Presumably because they both have a big marijuana leaf on the cover.

But that does not mean you shouldn't have done it. You're?

I predict you will regret soiling your hands with Wishart again, Russell. How long until the threatening phone calls and the private dicks hanging around your pad waiting to make pronouncements about your life, your partner and your children?

I doubt it'll go that far, but yes, I am well?

But with this type of behaviour, they have to consider the opinion of the great unwashed who aren't simply ignorant, but?

I doubt it'll go that far

I certainly hope it doesn't. And you're a big boy, you can handle it. Soros has deep pockets :-)

But lumping it into paranormal does seem harsh.

Just one of the outrageous things Wakefield did was take blood samples from children attending his son's 5th birthday party. Even though he had no prior ethical approval (as if anyone would give it), it was apparently OK with his supporters as each child was paid 5 pounds

Astonishing, eh.?

Ben Goldacre, who devoted the last chapter of his book, Bad Science to the Wakefield debacle, concludes a new blog post on a gloomy note:

Damn – much as I love Ben's work, I'm tempted to invoice him for a new desk, considering the sustained abuse its taken from my?

Stabbing me in the eyes as I read it is Wisharts exclusive Americanisation and use of -ize instead of -ise. I know the Oxford Dic falls on that side too, but I've always preffered Cambridge.

[edit – my mistake he uses both -ise and -ize for the?

I haven't read the mag, but how exactly does Cameron Slater risk the clink? Did our name suppression laws change?

Or is Wishart making stuff up again?

Legalising narcotics worldwide worldwide would allow business financiers like Soros to control large chunks of the drug trade "legitimately". They could own the opium poppy field, pay poor peasants to harvest, control distribution and supply of drugs to market ?

Wow!

Much better for the Highway61, Hells Angels, Black Power,?

I need to be working on this paper about the relationship between Rumours and conspiracy theories

I always suspected there was something iffy about that Fleetwood Mac album.

And re Wakefield, he didn't even front up in the court for the?

I always suspected there was something iffy about that Fleetwood Mac album

If you play it backwards it promotes vaccinations, harm-minimisation drugs policy, and critical thought.
But will the mainstream media report this attempt to influence our impressionable youth against community values? No!

fisking the arse off b.s. that should never have seen print in the first place

Oh, like WMDs in Iraq or all manner of adverts about household "germs".

Simply put, n=12 for a human disease is nothing more than?

Much better for the Highway61, Hells Angels, Black Power, Headhunters and other sundry gangs to control it, without paying tax.

And that's just the retailers. It's also better that opium growth is in the hands of Afghanistani warlords and their serfs and the distribution stays with the Triads. Then George?

I know the Oxford Dic falls on that side too, but I've always preferred Cambridge.

I believe Cambridge also uses the -ize suffix as its standard – i.e. look in a Cambridge Dictionary and you'll find modernise spelled m-o-d-e-r-n-i-z-e with "(UK usually modernise)" written after it.

I totally understand how hard it is to get the facts right especially if it is outside your field of expertise. And I understand that journalists will almost always be outside their field of expertise. It doesn't make me less grumpy about it.

It's not all on journalists. Readers also?

Or even just takeways once a week.

That, my friends, is the tip of the 'Secret Bankers ruling the world' conspiracy theory. It's a classic for a reason, although the reason has been lost to history.

It might even be true. But "Secret Bankers want Prohibition to End so they can take Legal Control of the Drug?

"Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor"

I haven't read the mag, but how exactly does Cameron Slater risk the clink? Did our name suppression laws change?

Meh, don't want to de-rail the thread this early, but I'm reliably informed that Martin Scorsese has just cast Mel Gibson to headline The Last Martyrdom of Cameron Slater.

I?

when he called me up, I said I could send him everything and anything he wanted – I said I had nothing to hide, but surprisingly he wasn't interested.

Lord forbid he should actually receive any facts that might spoil his story.

I don't know why Wishart doesn't just make shit up from whole cloth and attribute it to scientists who didn't say it. After all, it's good enough for the Sunday Times.

