Author Archive for BingPage 2 of 4

"Apart from the Marines, they’re all dead butch"

A little precision swanning about to celebrate the repeal of DADT!



I mean the Inniskillin Fusiliers and the Anglian Regiment are all right if you're interested in the art nouveau William Morris revival bit, but if you really want a regiment of the line that is really saying something about interior decor, then you've got to go for the Durham Light Infantry.



I think that is all of the gay army humor (or in this case, humour) I have. In all seriousness, it's a great day. Something rescued from this depressing lame duck session. Now, give them a country worth dying for and legalize gay marriage.

HJ

"Apart from the Marines, they’re all dead butch"

A little precision swanning about to celebrate the repeal of DADT!



I mean the Inniskillin Fusiliers and the Anglian Regiment are all right if you're interested in the art nouveau William Morris revival bit, but if you really want a regiment of the line that is really saying something about interior decor, then you've got to go for the Durham Light Infantry.



I think that is all of the gay army humor (or in this case, humour) I have. In all seriousness, it's a great day. Something rescued from this depressing lame duck session. Now, give them a country worth dying for and legalize gay marriage.

HJ

Allison DuBois is Bullshit

Yeah, I noticed that there was a spike in traffic related to medium-performance artist Allison Dubois, who is a yeasty, curdled discharge. Most of the searches were "Allison Dubois bullshit."

I always knew that swearing phonetically for four years would eventually land me 18 additional hits.

Anyway, I have posted on bullshitting bullshitter Allison "I am so full of bullshit I have bullshit coming out of my tear ducts" Dubois, or "Senora Bullshit of Bullshitania" as she is known to her friends. And it seems that she said "bullshit" on TV. No, I don't mean talking the total bullshit that she talks constantly when she bullshits bullshittingly with bullshit imaginary dead people (which is nothing but the barest, most absolute and concentrated bullshit you are likely to find, the exploitive shrew). It seems like Allison DuBois (DuBois means, "of, related, or pertaining to bullshit" in French) was on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (which is apparently a show) tonight and said, "Bullshit."

Of course, I also found that Medium was cancelled in November.

Ha, as they say, ha.

You can read the old posts, which I am rather proud of at "Allison DuBois and Oprah Winfrey in the Matrix" and "Allison DuBois: As Evil as a Four-Dollar Bill." These two articles were part of the Skeptics Circle, when we used to do that. Good times, good times.

HJ


Allison DuBois is Bullshit

Yeah, I noticed that there was a spike in traffic related to medium-performance artist Allison Dubois, who is a yeasty, curdled discharge. Most of the searches were "Allison Dubois bullshit."

I always knew that swearing phonetically for four years would eventually land me 18 additional hits.

Anyway, I have posted on bullshitting bullshitter Allison "I am so full of bullshit I have bullshit coming out of my tear ducts" Dubois, or "Senora Bullshit of Bullshitania" as she is known to her friends. And it seems that she said "bullshit" on TV. No, I don't mean talking the total bullshit that she talks constantly when she bullshits bullshittingly with bullshit imaginary dead people (which is nothing but the barest, most absolute and concentrated bullshit you are likely to find, the exploitive shrew). It seems like Allison DuBois (DuBois means, "of, related, or pertaining to bullshit" in French) was on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (which is apparently a show) tonight and said, "Bullshit."

Of course, I also found that Medium was cancelled in November.

Ha, as they say, ha.

You can read the old posts, which I am rather proud of at "Allison DuBois and Oprah Winfrey in the Matrix" and "Allison DuBois: As Evil as a Four-Dollar Bill." These two articles were part of the Skeptics Circle, when we used to do that. Good times, good times.

HJ


Morgan Freeman Dead. Is Morgan Freeman Alive?

It turns out, yes he is! Yay!


I've waited so long to use that headline and then confirm that it is wrong. Ah, love it!

HJ

Morgan Freeman Dead. Is Morgan Freeman Alive?

It turns out, yes he is! Yay!


