Tell The Internet

Yes, I really am OCD enough to still have thisClick to make it bigger*

For this, you need to know two things:

1. Talent vacuums Peter Andre and Katie “Jordan” Price have separated after four years of marriage; and
2. Several years ago, for reasons I can’t fully remember now, I followed a year’s worth of predictions by newspaper “psychic” Mystic Meg.

Suffice to say, that Meg made a number of predictions for the coming (as was) year of 2006 in popular “newspaper” the News of the World. Over the following year I made it my tedium-filled internet business to see if any of these predictions came true. The results were pretty damning. Of the estimated 30 definitive predictions Meg made, five (5) came “true”, that’s 1/6^th of her predictions; let’s face it, you’d be able to make that amount of shit up for the next 12 months just as accurately. But Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t pay you for them.

Anyway, when the terrible news of the Andre/Price split broke on the world, I couldn’t help but recall that one of the five correct predictions Meg made was: “Jordan and Peter Andre will be lovers in 2006 and for ever…”

Oh dear. I’m not going to take any pleasure in Andre’s misfortune - he’s a close** personal friend; I am however going to take pleasure in knowing that “Mystic” Meg is even worse a psychic than I’d thought before. As a post-script, since I did all this crap, Meg has never made another series of predictions like this. Of course, she’d have known that I was going to check up on her…

* That’s what she said! etc.
** Well, I know his cousin

So, hang on, if pig-death flu is going to kill us all, we all have to get flu shots just in case. But! We know that the flu vaccine causes autism which is also caused by MMR vaccine, does this mean the the NEW WORLD ORDER will be populated by mental kids doing drawings of Westminster Abbey and counting cards in Las Vegas? WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

It’s childish, but it’s fun…

click for big again

According to the internet, a couple in Gloucestershire are using “Physics laws” to find their missing dog; and this “little-known practice involves sending energy to people, animals or plants anywhere in the world”.

According to another place in the internet, radionics has no plausible biophysical mechamism [and] “most physicians dismiss radionics as quackery.”

It makes you wonder in this day and age a) what science in the media is coming to, b) how gullible some people can be and c) just how cruel pseudoscientists can be. You may remember that radionics was also used to try and find Madeleine McCann - and that worked well.

I’d suggest that everyone who has ever been blinded by science in the papers read Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science

The headline:

Four university workers ‘killed by radiation from 100-year-old experiments by nuclear pioneer Ernest Rutherford’

“…Radiation from experiments at a university 100 years ago is suspected of causing a cluster of cancer deaths.

Three academics and an assistant have died after working in the laboratory used by Ernest Rutherford at the start of the 20th century. ”

Actual ‘news’ in the article?

However the university confirmed it ordered a decontamination at the Rutherford Building in 1999, but say this was only a precautionary measure as readings taken had never recorded any dangerous levels of radiation.

The Health and Safety Executive say radiation readings in the department are at a completely safe level but they are overseeing a major investigation into whether they could have been dangerous to workers and students in the past.

‘It was surveyed by an independent specialist company as part of the refurbishment in 2006 and some minor contamination - below levels reportable to the Health and Safety Executive - were found in a limited number of locations.

Three of the university’s psychologists - John Churcher, Don O’Boyle and Neil Todd - were so worried about the deaths that they launched their own investigation.

The trio, who also work in the Rutherford Building, published their findings on the internet in June.

They admitted they could find no direct evidence of a link between radioactive contamination and the death of their colleagues.

OH GOD THE RADIATIONS ARE GOING TO KILL US! IS THAT A GIANT ANT! ARRRGGGH GODZILLA!