Tetherd Cow Ahead

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.

(Be sure and leave your own view in the TCA Poll!)

Excellent! A new magical potion has appeared on the supermarket shelves. Harry Potter eat yer heart out! This particular version is called ‘Nutrient Water’ and their marketing department has been pulling out all the stops with this one. Here’s what you get if you choose the ‘D-Stress’ flavour:

Remember what it was like to be a kid? One hour for finger painting, two hours for hide-n-seek, naps in the morning, naps in the afternoon, naps in general. Life as a grown up of course is a little more complex. Play-time is now work time, home-time is over-time and free-time is pushed-for-time. That’s why we’ve packed D-Stress with Vitmain D and L-Tyrosine to help bring you back, get a grip and put it all in perspective. Think of it as a step back in time. Just without the hand-me-downs and times tables.

What kind of whacked, off-his/her-face imbecile wrote that heap of crap? So you drink this stuff and it will help you get a grip and put everything into perspective? Then I don’t think the copywriter even opened the bottle. He needs about another fifty gallons by my reckoning. But as laughable as all that is, you have to go for the ingredient list for the full guffaw:

Ingredients (nature approved) – deionised water, crystalline fructose, food acid, natural blackberry goji flavour, etc etc

That little snippet has got to be the biggest gob of codswallop that I’ve heard in years. Nature approved? What the fuck? How did ‘nature’ approve it? Just by it existing? My brain is making pinging noises. And then we have ‘deionised’ water. Let me ask you, dear Cowpokes: do you have any reason at all to suppose water is any better without ions? (What they mean is simply that the water has been filtered, but oh no, they can’t just call it ‘filtered water’ – who’d buy something like that?). And of course ‘crystalline fructose’ is just a form of corn syrup. They could have said ‘ultra sweet sugar’ but that sounds a little too much like a step back in time… And I really don’t even want to go into the whole stupid goji thing. ((Goji berries are the new wheatgrass. They’re supposed to cure everything from depression to cancer. A clinical study done in May 2008 and published by the peer-reviewed Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine indicated that parametric data, including body weight, did not show significant differences between subjects receiving Lycium barbarum berry (goji) juice and subjects receiving the placebo; the study concluded that ‘subjective (my italics) measures of health were improved’ and suggested further research in humans was necessary. That was all I could find of any value. That’s the BEST they’ve got. Paraphrasing – if you imagine hard enough, maybe you’ll feel better.))

I was interested in why they might stick L-tyrosine in this product though, so I did a little bit of research. ((This is so easy to do now, that my mind just explodes with frustration – why don’t people check this stuff out?)) L-tyrosine is an amino acid, and one of the building blocks of neurotransmitters. Most people get all they need from their diet, and you have to be pretty unhealthy to have a deficit of the stuff. ((It’s in so many foods that it would be hard to avoid, in fact. You can even get it from an average McDonald’s meal.)) Not only that, you shouldn’t have too much of it, and several websites about nutritional supplements that I found have this kind of thing to say:

If you do not have any need to, you should not take L-tyrosine as supplements without consulting your doctor.

I figure that if they printed something like that on the label it would cause you to get a much better grip than all that other crud.

Still, at least this water has some active ingredients, even if they do have the potential to screw up your brain chemistry. Unlike some other waters we have visited.

Ah yes, dear Acowlytes, it is true. Our old friends Steorn have emerged once more from their mossy grotto in the depths of leprechaun country with more tales of a wonderful pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow. Quite incredibly, the Irish swindlers (who I expected to have vanished long ago into the annals of failed perpetual motion ventures) are again attempting to get people with money to part with it on the strength of their brainless ‘Orbo’ – a gadget that, to speak technically for a moment, retrieves fairy dust from the Caverns of Tinkerbellius and turns it into electricity.

