Vaccine Deniers Plan New Year's Eve Ad

Perhaps fueled by Michele "Vaccines Cause Retardation" Bachmann, a vaccine denial group plans to show their latest ad to the one million+ throng that will gather in Times Square on New Years Eve. The ad has already been running twice an hour there since last week.

“In 2012, NVIC is marking our 30th year of public education and consumer empowerment,” said NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher. “With so many health care options available today, becoming an educated health care consumer is essential and our pro-informed consent message will be seen by millions on New Year’s Eve.” The full-color LED screen on which NVIC’s ad is appearing is located near the Times Square Information Center in the heart of the Broadway district and is one of the largest digital display screens in the Times Square area. An estimated one million people pack the Times Square area during New Year’s Eve and the celebration is viewed on television by billions of people around the world.

(Via - The Friendly Atheist)

Today In Dick Size Silliness

I wasn't going to bother with this story, but since about a hundred of you have emailed it to me....

Men whose index fingers are shorter than their ring fingers may have longer penises, according to a South Korean study published in the Asian Journal of Andrology. "According to our data ... the shorter index (second) finger than ring (fourth) finger you have, the longer stretched penile length you have," wrote Tae Beom Kim at the urology department of Gachon University Gil Hospital in Incheon, South Korea, in reply to questions from Reuters.

You can stop looking at your hands now.

Airborne Crashes

The class action suit against cold remedy fraudsters Airborne has been settled for $23m, after its makers admitted that the "science" behind their "preventive" was a study conducted by non-professionals.

Customers of the fizzy snake oil can turn in their receipts and be reimbursed for the cost of up to six boxes. As part of the settlement, Airborne must take out full page ads in national publications advising on how to get refunds. The makers have also been forced to create a website about the case. However, they claim no wrong-doing in their settlement agreement.

Since sales of Airborne have exceeded $100M, the makers are still going to walk away extremely wealthy. And where's the lawsuit against Emergen-C? I suppose like many things, if you believe it works, it probably does.

If You're Crazy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands

According to WingNutDaily, liberals are a clinically insane.

Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.

"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

Here are the symptoms of your insanity:

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

* creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
* satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
* augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
* rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

An "acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist." BWAH HA HA. I'm clapping, are you?

Goodbye 90 Day Jane

For about a week I've been following the internet hullabaloo about 90 Day Jane, the woman who announced that she would count down the number of days to her suicide with daily blog posts.

I am going to kill myself in 90 days. What else should i say? This blog is not a cry for help or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to? I mean, as an atheist I feel life has no greater purpose. My generation has had no great depression, no great war and our biggest obstacle is beating Halo 3. So, if I feel like saying “game over”, why can’t I? Anyway, I hope you enjoy my thoughts as the clock runs out. Also, if blogspot takes this down before i’m gone just go to www.90dayjane.com. Please don’t attempt to “help” me. If you want to truly help, please send me ideas on how to do the deed. thx-Jane

The blog garnered massive attention and "Jane" reflected so in her posts, talking about media companies that wanted her story. Like most, I was pretty sure it's all some viral marketing scheme, a goth version of LonelyGirl15. But the comments were hilarious. An example: "Can you make it nine day Jane? Seriously. Attention whore. But either way, before you die, can you post pix of your clam?"

Anyway, just when things were getting very interesting, Jane pulled the plug yesterday in a post called "Day 0: The Resolve":

My closeness to this project must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours. 90DayJane was meant to mirror the tragic figure, Christine Chubbuck. Newscaster Christine Chubbuck committed suicide in 1974 by shooting herself in the head live on air. She was very vocal about her depression to those around her and gave every indication of her exact intentions leading up to the event. Sadly, no one reacted or helped Christine and those left behind could only ask “why”. Her story both inspired and terrified me because I can truly empathize with her rage and even her isolation. I wondered how Christine’s life and subsequent suicide would would play out in our time. Would the internet be yet another place of isolation to her or an escape?

Ah, interesting. For those too young to remember TV anchor Christine Chubbuck, her live on-the-air suicide in Sarasota, Florida was one of the most shocking stories of 1974. Just a few years later her story was part of my journalism course work at UCF.

90 Day Jane is already taken down. So what did Jane's experiment teach us? That even a woman threatening imminent suicide will be asked for pics of her clam? Anything else? Anything? I don't think so. Oh well, at least now we've got her copycat, 90 Day Joe.