Tetherd Cow Ahead

Just over a year ago (April 1, 2009, as it happens) I made my first post in what was to become a bit of an ongoing series – the ShooTag saga. Had Melissa Rogers, one of the CEOs of ShooTag, refrained from calling me ignorant at that time, and had not attempted to air her preposterous faux scientific notions on my blog, my interest in the dubious ShooTag might have blown away in the wind like so many other tumbleweeds of pseudoscience that have rolled my way. That wrong step by the ShooTaggers was just the first of many that has kept them in the focus of my attention and led us to this moment, which I think you will agree when you get to the end of this post, is a defining one for the credibility of this product and its makers.

When I first visited the ShooTag site, my main attention was, of course, on the science that was claimed to be behind this remarkable gadget, and, to that end, one of my first stops was the ShooTag Science page. It was immediately obvious that the scientific sounding language that was used there was utter waffle. ((This is the ‘scientific explanation’ originally offered on the ShooTag Science page:

All things are composed of atoms that are mostly electrons and protons. In between the electrons and protons and in between the atoms is mostly empty space, filled with magnetic static, quantum and gravitational fields. The science of voltammetry tells us of the electrical principles of all biological entities. Our research has shown that subtle inductance/capacitance fields (magnetic and static) can have dramatic effects on biology.



The only true measurement in electricity is the voltage and amperage, everything else is a mathematical variation of the two. These calculations are referred to as virtual or mathematical measures. Variations in flow of amperage and voltage give us a way to measure capacitance, inductance and frequency. These measurements reflect the static and magnetic effects of bio-electricity.

This is straight out of the textbook of Professor William Nelson, without a shadow of a doubt.))

This pseudoscientific rambling was quickly removed from the ShooTag site after I wrote my article, leaving only some lines of vague noncommittal nonsense.

The page also featured a link to a report called ‘Subtle Magnetic Repulsion of Insect Pests’ by someone called Professor William Nelson, which allegedly appeared in a periodical called The Quantum Agriculture Journal. It took me a scant second to establish that The Quantum Agriculture Journal didn’t exist [Note: See update at the bottom of this post]. The linked paper was an incoherent ramble through Chaos Theory Lite, MRI mechanics, the electro-sensitivity of sharks and the effects of magnetism on cell cultures – much of it inaccurate, most of it contextually adrift and the sum of it an addled mess of gee-whiz pop-science ideas that would be at home in a bad science fiction movie. [See more about this, also, below.]

Unsurprisingly, this link was also rapidly removed from the ShooTag site after my post, along with all references to the Quantum Agriculture Journal and Professor William Nelson. You can still see the original full text here though, complete with reference ((This reference has also been removed since I wrote this post. Only problem for them is that this time I anticipated that there was a very high likelihood of that happening, so I archived the site as it appeared on April 24, 2010. Compare that with the site as it appears today (January 27, 2011). Is there any more damning proof that the ShooTaggers are desperate to distance themselves from Professor William Nelson? Is this the behaviour of honest people who truly believe in what they sell?)) to ‘The Quantum Agriculture Journal’ edited by Prof. William Nelson for IMUNE. ((A search for IMUNE shows it to be another of William Nelson’s projects; it features references to a course in ‘Quantum BioFeedback’ featuring instruction in EPFX, SCIO and QXCI devices. So this ‘reference’ is to a an article in a non-existent journal attached to a website belonging to the person who supposedly wrote the article. Do I need to point out the fraudulent nature of that circuitous process?))

At the time I thought that the reason for these excisions was simply that the ShooTaggers didn’t like being sprung for their silly science. Fair enough – it does make them look pretty incoherent. However. Our recent investigations into the magnetic strips on the ShooTags prompted me to re-examine some of the scientific claims made for the gadgets, in particular, the notion of the ‘trivector electromagnetic signature’ that seems to be of such importance in the ShooTag promotional literature.

So I plugged that phrase into Google. The very first result throws up a link to a pdf of a document called ‘QUANTUM ELECTRO DYNAMICS and The VOLT-AMMETRIC TRIVECTOR SIGNATURE For DUMMIES’ by William Nelson MD Prof of Medicine IMUNE.

The pdf is a disjointed mish-mash of misunderstood science and erroneous analogies all whirled up into ball of unfathomable conclusions. It sounds, in fact, not unlike the incomprehensible babblings of a certain Dr Werner.