This time, they have struck on a novel new approach to their answering their critics (no, it’s not scientific evidence – don’t get excited). They have released a video on YouTube that is designed to ridicule all those who have in the past ridiculed them! Brilliant! Instead of merely demonstrating that their machine actually does what they claim (which would have been the definitive answer to pretty much any criticism) they have spent money on an expensive version of ‘Nyah nyah nyah – does SO work!’ ((I am somewhat miffed that Steorn had a go at Engadget and Wired for dissing them, but left out some of my excellent sarcasm…))

‘But surely Reverend,’ I here you exclaim in disbelief, ‘Steorn can’t just keep stringing people along ad infinitum on the whiff of a promise of their magical device delivering the goods?!’

‘Hahahahaha, my keen young Acowlyte,’ I say, patting you on the head, ‘One would think not in this world chock full of rationalism and commonsense! But if you go to this page on the Steorn site, you will see that for a small scattering of coins into their coffers, Steorn will offer to let you in on their magical secret by way of their Steorn Knowledge Development Base, or SKBD!’

Yes, that’s right. Once more, instead of just showing everyone that they have some real science, they are going to eke out (in tiny pay-as-you-go increments over a long period of time, no doubt) tantalising tidbits about how Orbo is really cool, and stuff, and y’know, awesome and gee-whiz and OMG – this is mind-blowing! and wow, can you believe it? and this is going to change the way we think about energy and on and on and on and on and on and on…

Wind some religion into all this and before you know it Steorn will be an Irish version of Scientology.

Just what the world needs.

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*Imagining things doesn’t make them possible. No matter how hard you imagine.

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Good morning Acowlytes. Today on The Cow we are going to have a science lesson. No, no, sit down there Joey, it’s not the kind where we make a miniature volcano and gas all the eighth grade on the top floor of C Block with sulphur – this is a lesson about science. Specifically, about how science works, and why it is different from, oh, just making stuff up.

As usual for a science lesson, I have some visual aids.

First of all here is a rabbit’s foot: ((Rabbit’s foot picture borrowed from The Skeptiseum – I didn’t think they’d mind))

A rabbit’s foot is what most rational modern people regard as a superstitious curio. The rabbit’s foot accrued its status as a ‘lucky’ object because in very ancient times the European Celts considered rabbits as sacred animals. Using a kind of logic that is mostly these days reserved for young children, the Celts figured that if the rabbit itself was lucky, then bits of the rabbit were lucky too.

Of course, there is no science at all behind this notion. A rabbit’s foot is an object that, no matter what people convince themselves to believe, does absolutely nothing at all. ((…well, after it’s removed from the rabbit, obviously.)) You can tell me you think it brings ‘good luck’, and even that you did a scientific study that shows, to your satisfaction, that it does what you claim, but (here’s the crucial thing about science): until your study is reproduced, under controlled situations, and in double-blind experiments by a third (preferably unbiased) party your claim is absolutely meaningless.

What exactly does all that mean? Let’s look at the bits:

Reproduceability: Well, obviously, if I can’t get the same results as you do, there is something seriously wrong with your idea; if you say your rabbit’s foot brings luck, and I don’t experience any luck while holding it, then how do we explain that?

Controlled Situation: This has a very rigorous meaning in science. Scientists spend a LOT of time perfecting controls, because they are crucial to experimental protocol. To put it simply, a good control is one that is completely free from the possible effects of the experiment. Not only that, a good control must be free of other artifacts that could be mistaken for possible effects of the experiment.

Double-Blind Procedure: When you have a vested interest in proving that your hypothesis is valid, you may, consciously or unconsciously, effect the outcome of the study. For this reason, scientists have come up with a very clever concept which ensures that neither the person conducting the experiment, nor anyone involved in collating the results of the experiment, know exactly what data they are handling until after the experiment is concluded. At that time, the double-blind protocol is decoded and the data is matched to the experimental procedure.

An Unbiased Third Party: Being able to convince others that your results are persuasive is a crucial part of the scientific method. That’s why the protocols I’ve outlined above are so important. If two or more groups of experimenters conduct the same study under the those conditions, and they get results that match yours, well then voila! – you have yourself a nicely working model! The really great thing about science is that if you disagree with someone’s hypothesis, you can perform the experiment yourself, under the same conditions! This is how we know so much of what we now know – this is why we no longer have smallpox, why diabetics can live a normal life, and why we know to keep ourselves clean to avoid contracting disease.