I've waited so long to use that headline and then confirm that it is wrong. Ah, love it!

HJ

Bill Donohue has been writing drunk emails again!

Bill Donohue actually wrote this and sent it out, apparently on purpose:

BEWARE OF CHRISTMAS PARTIES

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the advice given by the British law firm, BPE Solicitors, on how to handle Christmas parties:

This British law firm offers indispensable advice. "Christmas parties, with their mix of drink, high spirits and merriment, are one of the main potential sources of problems." Exactly right—this mix is combustible. But what problems are they talking about? "The claims which are most likely to arise are those around sexual harassment, bullying, assault and discrimination." Prudence dictates that the party be cancelled, but we at the Catholic League are going to risk it and see what happens.

The law firm does not lack for specifics. "Protection from harassment and discrimination relate to unwanted conduct on the grounds of sex, age, disability, gender reassignment, religion or belief, race, marital status and sexual orientation." Wow. The good news is that the Brits opt for the correct term—sex—which conveys a nature-based reason for sexual differences. The bad news is that they use the term "gender reassignment" when, in fact, it is not gender that is being "reassigned": the surgery alters one's anatomy. In any event, we are fortunate not to have any gender reassigned people working at the Catholic League (as far as I can tell, anyway), though I've had my doubts about a few recent applicants. Nice to know, too, that "belief" merits the same status as religion. If you can believe it.

The Brits also warn that at the Christmas party, "Muslim employees may feel excluded if the only religion option is an alcohol fueled trip to the pub." Good thing we don't hire any—all we do is go to pubs.

Finally, they suggest that employers should "identify areas where staff from other religions might be disadvantaged and then consider how those arrangements could be changed to overcome those disadvantaged." We don't have this problem either—we simply order them to convert and be done with it.

You are a hateful vomit-shrew, Bill. A wretched, sad failure of what superficially looks sort of like a human if you squint hard enough. Everything you are is perfectly wrong, and I'd pity you if you weren't so hateful and vile.

HJ

Bill Donohue has been writing drunk emails again!

Bill Donohue actually wrote this and sent it out, apparently on purpose:

BEWARE OF CHRISTMAS PARTIES

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the advice given by the British law firm, BPE Solicitors, on how to handle Christmas parties:

This British law firm offers indispensable advice. "Christmas parties, with their mix of drink, high spirits and merriment, are one of the main potential sources of problems." Exactly right—this mix is combustible. But what problems are they talking about? "The claims which are most likely to arise are those around sexual harassment, bullying, assault and discrimination." Prudence dictates that the party be cancelled, but we at the Catholic League are going to risk it and see what happens.

The law firm does not lack for specifics. "Protection from harassment and discrimination relate to unwanted conduct on the grounds of sex, age, disability, gender reassignment, religion or belief, race, marital status and sexual orientation." Wow. The good news is that the Brits opt for the correct term—sex—which conveys a nature-based reason for sexual differences. The bad news is that they use the term "gender reassignment" when, in fact, it is not gender that is being "reassigned": the surgery alters one's anatomy. In any event, we are fortunate not to have any gender reassigned people working at the Catholic League (as far as I can tell, anyway), though I've had my doubts about a few recent applicants. Nice to know, too, that "belief" merits the same status as religion. If you can believe it.

The Brits also warn that at the Christmas party, "Muslim employees may feel excluded if the only religion option is an alcohol fueled trip to the pub." Good thing we don't hire any—all we do is go to pubs.

Finally, they suggest that employers should "identify areas where staff from other religions might be disadvantaged and then consider how those arrangements could be changed to overcome those disadvantaged." We don't have this problem either—we simply order them to convert and be done with it.

You are a hateful vomit-shrew, Bill. A wretched, sad failure of what superficially looks sort of like a human if you squint hard enough. Everything you are is perfectly wrong, and I'd pity you if you weren't so hateful and vile.

HJ

This week in conspiracy (12/13)

It's been Monday all day, more than enough time for me to get to This Week in Conspiracy, so let's get right to it.