Well, we are talking about the same paper that [[http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/10/world/british-paper-and-science-journal-clash-on-aids.html|science editor Neville Hodgkinson became the respectable face of AIDS?

Every time I encounter Investigate in magazine racks, I reverse the cover or attempt to conceal it behind other mags. Adolescent, I know, but one must make such gestures to combat the enemies of democracy.

LOL, that's adolescent all right. But I think it might work better if you put?

Gardasil

Ben: As I once said to a Truther, I'd love it if some of the secret masters starting paying me for all of this. I could really do with an iPhone.

Or even just takeways once a week.

You're playing the long con, I see.

Even though this goes against the studies, because the police say it, it must be true.

Remember daddy knows best

Remember daddy knows best

I now have a vision of Wishart producing an audiobook version of one of his many tomes, specially read out for children.

(Actually, I met someone the other day who works for the Foundation for the Blind and performs the audio recordings of 'Investigate.' I really?

Are we about to see a rerun with this on Closeup last night?
Gardasil

Um, yikes.

The SMC has a response from Helen Petousis-Harris, Director of Research at the Immunisation Advisory Centre and Senior Lecturer in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Auckland:

?Based on?

As far as I'm concerned, Hodgkinson and his ilk should be in prison as an accessory to crimes against humanity.

Totally agree, Craig. 'His ilk' includes ratbag quack Matthias Rath. The chapter from Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science on Rath is available from here as a free download. Highly recommended.

...who works for the Foundation for the Blind and performs the audio recordings of 'Investigate.'

would that then make it a double blind experiment?

(Actually, I met someone the other day who works for the Foundation for the Blind and performs the audio recordings of 'Investigate.'

A bit obvious to suggest "the blind leading the....'?

But I think it might work better if you put it right at the front in the porno mag?

audio recordings of 'Investigate'

Genuinely accessible web content is essential so discussions like this can counteract dross like that.

Good idea. What do such mags look like? ;-)

Investigate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDVc80Z3FI

If I had a joke about 'long cons' and 'pizza,' I would be making it now.
Someone make it for me, please.

I'm going for gold, but may only achieve
a "long con silver"... (or "bunko bronze")

Step right up folks...?

New Scientist is a bit of a rag these days, and has been for a while, at least as far as a lot of their particle physics and cosmology coverage is concerned.

To a point, Lord Copper. In it's defence, it covers the whole spectrum of anything that is remotely?

Every time I encounter Investigate in magazine racks, I reverse the cover or attempt to conceal it behind other mags. Adolescent, I know, but one must make such gestures to combat the enemies of democracy.

Heh. Every time I'm in the video shop, I make a point of moving '[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know|what?

Every time I'm in the video shop, I make a point of moving 'what the bleep do we know' into the childrens fairy tales section.

Rofflenui

I have a colleague who thinks it's serious philosophy.

Meh, don't want to de-rail the thread this early, but I'm reliably informed that Martin Scorsese has just cast Mel Gibson to headline The Last Martyrdom of Cameron Slater.

Many months ago Craig, I think you said, Make me laugh and I'm your bitch forever.

Seems like you own me?

It hurts my eyes to read some of the nonsense Wishart dribbles.

While just looking at the cover of Insinuate in a bookshop makes me feel so dirty, I have to go scrub my body with the shrink-wrapped hetero porn to get clean.

Hey, you've used that line before. I call recycling.,

Fair cop, but it's not only true but the only way I can convey my crawling disgust at the spawn of the evil one without breaking into modern dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrzC_KLI8KM

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)

__Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze?filled "coffee shops,"?

Ahem, last nsfw part contains fake moaning and fishnets. Not much architecture though.

Ultimately an admin error, just need to be aware vaccines do have risks.

Nothing is risk-free. It's just that the risks associated with vaccines are vastly smaller than the risks associated with getting smallpox (or measles, or whooping cough, or...you get the point).

Nothing is risk-free.

