Rip N Roll campaign snuck this one in. ACL too busy to notice.

So ACL, you just got RipNRolled.

In case you don’t know what the story is about, see this article and this press release. Short story: Australian Christian Lobby organises a bunch of complaints to get an ad taken down for being “offensive”.  Adshel pulls the ad. People find out, get outraged (including me, I wrote to Adshel telling them how spineless they were and that they owed the campaign free advertising for the inconvenience), the backlash causes Adsel to grow a spine and stand up for a safe sex campaign against bronze age morons called the ACL.

The end.

Bible guarantees! Wow, it must be true then.

Unclear on whether that’s Greenwich mean time or whether it’ll be a rolling event as the day tracks around the globe. So as an Australian I won’t get a chance to repent but those in later time zones will presumably get a bit of lead time, perhaps to arrange for their pets to be looked after by some left behind atheists.

So let’s look on the bright side of the rapture
Let’s assume that all the religious believers are taken up for processing with just the dirty non-believers left behind. Unlike each of those religions, I’ll assume they’re all going to be treated the same: you believe in god/gods then hey – you won the irrational thinking bonus of a lifetime.

Chaplains out of schools
It will get NSCP Chaplains out of our supposed-to-be secular public education system in Australia (so we’d save $222m from the budget recently announced) and stop me from having to complain about the dodgy NSCP mobs (e.g. Scripture Union, Access Ministries) that run this tax funded religious racket.

School time would be more ethical and less bronze age
The only option in SRE time in NSW would be the Primary Ethics course or “non scripture” (I dubbed the trial The first useful scripture lesson in NSW history). So ethics teachers still need to turn up to teach the kiddies next week as they’d be left behind having shunned the nuns. It’s possible other ethics teachers would need to be covered by the Atheists as it is a secular course after all and makes no religious claims.

Public education would no longer be playing second fiddle to private religious schools and would have billions of dollars to spend on much needed facilities, materials, staff and land acquisitions in cramped schools.

Special treatment at all levels. (Image from SMH)

The calls for creationism to be taught in science class would stop.

No more door to door
There’ll be no one knocking on doors in cheap white short sleeve shirts and black ties while you’re trying to get a sleep in. The plus side is that there’ll be little piles of exactly that sort of clothing left around the streets in the post rapture world. Might want to discard their magic Mormon underwear.

Style repellent too.

Peace and quiet
No church bells on Sunday.
No more ridiculously early morning call to prayer in Muslim countries.
No more wailing at the wailing wall.
No more batshitcrazy types picketing funerals.
No more rioting mobs any time a holy book is destroyed.

London's finest out in force.

Discrimination laws will have less exemptions
No religious run businesses/schools left with ridiculous exemptions from the discrimination laws (e.g. allowing the expelling gays or single mothers from schools).

Less nonsense in healthcare
All hospitals left running would offer IVF, abortion services, post rape medical treatment, contraception advice etc. Chemists/pharmacists would all give out medication based on medical need and wouldn’t veto for their own personal reasons.

No nut-cases like this lady picketing female health clinics.

Crazy old bat that pickets a clinic in Surry Hills

No people thinking that scraps of Mary Mackillop miracle placebo items are miraculous. HIV/AIDS treatment and vaccinations could move forward instead of having ridiculous religious leaders impeding the flow of medical aid and advice.

Business and property
The tax system would have a massive amount of money to spend on things as it would stop handouts to the tune of billions to religious organisations.

Sanitarium would have to start paying taxes on its weetbix profits, meaning the tax free status it uses to compete with other cereal companies would evaporate. A slew of other for profit religious owned businesses would no longer be rorting an unfair tax advantage to put normal businesses out of the market.

There’d be lots of prime real estate that could be turned into useful spaces rather than just sitting empty except for an hour a week when a few people get up on a Sunday to do work. The new users of those buildings would pay council rates like everyone else.

Politics and equality would improve a bit
We’d have no more Fred Nile in parliament so someone else would get a chance at the dumbest minister award (plenty of candidates, but Abbott will be gone so the position is open).

Top priorities for Fred.

Gays could get married and have equal rights… you know, like they should have always had.

Child safety
The world’s largest paedophile cover-up group would cease to exist meaning thousands of children would not be exposed to predatory Catholic priests and crimes not covered up then simply shuffled on to new areas. Previous victims could be given free right to loot some of the gold that the Catholic church loves to hoard.

Women’s rights
We’d no longer have clerichead bearded Islamic morons telling us how to beat wives or rape them in a Sharia compliant way and brave Muslim women having to stand up and tell them they’re dickheads.

There's nothing real funny about this, but it makes a point.

Environment and Science
A whole bunch of trees cut down to produce uninspiring religious texts would be saved or used to make more interesting or enlightened books. There’d be slightly more storage room in bedside tables in hotels without the Gideon minions doing their work.