Conspiracy Theory of the Week (this was a tough one--either this or the Olympics one!):
You're welcome, and I'm sorry.

HJ

This week in conspiracy (12/13)

It's been Monday all day, more than enough time for me to get to This Week in Conspiracy, so let's get right to it.

Conspiracy Theory of the Week (this was a tough one--either this or the Olympics one!):
You're welcome, and I'm sorry.

HJ

How could an adult ever take Mike Adams seriously after this?

I have seen some stupid shit in my day, much of it emanating from Mike Adams' website, but this one takes the taco. It's...so...mind-warpingly endumbening that there is nothing left to do but declare Mike Adams' career as a self-styled "Health Ranger" over and inaugurate an era of his new career, wombat-licking crazy hobo shouting on the street corner. Seriously.

It's called, and I am not at all exaggerating:

It opens with this charming sentence:
Mention the word "astrology" and skeptics go into an epileptic fit.
For a health ranger, you sure treat epileptics like garbage, you turd-blast.
The idea that someone's personality could be imprinted at birth according to the position of the sun, moon and planets has long been derided as "quackery" by the so-called "scientific" community which resists any notion based on holistic connections between individuals and the cosmos.
The problems with this sentence are many, so let's just dwell on the most obvious ones. 1) "Holistic" is undefined. 2) It was made by Mike Adams. 3) We are all connected to the cosmos; hell, we're part of it--didn't you ever see Sagan's...sorry, thought I was talking to an adult. Of course you haven't, you ridiculous man-child. 4) Position of planets relative to what? Earth? The sun? Each other? 5) By so-called, he means, "actual." 6) We'd love to understand any actual effect on personality of the celestial world, but there is as of yet no evidence that this is the case, there is no plausible mechanism by which those effects could be felt, and 7) HOLYSHITWHATAREYOULIVINGINTHE
FUCKINGMIDDLEAGESYOUHOPELESSFAILURE?
It's not even quackery. Astrology is an embarrassment to quackery!
According to the conventional view, your genes and your parenting determine your personality, and the position of planet Earth at the time of your birth has nothing to do with it.

Then again, conventional scientists don't believe the position of the moon has anything to do with life on Earth, either.
The phrase "conventional scientists" shouldn't exist, first of all. The only scientists are the ones who bend to convention, not flaky spandex-wearing half-men like you, Mike.
They dismiss the wisdom that farmers have known for ages -- that planting seeds or transplanting living plants in harmony with the moon cycles results in higher crop yields.
Well, if a farmer says it, it must be true. It's like a new type of logical fallacy: ad agricolam. Show me your fucking data, pants-boy.
Even the seeds inside humans are strongly influenced by the moon, as menstruation cycles and moon cycles are closely synchronized (28 days, roughly).
That's why when a woman takes birth control, the phases of the moon stop! Also, it's why all women's periods are perfectly synchron...'Aaaang on!!
Skeptics must be further bewildered by the new research published in Nature Neuroscience and conducted at Vanderbilt University which unintentionally provides scientific support for the fundamental principle of astrology -- namely, that the position of the planets at your time of birth influences your personality.

In this study, not only did the birth month impact personality; it also resulted in measurable functional changes in the brain.

This study, conducted on mice, showed that mice born in the winter showed a "consistent slowing" of their daytime activity. They were also more susceptible to symptoms that we might call "Seasonal Affective Disorder."
How much do you want to bet that he misreads this study? Anyone? Anyone?