And there he is again. That Professor William Nelson guy.

Now, we’ve had cause to mention him before here on The Cow, but only in passing reference to the ShooTag scam. I think it’s time we turned the magnifying glass onto Professor William Nelson himself.

Here is a clip of him ‘explaining the trivector’:

Whoa. That was even more incomprehensible than the pdf we just looked at. ((I could really rip this apart if I could be bothered, but honestly, it’s just one dumb concept warped into another dumb concept mashed into another dumb concept for its entire length. There’s no point even trying to attack all the daft pieces of it because the whole thing is just utter nonsense.))

Researching Dr Nelson isn’t hard. There are literally thousands of references to him across the net. These are just some of the things that have been claimed of him (mostly by himself): ((http://www.theqxci.com/qxci_nelson.html)) ((http://www.stockscio.anolecms.com/the-inventor-dr-william-nelson/content/view/3/43/)) ((http://www.energetic-medicine.net/bill-nelson.html)) ((http://qxcinrg.com/inventor.html))

•He was childhood genius and accepted into Mensa at age 16 ((This really means nothing at all, even if it’s true – the Mensa tests don’t screen for lack of rational or logical thinking. You can still solve puzzles and be dissociated from a rational thought process))

•He is an accomplished golf, tennis and basketball player and was selected to compete in gymnastics in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

•He worked at NASA and was involved in the Apollo program, notably in the trajectory mathematics of the first moon landing ((He would have been only 18, had that been the truth.)) and the rescue mission of the astronauts on the aborted Apollo 13 flight.

•He is an accredited quantum physicist, medical doctor, mathematician, computer expert, naturopath, acupuncturist, and homeopath.

•He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine on numerous occasions.

•He has directed over 20 motion pictures ((‘Motion picture’ is a very floppy term, and could simply indicated the huge number of YouTube videos attributed to Professor Nelson/Desiré Dubounet.))

As well as the comprehensive reference links I’ve added above, you can read Professor William Nelson’s personal Curriculum Vitae here, courtesy of the Seattle Times. (Note that he tones down the more egregious exaggerations when writing in his own hand, and adds the caveat that ‘Whatever Dr Nelson says about himself can be relied on as true. Information that is not direct from Dr Nelson may be distorted’. O-k-a-y. Very convenient. And not that he bothers to correct any of this ‘distorted’ information anywhere, as far as I’m able to determine. To the contrary, as we shall see, he has a ‘friend’ who is very happy to take it one step further still…)

Depending how far you want to trawl and how much time you want to waste, you can find all kinds of other accomplishments for Dr/Prof Nelson. Needless to say, most of them can be established pretty quickly to be false. He (or anybody else) simply can’t know if he has ever been nominated for a Nobel Prize because Nobel Prize nominees aren’t advised they’ve been nominated and all nominations are kept secret for 50 years. So unless his Nobel Prize nomination was made when he was 10 or younger, that’s just plain rubbish. ((Thanks Dewi!)) NASA explicitly denies ((http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004020583_miracle18m2.html)) having any involvement with a Professor William Nelson and it is possible that he is hoping to dupe people into mistaking him for Clarence William ‘Bill’ Nelson – a NASA mission payload specialist of some achievement. ((Digging deeper we can find evidence that maybe William Nelson worked in a minor capacity for a company that worked for NASA. That’s not the same as ‘working for NASA’ and certainly not the same as ‘saving the lives of the Apollo 13 crew’.)) And, investigation into ‘Professor’ Nelson’s degrees reveals that they all come from dubious unaccredited institutions and mail-order or online courses. He is certainly not a quantum physicist.

There is no shadow of a doubt that Professor William Nelson is not the man he paints himself to be. Indeed, sometimes the man Professor William Nelson paints himself to be is actually a woman. A woman who goes by the name of Desiré Dubounet. It turns out that William Nelson is a gender switcher.