We’d (sadly) lose the learned Cardinal Pell and his climate science denial ways (because as a person who reads the bible he knows better than scientists).

Atheists/Agnostics and secularists can get back to adult matters
And finally Atheists, although they’d have been wrong if the rapture happens would finally get that evidence after thousands of years of waiting.
Secularists will get their separation of church and state they’ve been asking for..

Any others?

James Randi at TAM (doing a bit of magic)

1800s: Charles Darwin

1800s as Charles Darwin?

1400-1500s: Leonardo Da Vinci

Further back in time: Leonardo Da Vinci?

(someone at TAM pointed out this similarity)

Any other points in history where Skeptics/Men with magical powers have appeared?

I think the evidence is pretty clear and no real skeptic could doubt it. So that just leaves the question of:

How does Randi roll?

Time sled?

Time sled?

Tardis?

Tardis?

Phone booth?

Bill and Ted style phonebooth?

Delorian?

Delorian?

Or time train?

Time train?

Next time will not swallow the coat hanger whole.

Just read, it’s easier to explain by reading the court transcript (from this article).

Counsel: What is your name?

Chrysler: Chrysler. Arnold Chrysler.

Counsel: Is that your own name?

Chrysler: Whose name do you think it is?

Counsel: I am just asking if it is your name.

Chrysler: And I have just told you it is. Why do you doubt it?

Counsel: It is not unknown for people to give a false name in court.

Chrysler: Which court?

Counsel: This court.

Chrysler: What is the name of this court?

Counsel: This is No 5 Court.

Chrysler: No, that is the number of this court. What is the name of this court?

Counsel: It is quite immaterial what the name of this court is!

Chrysler: Then perhaps it is immaterial if Chrysler is really my name.

Counsel: No, not really, you see because…

Judge: Mr Lovelace?

Counsel: Yes, m’lud?

Judge: I think Mr Chrysler is running rings round you already. I would try a new line of attack if I were you.

Counsel: Thank you, m’lud.

Chrysler: And thank you from ME, m’lud. It’s nice to be appreciated.

Judge: Shut up, witness.

Chrysler: Willingly, m’lud. It is a pleasure to be told to shut up by you. For you, I would…

Judge: Shut up, witness. Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Now, Mr Chrysler – for let us assume that that is your name – you are accused of purloining in excess of 40,000 hotel coat hangers.

Chrysler: I am.

Counsel: Can you explain how this came about?

Chrysler: Yes. I had 40,000 coats which I needed to hang up.

Counsel: Is that true?

Chrysler: No.

Counsel: Then why did you say it?

Chrysler: To attempt to throw you off balance.

Counsel: Off balance?

Chrysler: Certainly. As you know, all barristers seek to undermine the confidence of any hostile witness, or defendant. Therefore it must be equally open to the witness, or defendant, to try to shake the confidence of a hostile barrister.

Counsel: On the contrary, you are not here to indulge in cut and thrust with me. You are only here to answer my questions.

Chrysler: Was that a question?

Counsel: No.

Chrysler: Then I can’t answer it.

Judge: Come on, Mr Lovelace! I think you are still being given the run-around here. You can do better than that. At least, for the sake of the English bar, I hope you can.

Counsel: Yes, m’lud. Now, Mr Chrysler, perhaps you will describe what reason you had to steal 40,000 coat hangers?

Chrysler: Is that a question?

Counsel: Yes.

Chrysler: It doesn’t sound like one. It sounds like a proposition which doesn’t believe in itself. You know – “Perhaps I will describe the reason I had to steal 40,000 coat hangers… Perhaps I won’t… Perhaps I’ll sing a little song instead…”

Judge: In fairness to Mr Lovelace, Mr Chrysler, I should remind you that barristers have an innate reluctance to frame a question as a question. Where you and I would say, “Where were you on Tuesday?”, they are more likely to say, “Perhaps you could now inform the court of your precise whereabouts on the day after that Monday?”. It isn’t, strictly, a question, and it is not graceful English but you must pretend that it is a question and then answer it, otherwise we will be here for ever. Do you understand?

Chrysler: Yes, m’lud.

Judge: Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Mr Chrysler, why did you steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers, knowing as you must have that hotel coat hangers are designed to be useless outside hotel wardrobes?

Chrysler: Because I build and sell wardrobes which are specially designed to take nothing but hotel coat hangers.

An amusing day in court that one.

Australian model Nicole Trunfio acknowledging the profession of holding up clothes.

From the guys at PhDComics

And I guess just typical journalist misquoting:

The curse of headlines.

Climate change denier and creationist. God help us if Abbott gets in.