It turns out, these researchers drew up natal charts for a bunch of rats and, holy shit, they were able to predict that the little guys would have bald tails and love cheese! Actually, not really. According to the abstract, the study, "Perinatal photoperiod imprints the circadian clock," reveals:
Using real-time gene expression imaging and behavioral analysis, we found that the perinatal photoperiod has lasting effects on the circadian rhythms expressed by clock neurons as well as on mouse behavior, and sets the responsiveness of the biological clock to subsequent changes in photoperiod. These developmental gene × environment interactions tune circadian clock responses to subsequent seasonal photoperiods and may contribute to the influence of season on neurobehavioral disorders in humans.
Uh...astrology? I see..."developmental gene × environment interactions", which sounds an assload like "your genes and your parenting"--that is, genetics and environment, and if part of your environment is the length of the day...well, so be it. Hardly a radical shift in our thinking about how personalities come about. It's not predicting events, it's making no exact predictions about individuals, it has exactly fuck-all to do with the position of the planets. It has to do with the length of the day.

Of course, this has as much to do with astrology as does a related article on the same web page as the abstract of the article you are failing to understand: "Photoperiodism in the Plant Kingdom". Mike goes on, fizzle that he is:
The study was carried out by Professor of Biological Sciences Douglas McMahon, graduate student Chris Ciarleglio, post-doctoral fellow Karen Gamble and two additional undergraduate students, none of whom believe in astrology, apparently. They do, of course, believe in science, which is why all their study findings have been draped in the language of science even though the findings are essentially supporting principles of astrology.
They don't believe in astrology. They don't believe in astrology. They don't believe in astrology. They don't believe in astrology. Tattoo that on the ass of your sheep, just to make sure that you remind yourself of it every night. The people who you are citing, you enfeebled nitwit, don't believe in astrology. Day length is determined by the speed of a planet's rotation on its axis, not its position relative to the sun or planets. You're pathetic.
"What is particularly striking about our results is the fact that the imprinting affects both the animal's behavior and the cycling of the neurons in the master biological clock in their brains," said Ciarleglio. This is one of the core principles of astrology: That the position of the planets at the time of your birth (which might be called the "season" of your birth) can actually result in changes in your brain physiology which impact lifelong behavior.
Swing and a miss! Here you have it, people! A man bad at everything! (Except, inexplicably, selling vitamins and quack cures.)
Once again, such an idea sounds preposterous to the scientifically trained, unless of course they discover it for themselves, at which point it's all suddenly very "scientific." Instead of calling it "astrology," they're now referring to it as "seasonal biology."
Another thing that occurs to me as I mull over epithets to describe you, your family, your pets, and your primary school teachers, is that this is an animal study, not a study of humans. That even if you were right, and, man (I use the term loosely), are you so wrong in every way, you still could not extrapolate and say that it reliably predicted anything in humans, much less any individual human.
We are made of star stuff, says Carl Sagan. He he's right: We are not only made of star stuff, we are influenced by that stuff, too. And finally, modern science is beginning to catch up to this greater truth that astrologers have known since the dawn of human existence on our tiny planet.
Carl Sagan would hold you down and fuck you retarded, Adams.

I need to calm down. Kitties it is.


HJ

UPDATE! GOOGLE RUINED MY MOMENT OF KITTY ZEN IN, LIKE, THE WORST WAY IMAGINABLE!



How could an adult ever take Mike Adams seriously after this?

I have seen some stupid shit in my day, much of it emanating from Mike Adams' website, but this one takes the taco. It's...so...mind-warpingly endumbening that there is nothing left to do but declare Mike Adams' career as a self-styled "Health Ranger" over and inaugurate an era of his new career, wombat-licking crazy hobo shouting on the street corner. Seriously.

It's called, and I am not at all exaggerating:

It opens with this charming sentence:
Mention the word "astrology" and skeptics go into an epileptic fit.
For a health ranger, you sure treat epileptics like garbage, you turd-blast.
The idea that someone's personality could be imprinted at birth according to the position of the sun, moon and planets has long been derided as "quackery" by the so-called "scientific" community which resists any notion based on holistic connections between individuals and the cosmos.
The problems with this sentence are many, so let's just dwell on the most obvious ones. 1) "Holistic" is undefined. 2) It was made by Mike Adams. 3) We are all connected to the cosmos; hell, we're part of it--didn't you ever see Sagan's...sorry, thought I was talking to an adult. Of course you haven't, you ridiculous man-child. 4) Position of planets relative to what? Earth? The sun? Each other? 5) By so-called, he means, "actual." 6) We'd love to understand any actual effect on personality of the celestial world, but there is as of yet no evidence that this is the case, there is no plausible mechanism by which those effects could be felt, and 7) HOLYSHITWHATAREYOULIVINGINTHE
FUCKINGMIDDLEAGESYOUHOPELESSFAILURE?
It's not even quackery. Astrology is an embarrassment to quackery!
According to the conventional view, your genes and your parenting determine your personality, and the position of planet Earth at the time of your birth has nothing to do with it.

