Denialism Blog

Author: MarkH

  • Speaking of making stuff up

    Next for “making up disease” files, Ed Brayton brings us news of the latest crank idea from the masturbation-obsessed nuts over at World Nut Daily. It’s the new plague of masturbation-induced impotence.

    Pornographically Induced Impotence is now a national pandemic, raking in untold billions for pornographers and their satellite businesses as well as from the marital discord and despair it produces.
    …
    Men are “visually wired,” Feldhahn explained. Their images of women stretch “back to his teenage years, and any one of the pictures is going to pop up at any time in his brain without warning.”

    In 1981, Hefner biographer Gay Talese wrote that “Hef’s” influence reached out to “the central nervous system of Playboy readers nationwide.”

    And, that “central nervous system” included “images” popping up and stretching “back to teenage years.” By 2005, some estimated impotence at roughly 50 percent of men.

    What percentage suffer from pornographically induced impotence is unknown. For pornography emasculates indiscriminately. It castrates men of every race, religion and “orientation,” atheist and orthodox, rich and poor, conservative and radical, young and old, svelte and paunchy, handsome and unappealing, scientist and sky cap, the clever and the obtuse, en masse.

    Pornographically Induced Impotence once kept men and boys breathlessly awaiting each month’s “new” fantasy images. The Internet means they wait no more.

    Good news for the sex business, sexologists and Big Pharma!

    Men conditioned since boyhood to use erototoxins blame their wives, girlfriends, women for their own waning libido.

    Pornographically Induce Impotence? Erototoxins? This is my new favorite woo. The idea that exposure to nudity, or masturbation, somehow decreases male libido. Well, maybe temporarily, but still, this is hysterical. To top it off this loony also suggests, and this really is great, that not only are naked women bad for men’s libido but that the cartoons in Playboy may be even worse!

    But even psychologist Bernie Zilbergeld warned that Playboy encouraged impotence in their consumers:

    “Humor is the basic source of education. … Cartoons that poke fun at impotence or other male inadequacies … would outweigh any supportive things said in the advice column. Cartoons are simply more compelling. Some things are.”

    Well doc, ever since I saw that cartoon making fun of men who take Viagra, I just haven’t been able to satisfy the missus. It’s something else, those cartoons. I once saw a Far Side cartoon mocking the near-sighted and I went blind for a week.

    I look forward to more breathless reports about this emerging epidemic of pornography-induced impotence. It’s sure to hit the mainstream literature on sexuality right after the proof that masturbation also causes hairy-palms and blindness.

  • Can You Really Strangle Yourself Getting out of Handcuffs?

    I thought for sure the idiotic slugs that pass for security in our airports had mishandled this woman resulting in her death when they said she strangled herself while trying to escape from handcuffs. However, Slate reports indeed you can manage to screw up this maneuver and contort yourself into such a position. They also linked this video

    showing how the double-jointed might attempt this maneuver, while warning people not to try it at home with handcuffs and asphyxiate themselves like this woman did.

    Not that I’m saying this lets the cops entirely off the hook, but I have to admit surprise that it’s possible for some people to bring their hands over their head that way.

  • Preying on the fears of pregnant women

    Here’s some woo for you. Via Gizmodo we hear about this wonderful new waste of money, Mummywraps. Designed to protect your baby from “electro-smog”, the non-existent threat of electromagnetic waves from radio and cell phone sources (that we have been exposed to constantly for decades with no discernible effect), these copper “Swiss Shield” garments will be sure to be a profitable waste of money ($70) for thousands of paranoid parents.
    i-ae348f986e2adb3f0654a6f8a55ea50c-mummywraps.jpg

    Ben Goldacre I think has been on the forefront of challenging this new electrosmog woo, so there is very little to add. But it is simply shameful how people are willing to exploit the well-intentioned paranoia of expectant mothers about the health of their fetuses with such nonsense. I’m never surprised of course, but always disappointed.

    Of course if you would like to make a few million dollars I can highly recommend imagining something new for people with children to be afraid of, and then convincing them only your product can protect them. My product idea is a special tinfoil hat, designed to block cosmic rays from penetrating your body and mutating your precious offspring.

  • Only 250 Comments Away

    I’d just comment like nuts if I were eligible for the 500,000th comment contest.

    Call this an open thread. Go nuts! I’m too busy writing to blog anyway.

  • The Coolest Picture You'll See of a Nose All Year

    National Geographic brings us the “best science images of 2007” which includes this amazing CT reconstruction of the nose and sinuses.