Now, I want to say right off the bat that when it comes to gender identification and sexual preferences and fantasies, I’m fairly open-minded. There’s a pretty big sliding scale with sexuality as far as I’m concerned, and as long people don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses, I really don’t care. William Nelson’s right to be Desiré Dubounet is unassailable in my book, but his right to cheat, lie and swindle people out of good medical care is what I have in my sights here. To that end, I present a clip of Desiré Dubounet that is as frightening for its dreadful taste as it is for its demonstration of William Nelson’s mental state (WARNING – this is NSFW. It contains torrents of venomous bad language and it is quite surprising that it is still up on YouTube):

That’s a deeply troubled person by any reckoning. And Desiré Dubounet is not at all shy about promoting her ‘accomplishments’, either, be it for herself or for William Nelson. This from the Desiré Dubounet website:

Desiré is by far the most colourful, interesting, intelligent and courageous person in the world today… Nobody has changed the world as much as Desiré. Desiré as a super intelligent child was the first to max several intelligence tests, she was able to save the Apollo 13 astronauts, and has developed several patents that have revolutionized life. ((Consider this symptom of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Omniscience – The narcissist often pretends to know everything, in every field of human knowledge and endeavour. He lies and prevaricates to avoid the exposure of his ignorance. He resorts to numerous subterfuges to support his God-like omniscience. Where his knowledge fails him – he feigns authority, fakes superiority, quotes from non-existent sources, embeds threads of truth in a canvass of falsehoods. He transforms himself into an artist of intellectual prestidigitation. Many narcissists are avowed autodidacts, unwilling to subject their knowledge and insights to peer scrutiny, or, for that matter, to any scrutiny. The narcissist keeps re-inventing himself, adding new fields of knowledge as he goes. This creeping intellectual annexation is a round about way of reverting to his erstwhile image as the erudite ‘Renaissance man’.

))

As we’ve seen in the video above, like a good many of the peddlers of pseudoscience, William Nelson/Desiré Dubounet portrays herself as being ‘persecuted’ for her beliefs. Claiming to have switched gender to ‘prevent the powers-that-be’ from killing her’ she makes her pseudoscience cause corporeal by dressing it up in a gender issue; that way, if her ideas are criticized she can make the accusation that it is her person that is being persecuted and that she is being witch-hunted by those who are intolerant of her human rights. ((And she does do this, there is no question about that. There are numerous instances of this tactic in her writings and in the many online videos.))

The truth of the matter is that in 1996 ((Or 1998 – like everything about William Nelson, the actual facts seem variable)) William Nelson fled his home in the USA to take up residence in Budapest because he has been indicted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on nine counts of felony fraud charges in relation to various ‘bioenergetic’ healing devices sold through his companies. These expensive (and needless to say completely bogus) devices, which are claimed to be effective for the treatment of all manner of ailments including debilitating diseases such as AIDS and cancer, have been implicated in the deaths of several severely ill people in the United States, and are responsible for the lengthening of the illnesses of numerous others. This is a monstrously repellent scam and William Nelson has made millions of dollars out of it. Consequently he lives extravagantly in a restored five story building in Budapest with his personal staff of about a dozen, including a cook, hairdresser, nanny, security guards and chauffeurs. He uses his money to make terrible movies, ((Hollywood is not interested in his movies because they have been ‘pressured by the drug companies’ to avoid dealing with him. It has nothing to do with them being so bad as to be laughable.)) even worse music, and run his nightclub Bohemian Alibi, among other things. ((Just an aside: if you thought the trolling by the various ShooTag supporters was bad, you should see how the supporters of William Nelson behave. It is very interesting to me that the tone of the commentary that I’ve read across various sites that have criticized Nelson is eerily similar to the way the ShooTaggers express themselves. I fully expect we’ll get trolled by both camps for this post.))

William Nelson’s network for the sale of his machines (which go variously under the names EPFX, SCIO and QXCI) is widespread. He uses chiropractors, homeopaths, physicians, nurses and volunteers to sell the machines worldwide and there is no question that he knows that they do nothing at all (the disclaimer on the QXCI site says, in part ‘No claims are made of the system or of its results.’ which, in anybody’s language, is the ultimate ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card).

And the ‘scientific’ basis for these completely fraudulent, dangerous ((Dangerous because they are completely ineffective.)) devices is the ‘trivector electromagnetic’ principle that Nelson promotes.