I really wish Abbott hadn’t back stabbed Malcolm Turnbull out of the Liberal hot spot. He’s at least got half a brain more than Abbott and was prepared to take a stand for the environment (before the liberal party bribepolitical donation companies got their claws into him). If elected he’ll be our version of George Bush: ignorant, smarmy, religious as anything and completely unsuitable for the top job. He couldn’t keep his religion out of the Health ministerial workings imagine how things will regress with him in the PM seat.

Abbott was so bad as health minister I wrote to John Howard suggesting he should be sacked.

Although I’d prefer the Greens to get a bit more of a say (to make up for Labor’s back-down on taxing carbon and capitulation to mining interests) or perhaps a wild-card like the secular party to reel back in the massive bribery/infection of church into state. But for no other reasons than the National Broadband Network (NBN) and the GFC recession free status of Australia (unique in the developed nations) Labor should get another round. It seems the dummies are hung up on Rudd’s disposal and yes, it was rough, but let’s look at policy instead. The situation is as it is: both leaders trampled the guy before them. Deal with it.. Who stabbed who in the back is kinda expected since the “Et tu, Brute?” story has political origins.

Et Tu Brute...

Anyhow, if Abbott gets in all this talk about stopping the boats won’t be important. If Abbott wins the NZ PM had better get a boat phone system in place because hoards of Aussies will be paddling their way to New Zealand strapped to anything that can float!

Tony's direct line to stop the boats.

And if that’s not making any sense:

and the scary movie rip off (probably better known):

You’d think Tony Abbott would steer clear of phones altogether after getting stuck in the outback and unable to work a phone:

There was some discussion about using a satellite phone Mr Conway had left with the party to summon help in the form of a helicopter from Kings Creek station.

As the light was fading, the chopper pilot wouldn’t be able to land but could drop some supplies.

“Beer, water, food and rugs. Especially beer,” quipped the Opposition Leader.

Just one problem with that plan.

No-one in the group could get the satellite phone to work.

After failing to make a voice call, Mr Abbott tried sending a text to the only mobile phone number he could remember, that of his press secretary Claire Kimball back in Canberra.

“WERELOSTNEARFOSSILCREEK” the text said. No one could work out the key on the sat-phone to put spaces between words.

It’s probably just as well for Ms Kimball’s peace of mind that this alarming text failed to transmit.

While the concept of the armed forces/navy calling the PM isn’t particularly novel, it makes for a good visual though.

Check out #boatPhone on twitter for other news.

One of the google queries that found my site was “How to spot a fake power balance“. I mean it’s an important issue right? These things are bloody expensive at $59.95 a pop and who knows what sort of impact a misaligned energy holographic sticker thingy might have on those pesky meridian lines or “natural energy”!

So when do I know I’m being scammed by a power balance bracelet?
Let’s for the sake of this define “getting scammed” or “ripped off” as “paying good money for something that doesn’t have any special ability and is just a piece of plastic with a sticker on it”.

So for the people considering buying one and worried about getting scammed: relax. I have a very easy guide as to when you’ve been ripped off.

1. If you buy it direct from power balance: you’re getting ripped off.

2. If you buy one from an authorised dealer or distributor: you’re getting scammed.

3. If you buy a fake one you will also be getting scammed, albeit slightly less. The difference is entirely down to a single metric to determine how much you’re getting scammed. If you pay $59.95 then you’ve been scammed 59.95 units on the power balance scam-o-meter (also known as Australian dollars or AUD). If you have some shifty looking guy (well.. a shifty looking guy who isn’t officially affiliated with the power balance company) sell you one for $29.95 you’ve been scammed out of twenty-nine bucks and ninety-five cents BUT that means when you stand next to the person who bought a “real” one: you’re actually $30 less scammed than that guy. So in essence you’ve got the same placebo for half the price.

Half price placebo is better than full price placebo.

So out of the possible options presented so far: your least scammy way of purchasing one is from the seedy non-genuine powerband guy offering you cheaper ones. The authentic power balance bracelet at full price is the biggest scam.

Avoiding power band scam!

Power balance bands: You can spot a fake one easily. They're all fake.

The only way you don’t get scammed is if you got it free (perhaps discarded by someone reading my earlier blog or other people exposing the hoax of power balance bracelets). I suppose you could steal one, but really: it’s illegal and there’s one thing stupider than buying one in the first place and that’s going to jail for one. But it would actually cost the original scammers (or their minion local scammers) some money, perhaps less than a dollar a unit. Go into a bargain/discount store full of kiddy’s toys and plastic crap and find the cheapest plastic wrist band and that’s probably what you’ve cost them. So not worth going to jail for. Perhaps the “fake” product will drive them out of business and they’ll have to get real jobs.