Yes, even the "risk free rate" predicates itself around Treasury not collapsing, something Muldoon may have risked.

He's a surgeon who writes a blog dedicated to abusing woo and its proponents, fisking each with proper medical facts and understanding.

Yes, 10,000 die from smallpox without vaccination and 2 (or 100 – or pick any 'small number") die?

Unfortunately, Wakefield's hoax MMR/autism link will probably be as pervasive and long lasting as Bettelheim's 1967 assertion (from unethical and flawed research) that 'refrigerator' mothers caused their child's autism.

The question is – what will be the next big autism hoax?

The question is – what will be the next big autism hoax?

The biomedical treatment, possibly:

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/the-false-prophets-of-autism/

The question is – what will be the next big autism hoax?

I've got one. Ventouse deliveries cause autism. 'Cause it might have happened with my son. I don't know if it's a hoax or not, which makes for the perfect hoax.

They obviously have some sort of trans-dimensional time machine so they can get their plot lines to tie in to these subjects.

That is the real conspiracy Wishart should be?

Didn't anyone watch Shorty last night?

Clearly not brainy enough

But, then again, being a wee bit altruistic may be useful in "accepting" your fate if you are one of the few. Afterall, you have then 'sacrificed' yourself for the many.

I believe Mr Spock answered this question long ago.

Now this might be a?

Now this might be a false dilemma, but its a dilemma that is fairly common in the existing conspiracy theory literature and it's not a an unwarranted inference to make.

Yes it is, because bankers does not necessarily imply Jews and because accusing people of anti-semitism is a serious matter.

That?

Hold on, chaps. Merely because Wishart mutters about bankers does not make him an anti-semite. I cannot recall Wishart making anti-semetic remarks (quite the opposite, in fact) or discussing a Jewish banking conspiracy. The inference is being drawn here, not in Investigate.

My point was more in relation to the?

bankers

I prefer to think of it as rhyming slang

It might also be worth noting that George Soros is neither Jewish nor a banker.

No – I believe he's an international currency trader – much like John Key ...

(and only one of them is Jewish – NZ has a long history of Jewish PMs)

EDIT: actually if wikipedia?

It might also be worth noting that George Soros is neither Jewish nor a banker.

In which case Mr. Wishart would note the long association of Greeks with duplicitous agendas!

?Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis?

Such conspiracies are suggested frequently in leftish publications, without anyone accusing the author or the readership of anti-semitism.

And most of those leftish conspiracy theories, when prodded, end up being versions of the Zionist Banking conspiracy theories, as Mark Fenster, in `Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture' and?

Thus the italics.

sounds all conspiratorial when I read it :)

Paradoxically, I think this is connected with with left-wing success in making open racism unacceptable.

Lee Atwater:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"?that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states'?

So for example, the open antisemitism of early Social Credit went underground as opposition to "international bankers" and became so coded that by now, many current followers of the movement are probably genuinely unaware of the original significance of those phrases.

Having said that, I do feel that Jew-hating adds?

'Of course there are extra-terrestrials among us – they are called Hungarians" – Enrico Fermi

And on the other end of the social scale, "tough-on-crime" measures seem to have a very strong air of crypto-Romaphobia.

"Europe's acceptable racism". Spot on.

PRESS?

'Of course there are extra-terrestrials among us – they are called Hungarians" – Enrico Fermi

He was of course referring to Edward Teller.

On paranoid fruitloops and nut bars, you can add Ken Franklin, Director of the Christchurch Arts Centre

I note that the Arts Centre hired an Auckland Private Eye to do their dirty work...
it would be interesting to know just how much money they have sent to the Auckland economy?

The Elders of Zion, the venerable and shadowy Jewish organization that controls the international banking industry, news media and Hollywood, has announced that it is disbanding so that members can retire to Florida and live out their golden years on the golf course.

?We had?