We could easily design an experimental protocol to test if rabbit’s foot charms are really ‘lucky’ but I think most normal people will accept that they are nothing more than a diverting superstition. But the lure of the talisman or amulet is a very strong one.

Which brings us to my second visual aid:

It is called a Shoo!TAG™ Essentially, until some scientific proof to the contrary is forthcoming, ((Hahahahaha! It is to laugh!)) the Shoo!TAG™ is exactly the same as the rabbit’s foot, ie, a functionless tsotchke. This is despite the personal testimony of its inventors, no matter how enthusiastically they spruik it:

As a founder and co-developer of the Shoo!TAG™ I was looking for a non-toxic “green” alternative for controlling fleas and ticks on our dogs and cats and flies and mosquitoes on my horses and milk cow. When the finished prototypes were ready, I picked two dogs and one horse and cow for the first trials and put a Shoo!TAG™ on them. Within 36 hours, the dogs wearing a Shoo!TAG™ had a noticeable reduction in fleas and ticks. In addition, those pests still on the dogs were staying on top of the hair, moving slowly and easily picked off. I also observed that the dogs with a Shoo!TAG™ did not scratch or bite at themselves, unlike the two dogs not wearing a Shoo!TAG™ . The horse and cow wearing a Shoo!TAG™ had a dramatic reduction in flies. After two weeks observation, I tagged the other animals so they could receive the same comfort and benefit. Again, after 36 hours, all newly tagged dogs, horse and cow demonstrated the same reduction in pest problems as the test group did. I knew then we had a winner!

-Kathy M. Heiney, Wimberley, TX
Developer and Founder of Energetic Solutions, Ltd. and Shoo!TAGâ„¢

This, explicitly, is not science. Merely saying ‘you saw’ some results is exactly the same as saying “My lucky rabbit’s foot won me the lottery!” Until you set up a controlled, double-blind experiment, you’re not offering evidence, you’re just tendering an anecdote.

Nor is any of the ‘explanation’ of the supposed mechanics of Shoo!TAG™ offered on the Shoo!TAG™ site under the tab called ‘Science’, actually anything of the sort. You don’t get to call yourself a scientist just because you know words like ‘quantum’ and ‘electromagnetic’. ((It is significant, in my opinion, that since I criticized the Shoo!TAG inventors’ claim to have had their science published in the (non-existant) Quantum Agriculture Journal, they have removed all references and links to the pdf which purportedly originated in that journal. Their allegiance to the dubious ‘Professor William Nelson’ has also evidently waned – he no longer features as their ‘voice of authority’ anywhere on the site.))

Lately I’ve been pretty much resolved to letting Shoo!TAG™ take its place in the Museum of Cow Lore – something for us all to wheel out every now and then as an in-joke. Dumb pieces of pseudoscientific trash like Shoo!TAG™ tend to flourish in the United Flakey States of America, where 45% percent of people believe the Bible is the literal word of God, and some 20% believe in angels. It truly belongs there.

But this week Atlas informed me that Shoo!TAG™ now has an Australian web domain, and I see on it that they have some several dozen Australian suppliers, as well as Australian offices and representation.

They’re on my turf now.

OK, so where were we? Oh, that’s right, God had just made the fish and the birds and was patting himself on the back. Again. Crikey – what is it with all the self-congratulation? How annoying does that make God sound? Aside from anything, it shows a distinctly un-Godly lack of humility.

Day 6:

~ And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

~ And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Jesus Christ! There He goes again! With no-one to cast a critical eye over the proceedings, God might have been able to convince Himself that all his handiwork was the bees knees, but if you ask me He could have used a good supervisor. If we were concerned with the Truth, in a proper accounting of things somewhere about here there would be a passage that read something like:

~ And God said, Let the earth bring forth cancer and leprosy, cockroaches and merchant bankers and Scientologists. Let there be abundant flooding and drought, and earthquakes and plagues of mites. Let there be hydrocephalic children, hemophiliacs and fatally conjoined twins. And behold, it was so. And God looked on all that he had done and saw that it truly sucked big time.

