after all, the transgender teen obviously only wants to use the women’s restroom so she can peep on other women even though she offered to isolate herself by using the restroom in the nurse’s office). This view leads him to believe that every girl in the school will suffer if this transgender teen is allowed to live her life in accordance to her gender. And that is ridiculous but inevitable when somebody develops a hatred of an entire group of people. When all you see are groups then any individual in a “bad” group necessary harms every individual in a “good” group.

I don’t subscribe to collectivism. While it is useful to refer to groups when discussing philosophy, religion, political beliefs, and other ideas commonly held by multiple individuals, we cannot make judgements about every individual in a group based solely on their membership in that group. Each and every one of us is a unique entity and can only be validly judged as such. Just because somebody is a communist, for example, doesn’t mean that they favor executing anybody who owns means of production. I believe the world would be a far better place if people started backing away from collectivist bigotry.

Statists Gonna State

Statists, in general, are slightly confusing to me. The more statist one is the more confusing I find them to be. As you can imagine neoconservatives and neoliberals really throw me for a loop. Their philosophy appears to be nothing more than a thinly veiled desire to ruthlessly rule over others. Consider the wish made by a host of Fox News:

Responding to co-host Greg Gutfeld’s commentary on how President Barack Obama is dealing with ISIS, Guilfoyle said:

“Can I just make a special request in the magic lamp? Can we get like Netanyahu, or like Putin in for 48 hours, you know, head of the United States?”

I’m no fan of Obama but I fail to see how replacing him with another tyrant; and make no mistakes, both Netanyahu and Putin are tyrants of the highest form; is going to make anything better. Especially when Guilfoyle is living in the United States and therefore would have to live under the reign of Netanyahu or Putin even though she faces also zero threat from ISIS (I’m sorry but all the fear mongering about ISIS coming here to get you is bullshit just as all the fear mongering about al-Qaeda coming back to kill us was bullshit). I’m left to believe that Guilfoyle is a masochist and is upset that the current tyrant heading this country isn’t inflicting enough pain so we need to replace him with an even more vicious tyrant. If pain is what she wants there are numerous clubs that can provide it in an entirely voluntary way.

But Police Need Military Gear

I’m firmly in the camp that says police officers should have all surplus military gear stripped from them. They’ve been handed this gear and proven to be irresponsible with it. But there are a lot of people claiming that the police need that equipment. Sadly most of the people making this claim do so because they want the police to be protected when they’re initiating aggression against nonviolent individuals not for protecting people. Take these two letters sent to the Star Tribune by, presumably, readers:

After reading Ross Douthat’s commentary “When the police dress for war” (Aug. 19), I’m thinking he has very little firsthand experience with enforcing the law. I’m thinking that he might completely reconsider his final comment — “time to take their toys away” — if he were sent to a “drug house” on a no-knock warrant, pushed to the front of the line of cops and told to “go in there with your six-shooter and take those drugs and weapons away from those hooligans.” One or two entries like that, and I believe we would find old Ross standing in front of the line at the “SWAT store” buying the latest, greatest offerings that would put him on par with what the criminals are toting.

Richard Greelis, Bloomington

You see the police need all of those toys so they are better protected when they kick in a person’s door, burn their baby with a flashbang grenade, and shoot the family pet all in the name of stopping them from smoking a plant or using some other unpatentable drug.

Every cop who stops a car knows things can go from routine to life-or-death without warning. This is true night or day, even with Volvos driven by middle-aged white men like the author of the Aug. 17 Short Takes (“Questioning authority: Trooper wanted to be in control”). If the writer chooses to drive with illegally tinted windows, then it is he, not the law officer, who is being rude and disrespectful.

By the way, the weather was bright and sunny when the officer from West St. Paul was recently murdered. I’m sure you get the picture.

Dennis H. Roberts, Maplewood

Police officers also need those toys so they can pull you over for exceeding the arbitrarily selected speed limit, create a dangerous situation by forcing motorists to slam on their brakes or pile into another lane in order to avoid hitting the dumbass getting out of his vehicle on a major highway, and issue you a citation for being a safe driver by driving with the flow of traffic.

This is a trend I’ve noticed with police apologists. They usually use examples where police officers are the aggressors and seldom discuss situations where officers are actually protecting lives. Perhaps this is because modern police spend so much time doing the former that nobody realizes that they’re ideally supposed to be doing the latter. But I haven’t heard an apologist say that the police need surplus military gear to handle hostage situations in a way that saves the hostages’ lives or to respond to calls from wives being viciously attacked by their husbands. Some have mentioned that they need that gear to stop riots like those occurring in Ferguson but I don’t give points to government goons who “solve” problems that they created in the first place (I’m harsh, I know).

Wolf Blitzer Demonstrates That He Doesn’t Understand Firearms Use of Force

Wolf Blitzer has never stuck me as a particularly intelligent man. No intelligent man would willingly stay on board the sinking ship that is CNN. Then again he could still be there simply because nobody else will take him. Either way he decided to demonstrate his lack of intelligence by asking why police officers shoot to kill:

Blitzer’s questions arose during a discussion on the unfurling conflict in Ferguson, Mo. over the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

“They often shoot to kill,” Blitzer said of police. “Why do they have to shoot to kill? Why can’t they shoot a warning shot in the air, scare someone off if they think they’re in danger. Why can’t they shoot to, injure, shall we say? Why do they have to shoot to kill?”

Toobin said police are trained to “never fire a warning shot” and to “never fire a shot to injure.” He explained that if police fire their guns, they must “accept the risk” that they are “gonna kill somebody.” Adding that: “If you are not prepared to kill someone, don’t fire the gun.”

A firearm is considered a deadly force weapon and for good reason, they cause major bodily harm that can lead to death. Using deadly force is only acceptable in most areas if there is an immediate risk of great bodily harm or death. If anybody, whether they be a police officer or a peaceful human being, doesn’t feel that they are in immediate risk of great bodily harm or death they shouldn’t be employing a firearm in any way.

But what’s the harm in firing a shot into the air? The fact that Blitzer even asked that proves that he doesn’t understand how a firearm works. What goes up must come down (unless it achieves enough velocity to escape the effects of gravity but no man portable weapon can do that yet). If you fire a shot into the air the damn bullet has to come down somewhere and there is no practical way for the shooter to know where in the hell the bullet is going to land. It may land in an empty parking lot or it may land of grandma’s head. And attempting to inure somebody with a deadly weapon is really fucking stupid. Even if you put a hole in somebody’s extremity they still risk the possibility of bleeding out. It’s the same risk somebody would face if you ran a javelin through them.

The reason use of force continuums usually discourage using deadly force weapons for any situation not needed deadly force is because employing a deadly force weapon necessarily makes the situation potentially deadly. This isn’t rock science, it’s common sense. If a police officer needs to scare somebody they can grab a baton and extend it.