Which brings us, I believe, right back to ShooTag. As we have seen, Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney were at first very happy to invoke Professor William Nelson’s name when it suited their purpose ((And ditch it mighty fast when it didn’t, I might point out.)) and are still flaunting the ‘trivector electromagnetic’ principles behind their device. It seems to me very likely that Kathy Heiney, in her ‘training’ as a ‘Quantum Biofeedback Technician and Stress Management Specialist‘ could have come across the work of William Nelson. So, no real coincidence there. But now an obvious question arises: Is there any really tangible link between Professor William Nelson and ShooTag, Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney? Let’s see what a quick search brings up…

The link is protected with a login, but Google can see it, so it should be there… somewhere… Aha! Some further detective work from Dewi (who you will recall was our chief decoder of the data on the ShooTags a few posts back) reveals the complete schedule for the QX World Conference in Budapest, part of which features:

QX World Conference 2009. 8-11 October 2009. Budapest, Hungary.
Sunday, Oct. 11.
09.00, Prof. William C. Nelson/Desir̩ Dubounet. Introduce ShooTag РMelissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney.
09.15, Dr. Amanda Velloen. AIDS research.
12.00, Coffee Break. ((Dewi was able to reconstruct the entire schedule for the conference, even though none of it was directly available. He’s a good man to have on your side!))

And the pieces of the puzzle all fall resoundingly into place. The QX World Conference is an event that has, over the last few years, been held annually in Budapest by William Nelson/Desiré Dubounet. At this conference, Nelson assembles the faithful from his Quantum Bioenergetic flock, and here they presumably shore up each others’ belief systems, trade war stories and have an opportunity to touch the hem of the Master’s (Mistresses?) garment. From this snippet of information we can deduce that Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney were there, were sheduled to be there, or at the very least were represented there in some way. ((For their literal 15 minutes of fame in bioenergetic circles, it seems.)) However you cut it, a visceral, and certainly not insubstantial link with the fraudulent, criminally culpable William Nelson is established.

Now, I will quickly add that the act of associating with a criminal does not make you yourself a criminal. It can in no way be construed that the Shoo!TAG sisters are involved with the felony fraud committed by William Nelson. But the inference is written plain – William Nelson is wanted for fraud by the FDA because the ideas behind his gadgets have no scientific substance and are, through their complete lack of efficacy, misleading and liable to cause harm. Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney, by all the available evidence, advocate those exact same pseudoscientific ideas for their Shoo!TAG products.

No wonder they were so quick to divest themselves of any relationship to Nelson. Once they realised that they simply didn’t need to have the endorsement of a nutty ‘professor’ like Nelson to get their product to sell, they ditched all reference to him quick smart.

The credentials of Shoo!TAG can no longer be in any doubt. With absolutely no scientific evidence to back up their claims, a product that is revealed to be nothing more than a stock-standard magnetic swipe card, some third party testing that demonstrates clearly the complete ineffectiveness of the tags, and an indisputable link to the unsubstantiated irrational beliefs of a person who is a fraud and a swindler wanted by the FDA, it is more than clear that Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney are ripping off pet owners wherever they have managed to get their silly product into a retail outlet. Worse, by encouraging the use of their product for humans, they are putting the lives of people at risk.

I consider that what we have here, then, on the matter of the Shoo!TAG’s bona fides, is an emphatic QED.

And I’m not talking quantum electrodynamics.

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[UPDATE] – Dewi points out that something calling itself the Quantum Agriculture Journal does indeed exist as a one-off document in exe format. I want to make it very clear that the Quantum Agriculture Journal did not have any web presence at the time I searched for it originally – and I was extremely thorough. All available references to it at the time pointed back to the ShooTag site. I did some further searching and turned up another online version of the ‘scientific’ paper (attributed to Professor William Nelson) that was purportedly carried by the QAJ (and originally linked to the ShooTag site). You can read the complete paper here. (This, also, has been removed from the web as of April 2010).

This is what I said of it in my original ShooTag post:

The ’scientific’ document itself (if you can be bothered) is a hare-brained ramble through a whole mess of abracadabra, beginning with some descriptions of chaotic attractors, jumping through magnetic resonance imaging and the electrical sensitivity of sharks, and ending up with the conductivity of chemicals in cells. It’s the most meaningless agglomeration of waffle that I’ve attempted to read in a very long while. If you’ve ever even seen a scientific paper, you know this ain’t one of those.

In light of recent comments by the ShooTaggers, though, it does have some interesting points. The ‘paper’ says that:

‘This three dimensional or trivector signature has been imprinted onto the magnetic field of a three-field magnetic memory card. This card is then hung around the neck of an animal and the magnetic field can stimulate the biology of the animal to build up defense to invaders.This is completely safe and proficient. In our preliminary farm tests the researchers found 75% less infestation of the insect pests when using the pests than in control populations. Further testing is presently being done in Europe.’