Then again, conventional scientists don't believe the position of the moon has anything to do with life on Earth, either.
The phrase "conventional scientists" shouldn't exist, first of all. The only scientists are the ones who bend to convention, not flaky spandex-wearing half-men like you, Mike.
They dismiss the wisdom that farmers have known for ages -- that planting seeds or transplanting living plants in harmony with the moon cycles results in higher crop yields.
Well, if a farmer says it, it must be true. It's like a new type of logical fallacy: ad agricolam. Show me your fucking data, pants-boy.
Even the seeds inside humans are strongly influenced by the moon, as menstruation cycles and moon cycles are closely synchronized (28 days, roughly).
That's why when a woman takes birth control, the phases of the moon stop! Also, it's why all women's periods are perfectly synchron...'Aaaang on!!
Skeptics must be further bewildered by the new research published in Nature Neuroscience and conducted at Vanderbilt University which unintentionally provides scientific support for the fundamental principle of astrology -- namely, that the position of the planets at your time of birth influences your personality.

In this study, not only did the birth month impact personality; it also resulted in measurable functional changes in the brain.

This study, conducted on mice, showed that mice born in the winter showed a "consistent slowing" of their daytime activity. They were also more susceptible to symptoms that we might call "Seasonal Affective Disorder."
How much do you want to bet that he misreads this study? Anyone? Anyone?

It turns out, these researchers drew up natal charts for a bunch of rats and, holy shit, they were able to predict that the little guys would have bald tails and love cheese! Actually, not really. According to the abstract, the study, "Perinatal photoperiod imprints the circadian clock," reveals:
Using real-time gene expression imaging and behavioral analysis, we found that the perinatal photoperiod has lasting effects on the circadian rhythms expressed by clock neurons as well as on mouse behavior, and sets the responsiveness of the biological clock to subsequent changes in photoperiod. These developmental gene × environment interactions tune circadian clock responses to subsequent seasonal photoperiods and may contribute to the influence of season on neurobehavioral disorders in humans.
Uh...astrology? I see..."developmental gene × environment interactions", which sounds an assload like "your genes and your parenting"--that is, genetics and environment, and if part of your environment is the length of the day...well, so be it. Hardly a radical shift in our thinking about how personalities come about. It's not predicting events, it's making no exact predictions about individuals, it has exactly fuck-all to do with the position of the planets. It has to do with the length of the day.