    Science magazine has the full set, but is behind a paywall.

    Via BoingBoing and Neurophilosophy

  • If you can't beat 'em, smear 'em

    Tim Lambert has coverage of the latest in the denialist attempt to discredit global warming science – the smearing of scientist James Hansen. Using the bogey-man of George Soros, they try to suggest that Hansen has been funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute, which gave him “legal and media advice”?

    That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.

    They do this by the dubious assumption that 100% of the Soros organization’s outlay to cover “politicization of science” that year went to Hansen.

    The facts? Hansen received zero money from Soros, and 10,000 dollars and legal representation from the Government Accountability Project . As Hansen explains (PDF), he temporarily accepted this help, then declined after he was concerned strings would be attached.

    So, in other words, this is a lie, and a smear, and it is completely beyond the pale for the Investors Business Daily to attack a civil servant this way and fabricate some kind of bribery charge against him. Lambert has also covered other attempts to discredit Hansen by saying he used to raise alarms for global cooling, equally dishonest, that are sadly already making the rounds of the conservative blogosphere unchallenged.

    It again goes to the fundamental dishonesty of the global warming denialist movement. They can’t win with data, so they have to resort to lies, and smears to advance their agenda.

  • Skeptics' Circle Number 70 – Conspiracy Factory

    This week it’s our friend Factition at Conspiracy Factory. However, he makes the poor decision to let the world know about our contacts with the Illuminati as part of our anti-conspiracy disinformation campaign.

    Traitor!

  • HIV/AIDS crankery from a Catholic Archbishop

    This is seriously disturbing. Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, who is head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique, is telling people that condoms are laced with HIV and HAART therapy is designed to finish you off. This is in a country with double-digit HIV infection rates.

    Archbishop Chimoio told our reporter that abstention, not condoms, was the best way to fight HIV/Aids.

    “Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose,” he alleged, refusing to name the countries.

    “They want to finish with the African people. This is the programme. They want to colonise until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century’s time.”

    This abstinence/anti-condom nonsense from the Catholic Church has got to stop. It doesn’t work. They are killing people with this message. And worse, Chimoio telling people that one of the truly effective methods of preventing infection is a cause of infection is one of the more despicable things I’ve ever heard. However, since they are opposed to condoms for any reason, I doubt that he will experience any kind of censure for spreading such obvious lies and distortions about condoms and HIV/AIDS treatments.

    This “every sperm is sacred” nonsense isn’t just a joke anymore.

    This policy of the church actually has the potential to kill people.

  • Internet Roundup

    Here’s what I’m reading this morning.

    An Orangutan stole a womans pants in Malaysia. That’s got to be embarrassing, but at the very least, you’d have a story to tell people for the rest of your life that is sure to entertain.

    Congress, having solved all other problems is looking into the language of hip-hop. Someone needs to find the youtube of this testimony.

    But rapper and record producer Levell Crump, known as David Banner, was defiant as lawmakers pressed him on his use of offensive language. ”I’m like Stephen King: horror music is what I do,” he said in testimony laced with swear words. ”Change the situation in my neighborhood and maybe I’ll get better,” he told one member of Congress.

    Swallowing the Camel lists the worlds weirdest/stupidest conspiracies, however manages to leave out “a cruise missile hit the Pentagon”. The troofers, of course, make an appearance and immediately churn out the usual debunked nonsense.

    Super-crank Ahmadinejad apparently thinks Iran has no homosexuals. I don’t think there is any type of crankery this moron would not embrace (including 9/11 troof), so I can’t admit to any surprise.

    Christopher Monckton, famous global warming denialist, apparently told a lie about why he had to sell his house. Once again, not surprised.

    From the comments, someone points out they finally fired the vegan proselytizing teacher. He apparently wouldn’t return to work until everyone in the world converted to his lifestyle. I’m sure it was a hard choice for the school district.

    Finally, one last piece of crank news, Paul Cameron has announced the formation of a new crank journal to study human sexuality. I can guess what its first article will say. Something like “teh gay kills”. One more crank source to track, no big deal.

    Any other good crank news?

  • Creationists are idiots – Part 8,246,532

    I’ve largely been ignoring their stupid lately. But the sheer idiocy of a ID “mathematician” Granville Sewell takes the cake for this truly idiotic straw-man argument.

    It starts with an interesting question though:

    (more…)