These words have been spoken in larger or smaller part by promoters of ShooTag at various times over the last year. It establishes quite clearly that they are using the exact same pseudoscience which underpins William Nelson’s fraudulent medical devices.

You may remember that I wrote, some time back, about Dr Masaru Emoto, a man who believes that water has feelings. Dr Emoto has a fairly substantial following in the magic water fraternity and his name is used to promote products such as H²Om Vibrational Water, which we’ve had cause to discuss previously on The Cow.

Well, it seems that Dr Emoto is happy to lend his name (and image, it would appear) to quackery, but is most reticent to appear anywhere that is critical of his ideas. This morning I received a letter from his office:

Hello,

I’m Michiko Hayashi from OFFICE MASARU EMOTO LLC in Tokyo, Japan.

I would like to let you know that your use of water crystal photos has not been approved by OFFICE MASARU EMOTO. Please find attached the letter “Use of water crystal images on websites” and make the appropriate procedure to use water crystal images legally.

This is part of the attached letter:

– IMPORTANT NOTICE –

Use of “water crystal” images on websites without permission

Please be informed that water crystal images are intellectual property, and OFFICE MASARU EMOTO LLC owns the copyrights to the water crystal photos that you have posted on your website. It is important that you obtain an official permission for such use authorized by OFFICE MASARU EMOTO LLC. The fee for the use on the website is 1,200€ (one thousand and two hundred Euro) or $1,400(one thousand and four hundred US dollars) for one year.

You what? 1,400 US dollars! Hahahahaha! I wonder if anyone would be daft enough to actually pay that? And I wonder even further whether they try this on with people who aren’t critical of Dr Emoto? Let’s do a quick image search, shall we… Oh, what a surprise! almost a hundred thousand images of Dr Emoto or his water crystals. And virtually none of them on sites that are critical of his silly ideas. The letter goes on to say:

If you have Mr. Masaru Emoto’s face photo (portrait rights) and/or his name on your websites, please delete it/ them IMMEDIATELY. The use of “Masaru Emoto®” and his portrait rights are strictly prohibited.

Ha. I hope that they aren’t thinking they can get away with his name being intellectual property too! Just sticking a ® on the end of something means toss-all folks.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the letter – it’s basically just repetitions of the same thing, coupled with a vague threat of legal action that doesn’t really scare me in the least. I have, however, um… altered the images I used on the original post because, quite frankly I can’t be bothered getting into any kind of legal dispute with people who aren’t able to think rationally.

I am a little disappointed in Dr Emoto and his office, if the truth be told. He got off pretty lightly on The Cow, all things considered. I cut him a bit of slack because I think he’s just a misguided old duffer, rather than a cynical con artist, ((Emoto is one of the very few of his ilk that has, at least, the courage to call his ideas ‘magic’. The problem is that he does so while wearing a lab coat and calling himself a doctor. Unfortunately most people aren’t able to understand that just because he has a laboratory and does ‘experiments’ doesn’t make him a scientist)) and he certainly didn’t get the roasting that many of his fellow loonies have copped on my pages. But it is immediately apparent from today’s letter, that, like all practitioners of pseudoscience, one of Dr Emoto’s raisons d’être is the financial reward his nutty beliefs bring.

Michiko signs off…

With love and gratitude,
Michiko Hayashi

… an unusual (to say the least) salutation for a legal letter. Perhaps you will not continue to feel much gratitude towards me Ms Hayashi, when you know I have no intention of paying you any money, and have not changed my opinion of Dr Emoto in the least. As for the love, well, I have a feeling that yours is nothing more than the watered-down kind.

Do you like these bottles of coloured water? Me too. I’ve always liked coloured bottles, and coloured glass and even stained-glass church windows. But little did I realize that it was not the visual pleasure that was at work on me, but the homeopathic effect of said items!

Here at Tetherd Cow Ahead, as we continue our support for World Homeopathy Awareness Week, ((I say ‘support’ in reference to the ‘awareness’ part of the process – I’m definitely up for bringing awareness of the stupidity of homeopathy to the attention of the world)) the boffins in the TCA labs have whipped up some potions that, believe it or not, have absolutely nothing absorbed in them except light! The homeopathic effect of merely the colour in these elixirs will cure you of everything from mild ennui to autism. I know, I know – hard to believe I could make up something quite so implausible and expect anyone to swallow it. (Hahahaha. Little joke there.)