Of course, this has as much to do with astrology as does a related article on the same web page as the abstract of the article you are failing to understand: "Photoperiodism in the Plant Kingdom". Mike goes on, fizzle that he is:
The study was carried out by Professor of Biological Sciences Douglas McMahon, graduate student Chris Ciarleglio, post-doctoral fellow Karen Gamble and two additional undergraduate students, none of whom believe in astrology, apparently. They do, of course, believe in science, which is why all their study findings have been draped in the language of science even though the findings are essentially supporting principles of astrology.
They don't believe in astrology. They don't believe in astrology. They don't believe in astrology. They don't believe in astrology. Tattoo that on the ass of your sheep, just to make sure that you remind yourself of it every night. The people who you are citing, you enfeebled nitwit, don't believe in astrology. Day length is determined by the speed of a planet's rotation on its axis, not its position relative to the sun or planets. You're pathetic.
"What is particularly striking about our results is the fact that the imprinting affects both the animal's behavior and the cycling of the neurons in the master biological clock in their brains," said Ciarleglio. This is one of the core principles of astrology: That the position of the planets at the time of your birth (which might be called the "season" of your birth) can actually result in changes in your brain physiology which impact lifelong behavior.
Swing and a miss! Here you have it, people! A man bad at everything! (Except, inexplicably, selling vitamins and quack cures.)
Once again, such an idea sounds preposterous to the scientifically trained, unless of course they discover it for themselves, at which point it's all suddenly very "scientific." Instead of calling it "astrology," they're now referring to it as "seasonal biology."
Another thing that occurs to me as I mull over epithets to describe you, your family, your pets, and your primary school teachers, is that this is an animal study, not a study of humans. That even if you were right, and, man (I use the term loosely), are you so wrong in every way, you still could not extrapolate and say that it reliably predicted anything in humans, much less any individual human.
We are made of star stuff, says Carl Sagan. He he's right: We are not only made of star stuff, we are influenced by that stuff, too. And finally, modern science is beginning to catch up to this greater truth that astrologers have known since the dawn of human existence on our tiny planet.
Carl Sagan would hold you down and fuck you retarded, Adams.

I need to calm down. Kitties it is.


HJ

UPDATE! GOOGLE RUINED MY MOMENT OF KITTY ZEN IN, LIKE, THE WORST WAY IMAGINABLE!



Stranger than fiction…

It's taken me four years, but I finally get to make the following pop culture reference:

(My god, those sweaters are war crimes. Sure, we
were no longer wearing polyester pants, but at what cost?)

Stranger than fiction…

It's taken me four years, but I finally get to make the following pop culture reference:

(My god, those sweaters are war crimes. Sure, we
were no longer wearing polyester pants, but at what cost?)

MIke Adams Inadvertently Reassures Me That the CDC Does Not Listen To Feeble Antivax Cranks

My father is an OB/GYN and, I'll say it, new mothers-to-be are often a very nervous group of people. Don't get me wrong, it might just be the parasite talking, but they ask questions like, "Is shampoo bad while I'm pregnant?" (Answer: Not if you don't drink gallons of it.) So, what about pregnancy and vaccinations? I mean, there you are actually injecting something into a woman. (Needles + pregnancy + fear)^ignorance = catnip for predatory fear-mongers like Mike Adams.

He can't help himself, I suppose. He is ruthlessly exploitive. He uses people's fears to sell them their dreams. There is no more simple marketing strategy, though that does not make it ethical. So, what is this grass-eating glob of monkey mucus saying? It came in an email to me this morning entitled:


Mike, you are a menace to women, children, and public health. But you are also an ass-clown.

The article is especially feeble, and once you start digging into it, it falls apart like a corpse being dragged along the highway, only more grotesque.
Recent data presented to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Children's Vaccines has revealed some shocking information about the effects of the H1N1 / swine flu vaccine on pregnant women. According to the report, the rate of miscarriage among pregnant women during the 2009 H1N1 / swine flu pandemic soared by over 700 percent compared to previous years, pointing directly to the vaccine as the culprit -- but the CDC denies the truth and continues to insist nobody has been harmed.
OK, so it was not, technically, a study designed by scientists or epidemiologists. It was presented to the CDC by Eileen Dannemann, who runs the National Coalition of Organized Women (those disorganized women could never present anything to the CDC!). Adams makes the mistake of giving the woman's name and the name of her organization, because even the most cursory look their website reveals that they are merely a faulty CAPS LOCK button away from being Time-Cube guy. Across the top of their website is the headline:
National Coalition Of Organized Women Looking For Those Who Have Had Adverse Reactions To Flu Shots
Why do I think that they might have an agenda? Hm. And you look at their website, and it is a testament to the post hoc fallacy and the deservedly beaten redheaded stepchild of scientific evidence, the anecdote.

Take for instance the compilation of anecdotes included in the report to the CDC. You can't discern anything like causality in these stories because they don't have a control. They simply don't. I also failed to see anywhere in the assembled materials that the spontaneous abortion rate in the HEALTHY population is somewhere around 20%. 1-in-five. That's not at all an unlikely outcome of pregnancy!