So, instead of the placebo peddlers of powerbalance products: trust honest Nathan’s snake oil detection services to steer you clear of scams: if you buy a power balance band, real or fake: you’re getting SCAMMED sweetheart.. Instead (or if by some miracle I’ve stopped you wasting $60), might I suggest a donation to one of these fine, secular, charity organisations:

• The Fred Hollows foundation (donate here) – restoring sight to the poor throughout the world
• Oxfam Australia (donate here) – a number of great charitable works around the world
• Australian Red Cross (donate here) – neutral humanitarian aid with an extensive history of helping.

Sorry if that last bit was a bit preachy, but fuck me: $60 for a bullshit plastic bracelet? I mean take a look at what that means to the above charities and what they can do with it versus your typical evil scumbag placebo scam artist rolling around in piles of $100 bills having cocaine snorting contests with $10,000 a night hookers.

At $60 a pop, I'd say they could just about afford it.

Update: this also applies to iRenew bracelets. Check out how similar the claims are (and the dodgy tests). Thanks to Frank Montez for pointing them out.

From their website:

The iRenew Bracelet does this by helping to balance your body’s subtle BioField.

and a bunch of claims about strength etc. Also even more placebo-ey than powerbalance:

Keep in mind the positive biological effects a balanced biofeld has for your plants and animals as well! The most efficient way to benefit your plants and animals with the technology is to use an iRenew Energy Balance System product to charge their water prior to dissemination. You can also place an Energy Balance System hologram on your pet’s water and food bowls or on the pots in which your plants reside.

Wow! Really? I guess next time I disseminate my plants, I’d better dose up the water on good quality plastic placebo.
Although I can say that the iRenew is slightly less of a scam than the power balance. Going back to my metric on the “fake” bracelets being cheaper and thus less of a scam. These are apparently USD$19.95, so a lot better *cough*value*cough* than power balance.
I’d still like to see them outperform a rubber band or bit of string though for placebo value goodness.

UPDATE: See newer post about Power balance admitting they were deceptive. No longer able to make any of the claims in Australia. So before you start going on at me: power balance themselves say these things do nothing.

Not about a particular person, I'd be here all year filling these out!

Pretty big industry this tax evasion thing.

Let's be clear: negative gearing robs taxpayers and feeds bank profits.

Have my doubts it'll be fixed.. But..

Wonder whether they'll actually look into it?

Hope it gets a chuckle from someone at the ATO.. 

Proof the easter bunny exists!

It would actually work well with the toasted cheese sandwich one for a double imaginary friend quick breakfast.

As Easter (I’m going to call it Zombie Jesus weekend from now on and wish people a happyZombieWeekend) has rolled around, check out last year’s Easter funnies post of mine (the videos are well worth a watch).

PS Hell of a lot of talent in that barista by the way. Impressive!

The "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign.

So there was something about a nude photo snapped by some other dodgy sportsman. That’s when she became truly noteworthy (the law of “flashed celebrity pink bits” kicks in.. a la Paris Hilton et al) and the frenzy began. Somewhere in there she and her meat-head sportsman decided to call it quits.

Latest development in the saga is plumbers called to try and retrieve “an item of value” from the toilet. So a $200K diamond ring is somewhere between toilet seat and deep ocean outfall. Although as a model it’s a nice change that she might throw something other than expensive meals down the toilet.

I wonder if at the moment we have Lara Bingle bent over the toilet yelling to her engagement ring “Where the bloody hell are you?”.

Boom tish.

The BBC’s graphic on not sitting up “too straight”:

Correct posture (image from the BBC)

But the real position for corporate situations I think is quite often more like this:

Correct corporate posture.

Captain Planet vs Avatar's Na'vi

Not convinced?

Captain Planet!

Vs

Avatar Na'vi

The evidence stacks up

Both got mullets/long hair, blue skin and a love of mother earth that borders on x rated. The Na’vi are at home in skimpy loin cloths and Captain Planet is at home in red lycra underpants and dashing red boots. Both have clashed with giant robotic bulldozers, both have fought to save trees and both fell from grace to rise again with the help of the animals/mother Earth to drive out evil badguys who are hell bent on messing with the environment to the maximum extend apparently for no real reason other than greed.

The superman theory

So come clean Avatar cast: are we going to find out later that, like superman, Captain Planet is just a wayward Na’vi? Perhaps he floated across the expanse of space via one of those funky floating mountain lumps when a vine or two snapped. Then due to his link with the power (powers combined!) of the Earth he kicks arse on planet Earth for a while to inspire a multicultural bunch of “special kids”.

And I may just have found the missing link..

The missing Avatar-Captain Planet link?

Maybe it’s time for a captain planet movie? Just un-stretch the 3D models and.. well.. you’ve pretty much got the basics of a captain planet TV show.