Day 514 – I’d like to report a murder

Ooh dear. Professor Cookbook is still heading down the lunacy rabbithole. Sadly(?) he’s taking his 146,000 twitter followers with him. He responded to a horrifically fake video on [checks notes] @Katwoman6620’s…

(Mother of 2 awake teens, love travel, history, books, animals, footy & snooker. Snorkeling is my happy place. Hate cruelty, ignorance & social climbers!)

…timeline, musing:

Perhaps it’s all finally beginning to unravel. As Dr Judy Mikovits predicted it would nearly 2 years ago. Maybe the conspiracy is real (after all).

And then went on to suggest that the vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 wasn’t actually a vaccine at all. Thankfully, in stepped Professor Shabir Madhi – Prof of Vaccinology at Wits – with this gem:

Ouch. Is he even still breathing?

Of course, there’s a serious side to this as well. Tim’s cult hangs on his every word, and so they now likely also all think that the Covid-19 vaccine isn’t a vaccine. And while Tim has been been circling the edge of the anti-vax black hole for a while now, it does seem that he has finally been pulled in by the immense gravitational force acting upon his ridiculously large ego.

There’s free speech and there’s blatant, dangerous misinformation. It’s time for UCT to take away that honorary title that he so proudly displays right after his cookbook credentials, and to distance themselves from this total and utter moonbat. Prevent any further reputational damage to their institution via this direct association.

It would send out a strong message that abusing the power and privilege which they bestowed upon him – and others – will not be tolerated. And damn straight, too: this sort of BS costs lives.

Day 41, Part 2 – More Noakes nonsense

Linking to this post here, which says it all better than I ever could.

Cherry-picking, sowing malicious seeds of doubt, double standards, victim mentality – they’re all there.

And this explanation for taking the time and effort to write it at all:

…misinformation and disinformation thrive when nobody calls it out, and here, the disinformation is potentially dangerous, in that vaccine-assisted herd immunity is necessary for Covid-19 to become a relatively trivial problem for all of us.

Brilliant.

Day 19 – “Tim Noakes interview is dangerously misleading”

Indeed.

Professor Cookbook gave an interview to CCFM (“we play a mix of contemporary Christian music, combined with compelling chat, views and interviews”) about Covid-19.

Nathan Geffen from Groundup reports that the interview was dangerously misleading.

Professor Tim Noakes gave an interview to CCFM that has been widely circulated on social media. In it Noakes makes false and misleading statements.

The interview starts off with Noakes admitting he is not a virus expert. If the interview had ended at this point it would have been accurate.

Ouch!

I haven’t listened to the interview, because of:

a) The radio station,
b) The interviewee, and
c) The combination of points a) and b) above.

but it certainly wouldn’t be out of place for Tim to make false and misleading statements.

The cap certainly fits, even if the trousers are a bit iffy.

There’s a very valid school of thought that says that responding to this sort of thing merely amplifies the reach and message of the original interview. Then there’s the other equally valid side of the coin which says that if you don’t challenge this sort of nonsense, it will just continue unabated (actually, it seems to continue to ooze like shit from a leaky sewer whatever you do, but anyway…).

Sadly, given that both these points of view hold merit and validity, there is likely no right answer here, but Geffen’s piece is a robust, undramatic, step-by-step takedown of Noakes’ BS. I like it for its simplicity.

And for that second paragraph. Thank you.

Without Chemicals

Spotted today at my local, terrible Pick n Pay, this stuff:

I will always be attracted by the word “microbe”. And so it was with this product, nestling amongst the cleaning products, with its owl in a nurses hat, studious-looking glasses and a bow tie, carrying a stethoscope. Why does he need the glasses? Don’t owls have amazing eyesight?
And what’s with the stethoscope? Is he a doctor, and not actually a professor? And why does the patient have cardiac or pulmonary problems if they’re using this wonderful product? None of this makes any sense.

But to be honest, it was the blurb below that really caught my eye.

Clean surfaces safely, without chemicals!

Oh really?
Well, if you’re going to do it without chemicals, then I’m guessing that there must be a motherfunning genie in your spray bottle there, because everything is made of chemicals, dahlink (possibly even genies, actually). But we’ll come to that in a second, because wait… there’s more:

Welcome to the new science of cleaning.
Harnessing the power of beneficial microbes to rid surfaces of harmful germs.

Oh really?
Microbes when they’re beneficial, germs when they’re harmful. It’s pure bacterial racism you’re looking at right there, folks.

But would you really want to spray your surfaces with microbes, beneficial or not, and no chemicals?
Well, it seems that actually, you don’t have to do either, because turn the bottle around and there’s this:

See it?

Ingredients: Aqua, Sodium Citrate, Orange Extract

Well, Aqua is just the posh word for water (which is a chemical), Sodium Citrate is the chemical name for the chemical Sodium Citrate, and your orange extract is basically a group of chemicals that comes from oranges.

That’s an awful lot of chemicals for a product which, just a bottle-turn away suggests that you can clean stuff “without chemicals”.

At least it’s halaal. And that’s likely to be because there is no pork in it and no microbes in there either. Beneficial or otherwise.

So I really am left wondering how this product is “harnessing the power of beneficial microbes to rid surfaces of harmful germs”.
Sure, the chemical in this solution might knock out some of the bugs growing on your kitchen surfaces, but it’s likely to be really ineffective when compared with “traditional” (chemical) cleaning agents, because although Sodium Citrate (which is the chemical name for the chemical Sodium Citrate, as mentioned above) might kill some “harmful germs”, a) it’s really rubbish at it, and b) it’ll kill just as many “beneficial microbes” as well.

Obviously, I didn’t buy any of this stuff, but I would fully expect the limited citrus scent to be overwhelmed with the stench of bullshit.

I’m done here for the moment, but visit the Professor Microbe website and you’ll learn that:

Professor Microbe™ uses Nano-Natural technology with Active Nanoids to cut through fat, oil and grease.

u wot m9?

Yeah, remember that BSc you were going to do in Nano-Natural Science? The one that had the foundation course in Active Nanoids?
You know: the one with all the made up words that sound ever so sciencey, but don’t actually exist?

And don’t even get me started on their “The Technology” page. It’s so deeply unscientific on every line that I’d even bet that Tim Noakes is jealous.

I shall return to Professor Microbe™ in a future post, and share more details on their utter nonsense from a considered, scientific point of view.

Silly Diet Saturday

Someone once said:

The good thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe in it or not.

And that person was right. Of course, there are other good things about science as well. I’m one of them, for example.
Sadly, not everyone respects science (or me, actually) in the way that we deserve.

I recognise that posting this on a Saturday won’t keep the cult away.
Comment moderation is, as always, enabled.
Don’t @ me, although previous experience has suggested that you surely will.

The thing is that this cherry-picking of convenient bits of scientific data is merely the gateway drug to ignoring facts altogether. I expect to see many vocal LCHFers to head down the anti-vax spiral with Uncle Tim anytime soon.