They go to the VAERS database, which, as Bill Atkinson of the CDC told the Atlanta Skeptics, accumulates a massive amount of information about vaccines, including adverse events (not the same as adverse reactions, mind you). As far as I can tell, they have pulled 222 anecdotes of miscarriages following vaccines from the data. That's 222 cases of so-the-fuck-whats? It looks like it was compiled on behalf of some sort of legal action, but I don't know which. I can only imagine that it failed fucking miserably.

Even though I looked everywhere on the website for a single controlled study--anything with a control group, really-- that illustrated...anything. None is present. That means, by necessity, that this wacky activist group is fundamentally incapable of establishing causality.

The Health Retard fails again! Keep it up, Mike!

HJ

MIke Adams Inadvertently Reassures Me That the CDC Does Not Listen To Feeble Antivax Cranks

My father is an OB/GYN and, I'll say it, new mothers-to-be are often a very nervous group of people. Don't get me wrong, it might just be the parasite talking, but they ask questions like, "Is shampoo bad while I'm pregnant?" (Answer: Not if you don't drink gallons of it.) So, what about pregnancy and vaccinations? I mean, there you are actually injecting something into a woman. (Needles + pregnancy + fear)^ignorance = catnip for predatory fear-mongers like Mike Adams.

He can't help himself, I suppose. He is ruthlessly exploitive. He uses people's fears to sell them their dreams. There is no more simple marketing strategy, though that does not make it ethical. So, what is this grass-eating glob of monkey mucus saying? It came in an email to me this morning entitled:


Mike, you are a menace to women, children, and public health. But you are also an ass-clown.

The article is especially feeble, and once you start digging into it, it falls apart like a corpse being dragged along the highway, only more grotesque.
Recent data presented to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Children's Vaccines has revealed some shocking information about the effects of the H1N1 / swine flu vaccine on pregnant women. According to the report, the rate of miscarriage among pregnant women during the 2009 H1N1 / swine flu pandemic soared by over 700 percent compared to previous years, pointing directly to the vaccine as the culprit -- but the CDC denies the truth and continues to insist nobody has been harmed.
OK, so it was not, technically, a study designed by scientists or epidemiologists. It was presented to the CDC by Eileen Dannemann, who runs the National Coalition of Organized Women (those disorganized women could never present anything to the CDC!). Adams makes the mistake of giving the woman's name and the name of her organization, because even the most cursory look their website reveals that they are merely a faulty CAPS LOCK button away from being Time-Cube guy. Across the top of their website is the headline:
National Coalition Of Organized Women Looking For Those Who Have Had Adverse Reactions To Flu Shots
Why do I think that they might have an agenda? Hm. And you look at their website, and it is a testament to the post hoc fallacy and the deservedly beaten redheaded stepchild of scientific evidence, the anecdote.

Take for instance the compilation of anecdotes included in the report to the CDC. You can't discern anything like causality in these stories because they don't have a control. They simply don't. I also failed to see anywhere in the assembled materials that the spontaneous abortion rate in the HEALTHY population is somewhere around 20%. 1-in-five. That's not at all an unlikely outcome of pregnancy!

They go to the VAERS database, which, as Bill Atkinson of the CDC told the Atlanta Skeptics, accumulates a massive amount of information about vaccines, including adverse events (not the same as adverse reactions, mind you). As far as I can tell, they have pulled 222 anecdotes of miscarriages following vaccines from the data. That's 222 cases of so-the-fuck-whats? It looks like it was compiled on behalf of some sort of legal action, but I don't know which. I can only imagine that it failed fucking miserably.

Even though I looked everywhere on the website for a single controlled study--anything with a control group, really-- that illustrated...anything. None is present. That means, by necessity, that this wacky activist group is fundamentally incapable of establishing causality.

The Health Retard fails again! Keep it up, Mike!

HJ