Nancy Jew and The Jihadi Boys

Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7viPQ04dCLE

As a long time subscriber to New Scientist I know what you mean about their physics and cosmology coverage. Even as a biologist I can tell they are plumbing the ever more wild extremes of hypothesis purely to put a supposedly interesting article together. I have ceased to read?

I'm not sure that this manufactured crisis wasn't part of the plan to then sell off these crown jewels.

Their intention to break the the Arts Centre block into (I believe) 6 separate (leaseable?) titles would seem to indicate that they have a fire sale coming up... – the initial?

I want some data please, not ever more fanciful String Theory derived wanderings in fantasy land.

interestingly the more populist New Scientist
when put thru the anagramaphone reveals
its true colours:
Nit Wit Scenes – or – Winces in Test
and their desire to please shows in __Nicest in West__?

By the time Franklin and the current board are finished I bet we'll have a large food hall and an expensive wedding venue

It's probably all that these overfed corporate tossers can relate to – art is only what they invest in for their office walls, so why would you?

...iit sounds like our usual practice as a callow nation of trying to make a taonga pay for itself, rather than nourishing and honouring it.

I've thought it often but finally must say it:

Sacha for PM.

Or President.

Paradoxically, I think this is connected with with left-wing success in making open racism unacceptable.

So for example, the open antisemitism of early Social Credit went underground as opposition to "international bankers" and became so coded that by now, many current followers of the movement are probably genuinely unaware of?

I had earlier read of Icke's collision with various groups like the Anti-Defamation League, causing consternation by insisting (I believe sincerely) that when he says lizards, he means lizards.

causing consternation by insisting (I believe sincerely) that when he says lizards, he means lizards.

That's pretty much the impression Jon Ronson got as well, although he also points out that the conspiracy theorists do tend to use a lot of anti-semitic codewords as well.

the truth will out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnNjRaBj3zs

It's Friday after all.

Yes, but it's on the verge of cancellation – for getting too close to the truth, obviously. (To bring the thread full circle, one episode featured a vaccine conspiracy.)

Several months ago there was mention of a group of influential business persons in Christchurch who wielded a lot of political power back in the 40's? 50's? 60's?. The group had a name and I'm wondering if someone here can remind me.

Freemasons? Illuminati? Christs College Old Boys Association?

Rotary?

Several months ago there was mention of a group of influential business persons in Christchurch who wielded a lot of political power back in the 40's? 50's? 60's?. The group had a name and I'm wondering if someone here can remind me.

I was initially thinking the ZAP, but apparently?

they have sent one of their number to openly walk amongst us.

Oh... that's just icky!
that's the Arrrgh Complex I'm from
not the Military Industrial Complex

Warren and Mahoney?

rofflenui

influential business persons in Christchurch who wielded a lot of political power back in the 40's? 50's? 60's?

Social Credit?

ZAP

Dave Henderson and friends (Robin Booth, Trevor Loudon, et al), devotees of Johnny Dalhoff/Ultimate who had abandoned (or been tossed out by) Scientology...
Chch is full of new Hendo's Holes – where the Tivoli/Westend used to be in the Square and in ratepayers' pockets where the council bailed him?

W & M were a force for good, but that all changed after the Christchurch Town Hall.

You might not like post-modernism, but evil is a bit strong, isn't it?

?I always used to complain that Jews ran the world,? said Reginald Weber, author of ?Zionists and Zookeepers: The Unholy Alliance.? ?But now I?m starting to worry that nobody?s in charge.?

Yes, my thoughts exactly.
You only have to look at George Bush, oir even our "dear leader" to know?

a conspiracy is beyond the capabilities of those that aspire to power

gosh, that's an interesting perspective, but it seems to me that Bush, Blair, et al, conspired quite successfully to invade a country for no valid reason whatsoever, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees.?

must be all just cock-ups

The end result was a cock-up certainly, and because of false certainty on the part of those who colluded they set in motion chains of events which they thought they could predict with that same certainty.
Only to be proved wrong.
What's that saying "Life?

Oh crap, did I just mention George Soros and Noam Chomsky in the same post? I'm outta here...