Well, it probably won’t surprise you to find out that it wasn’t actually my idea at all. Over at The Institute of Life Energy Medicine you can buy ‘homeopathic colour remedies’ just like these (only not anywhere near as pretty) that promise all kinds of marvels.

How are the color remedies made?

Homeopathic color remedies are made by taking pure water in glass tumblers and placing them in the sun. Auspicious days are chosen such as the winter solstice and summer solstice, days of maximum and minimum light on which to make these remedies. The tumblers are placed in a quiet place without much commotion and colored theatrical gels or colored silks are placed on top of and around the glasses. The glasses are placed on small mirrors to maximize the color vibrating in the glass.

Trawling around the site will take you on a veritable guided tour of this kind of fruitloopery and you can finish up with a sobering reflection on just how much money is to be made from selling water that has been sitting in your backyard under a piece of coloured cellophane.

The colours all have particular ‘powers’ of course – red is the colour of ‘passion, violence and danger’ (oh surprise) and green is the colour of ‘the healing power of nature’ (yawn). ((Why are these people always so damn leaden and pedestrian. It’s magic for chrissakes! Show some imagination!)) The efficacies of these solutions, no matter what their ‘colour’ are all amorphous and diffuse; they help with ‘recovery from shock or illness’ or ‘detoxification’ or they ‘calm frayed nerves’. They are, unsurprisingly, most effective on the stock standard hard-to-pin-down vagaries of human existence – the vast grey area that provides so much nutrition for wacky beliefs to flourish. There isn’t one concrete or unequivocal promise on the entire site.

The contra-indications for use are particularly amusing:

Yellow:

This remedy should not be used by people who are overly confident or have an excessively developed ego. It should not be used at night.

Why? What could possibly happen – they might get even more confident and their ego might EXPLODE? It’s a bottle of water for Pete’s sake.

I’m not going to dwell on this too long. The Institute of Life Medicine site is really just another flavour of Special One Drop Liquid, only not quite as entertaining.

I just want to finish with one question directed to Ms Wauters: What happens if I drink a glass of water that’s been sitting on the table outside my studio in the sun? Since sunlight is a combination of all colours, does that mean I’ll I be cured of all my ailments?

In the bizarre reality of the world of homeopathic colour remedies, it seems pretty logical to me.

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Ms Wauters also spruiks homeopathic ‘sound’ remedies, but I tire – maybe another day we can find out why Middle C ‘promotes grounding, connection and engagement’.

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The capacity for stupid people to part with huge amounts of cash on schemes concocted by morally bankrupt swindlers never ceases to amaze me. It’s as if there’s a reservoir of schmucks out there who are just busting to empty their bank accounts into the pockets of criminals. Here on The Cow this is very familiar territory. Over the years we’ve seen the duplicitous Shoo!TAG™ scammers bilking all and sundry with their nutso pest repellent scheme; the smarmy Steorn with their ‘free energy’ shell game (a scam that’s centuries old in one form or another); the Space Diamond fraudsters who promise untold wealth via implausible interstellar retrieval schemes. And the list goes on.

Sometimes I like to play this game in my head where I make up the weirdest scheme I can imagine and speculate on whether people would pay money for it. For instance, I’ll look out my window and see something like, oh, let’s see – bird shit – and then make it the centre of some daft scam. I’ll imagine, for instance, that there’s some place that offers to rub bird shit on your face for money. Maybe I’ll even elaborate on it a bit to make it even more implausible – maybe it’s not just bird shit they’re offering to smoosh all over your dial but, oh, let’s see something really off the wall… I’ve got it! Nightingale shit!

Hahahaha! No-one would believe that in a BILLION years. No-one on the PLANET is dumb enough to fork out for that.

Hahhahahahahahaha!

WRONG!

Oh joy, oh joy! Oh joyohjoyohjoyohjoyohjoyohjoyohjoy!

Acowlytes! The world is about to change forever! Goodbye Global Warming! Goodbye cumbersome coal mining, solar panels, wind farms and hydro schemes! Yes, my friends, tomorrow (Saturday January 30, 2010) our old friends at Steorn are going to demonstrate once and for all, conclusive and unequivocal PROOF that their overunity ((Overunity means that it puts out more energy than you put in)) energy system actually works!