Where are the passages like that, eh? Funnily enough, not in Genesis. Or anywhere for that matter. God happily takes credit for all things bright and beautiful, but all things ugly and screwed-up are conveniently ignored or blamed on someone else. ((Satan or humans, typically)) Hands up who amongst us doesn’t recognize that kind of person in the workplace?

And, as I mentioned last episode, it’s here we start to see God’s preoccupation with ‘creeping things’. There’s more:

~ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

God seems obsessed with creeping things in much the same way as Fundamentalist Christians are fixated on atheists and homosexuals. It’s almost like He made the damned things but can’t quite believe they exist.

You will also notice that in that previous passage ((I’m reproducing all these verses from Genesis in order, with no excisions, lest you think I’m being partisan)) God creates man, bizarrely lapsing into the possessive plural personal pronoun. ‘Let Us make man in Our image’? There’s someone else around? Who the crap is that? Are they the ones responsible for the water, maybe? Or is it, perhaps, that, in the manner of all those who abrogate responsibility, God is just trying to avoid taking the whole blame for making humans?

~ And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Again with the creeping things. And back into the singular personal pronoun. God is supposed to have created an entire universe and He’s still shit at grammar? It’s obviously a manifestation of ‘omnipotence’ which excludes language skills.

Genesis 1 ends at this point, with the newly-made sun setting on Day 6 (which is really Day 3 if you’re talking about days actually being determined by the Earth’s orbit around the Sun) and we take up Genesis 2 with:

Day 7:

~ And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

God is so knackered from all that creatin’ that he’s done that he has to put his feet up. But people – HE’S OMNIPOTENT! Why the fuck does He need to REST? Does it occur to anyone else that this is pure unadulterated baloney?

Seriously, you can’t have it both ways – God is either omnipotent and can do anything he likes with no restriction, or HE’S NOT. You can’t be Almighty God and be ‘kind of’ omnipotent. Do Christian people who believe in the Bible never think about these things? ((God demonstrates his lack of omnipotence numerous times in the Old Testament. For instance, a few paragraphs from where we are in Genesis 2, after Adam and Eve have eaten of the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, realised that they are naked, and so hidden themselves from God, He walks through the Garden of Eden calling out ‘Where art thou?’ Well, of course he already knows this, obviously, so it’s quite plain that he’s just being a bastard.))

Anyway, Week 2 continues on much as Week 1, with God creating man again (it’s there in writing, I’m not making it up) and straightaway telling him: ‘I’ve made all this stuff, but you can’t play with it unless I say so!’ – quickly assuming a petulant and vindictive tone that doesn’t let up for most of the Old Testament. Oh, He also creates woman too, pretty much as an afterthought, and not until after Adam has named every living creature on the planet (and after He has created them for the second time too):

~ And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

I imagine it to have gone something like this:

God: Hey look at this Adam. Whaddya think?

Adam: It looks like it should be called a ‘rabbit’!

God: Righty-ho! So it shall be! What about this?

Adam: It looks like it should be called a ‘spotted toad’.

God: Brilliant! I would NEVER have thought of that! What about this? I think this is quite good, if I do say so myself. And I do, often.

Adam: I think that should be called a ‘procompsognathus’.

God: Hahaha! Awesome. that should keep the Creationists on their toes! What about this?

Adam: Oh, I dunno. Er, a ‘wallaby’? No, how about a ‘squid’? Look, how long is this going to take? I’m kind of tired. I’m not omnipotent like some people.

God: Chin up, Skipper, we’re just getting started! Look at this! It’s really quite well crafted – I think you should call it a ‘sea cucumber’. But it’s up to you of course! Don’t let me sway you!

Adam: You really need a girlfriend. Come to think of it, so do I.

I don’t think I need to point out to you, faithful Acowlytes, that, as we’re in Week 2 with God still creating stuff, it kind of makes nonsense of the claim that He did it all in seven days. He quite explicitly did not. But for the moment I will leave God and Adam naming the siphonophores and the echinoderms, as we ponder what God has been doing ever since those first couple of enthusiastic weeks.

Mostly making a nuisance of Himself, is my opinion.