I hope you will tune in with me at 14:00 GMT to the Steorn website for a jolly old belly laugh this world-shattering event!

(It’s like some kind of Saturday matinee thriller – how will they get out of their dastardly fix this time???)

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*Sort of. Like, if I close my eyes and squint. And the light’s just right. And I have my lucky rabbit’s foot. And the moon is in Aquarius and my chakras are aligned…

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Ave, Faithful Acowlytes! That’s ‘ave’ as in ‘Ave Maria!’ – for this morning I bring you a touching moral tale of wondrous miracles and things that seem so unbelievable that, well, you’ll have trouble believing them!

Our story starts some time ago in the house of George and Lina Tannous, in the little suburb of Guildford in Sydney, Australia. Very sadly for George and Lina, their son Mike was killed in a car accident in September of 2006. It must have been a terrible loss and I sincerely feel for them.

Here’s a picture of George holding a picture of Mike:

And this is where our story turns from one of human compassion, into full blown woo-woo of the highest order. See those trickles on the wall next to George? It’s not the result of bad caulking. Not long after Mike’s death, those oily trails began appearing on the walls of the Tannous’ Guildford home as if by magic. That, my friends, is a miracle in action! Yes, if you believe George and Lina Tannous, it would appear that Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, has chosen to make his presence felt to all of humanity by manifesting as trickles of oil on the wall of a house in a nondescript Sydney suburb!

Mr Tannous told The Daily Telegraph:

“My wife saw something shining on the wall like a diamond over Mike’s bed. Only my wife saw it and there were 15 of us in the room with her. She touched it and all of a sudden oil started appearing on the walls and it hasn’t stopped. This is a big miracle. I can’t explain it.”

The Lord be Praised! And what does the Church have to say about all this?

“I’ve been there many times and we cannot pinpoint exactly what’s happening. It is miraculous.”

…opined Archbishop Paul Saliba, the head of the Australian Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese.

A local Catholic priest, Fr Michael Melhen, said that while he cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic church, as an individual believer, he is stunned at what he has seen:

“The purpose of the oil, according to the church, is to bless people and that’s a sign, a symbolism of peace.” ((In spite of his disclaimer, he apparently IS speaking on behalf of the Church)).

Meanwhile, University of Western Sydney expert on the psychology of the paranormal and supernatural, Dr Tony Jinks told the Parramatta Sun that:

“There is a deeper story here than whether its true or a hoax. I’ve seen a lot of things to make me very wary of saying that there’s nothing to it.”

Woooo-eeee-ooooo!

What is really depressing with this whole matter is the wide-eyed credulity with which the news media has been reporting it. Aside from one article which included a frumpy throwaway sound bite from a token skeptic, any search I made on ‘Guildford Miracle House’ returned a frothy spew of gullible drivel that would hardly have passed muster in kid’s book of fairy tales. It hasn’t, of course, deterred legions of The Faithful from visiting the house, which is kept open during the day for such pilgrimages.

But pushing on, let us consider all of the above in the light of some recently unfolding news about Mr George Tannous. Last week Mr Tannous was charged with credit card fraud – specifically with falsifying documents to allow people with poor credit histories to obtain credit cards. Police allege that for his efforts, Mr Tannous received remuneration from his clients. Mr Tannous claims that he is not guilty of the charges. He told The Sydney Morning Herald in a statement that:

”There is a big game [being played] by those who are against this miracle and the House of Miracles. The miracle is completely true and it’s clear from the result of the oil which was tested by the scientists from the Government. ((Despite other claims of ‘extensive scientific testing’ of the oil, I could find no evidence of such a thing ever having happened. There are certainly no results published anywhere on the web, which seems curious at the very least for such an earth-shattering event)) If somebody has a problem with my job, let him take me to court. The miracle will continue always and the door is always open.”

Yes, George, of course there is a big game being played to discredit your unlikely miracle. That’s got to be it! It’s not like you’d do anything wrong in the eyes of God, would you? ((Where does anyone get this bereft-of-all-evidence idea that having religion in your life gives you any kind of moral superiority?))

I feel it is important to note that Mr Tannous has not actually been charged with fraud at this time, and, under our justice system, he therefore remains an innocent man until such charges are upheld. But I can’t help wondering what Archbishop Saba, Fr Melhen and Tony Jinks would have to say about the miracle in his house if we were to ask them today…

I suspect there’d be a lot of ‘No comment’ going down.

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