WOO FILES: HELL ON EARTH AND PORK IN THE WOODPILE

I've recently come across two intriguing stories in my online wanderings that I felt deserved a mention here. 

First from the Daily Mail in the UK comes word that Oxford researchers are conducting studies that could literally create a close approximation to Hell on Earth (click here for a glimpse of what this might look like). This could be achieved in three ways. First, we could extend convicts’ lives so that they could serve out incredibly long sentences for particularly vile crimes. Alternately, we could alter their perception of the passage of time to make a short time span feel like decades or centuries. This process would be achieved either chemically, via pharmaceuticals, or by uploading the convict’s mind in to a digital simulation and running it a million times faster than normal, “thus enabling a criminal to serve a 1000 year sentence in eight and a half hours”. Of course, this brings up the possibility of sentencing some criminals to an virtual ETERNITY of infinite suffering. The article suggests:

If these technologies are developed, one crime that could ever justify eternal imprisonment was something that would endanger mankind. ‘Suppose there was some physics experiment that stood a decent chance of generating a black hole that could destroy the planet and all future generations,’ said Dr Roache. 'If someone deliberately set up an experiment like that, I could see that being the kind of supercrime that would justify an eternal sentence.’

Frankly, the fact that there are scientists who are even thinking of going down this particular avenue of research is a sign of the End Times.

Our next example of Woo in the News is somewhat less troubling... if you're not too sensitive about the issue of human origins, that is. Because, according to Eugene M. McCarthy, PhD, it is apparently possible that the human race is actually a hybrid race that resulted from the cross-breeding of chimpanzees and… something else. 

At his comprehensive and fascinating website, Macroevolution.net, McCarthy presents a shockingly bizarre hypothesis in astonishingly convincing fashion. He writes: 

One fact, however, suggests the need for an open mind: as it turns out, many features that distinguish humans from chimpanzees also distinguish them from all other primates. Features found in human beings, but not in other primates, cannot be accounted for by hybridization of a primate with some other primate. If hybridization is to explain such features, the cross will have to be between a chimpanzee and a nonprimate — an unusual, distant cross to create an unusual creature. Looking at a subset of the listed traits, however, it's clear that the other parent in this hypothetical cross that produced the first human would be an intelligent animal with a protrusive, cartilaginous nose, a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, short digits, and a naked skin. It would be terrestrial, not arboreal, and adaptable to a wide range of foods and environments.

So, apparently, the other half of the equation is...PIGS!!! Hell, I dunno folks… I’m just the messenger. I should note, however, that this ingenious theory does have its critics. But I'll leave it for you to decide.

PARADIGM SHIFT: WOO IN THE NEWS FROM DRUDGE

Reading today’s Drudge Report, we’re treated to a plethora of bizarre news stories, including one about an upcoming Amy Winehouse “hologram” tour, and Newt Gingrich’s plan to save the world from North Korean nukes AND giant solar flares. But perhaps the most intriguing stories involve a breakthrough in mind-reading technology as reported on by FOX News (which turns out to be not quite so groundbreaking as the headline suggests). From the article:

"There’s a wide variation in how people’s brains work under a scanner – some people have better brains for fMRI – and so if you were to pick a participant at random it might be that their reconstructions are really good, or it might be that their reconstructions are really poor, which is why we averaged across all the participants,” Cowen said. For now, he added, you shouldn’t worry about others snooping on your memories or forcibly extracting information. “This sort of technology can only read active parts of the brain. So you couldn’t read passive memories – you would have to get the person to imagine the memory to read it,” Cowen said.

The images in question:

Now, we do have to keep in mind that the images in this article were created a full two years ago – the paper based on the findings being published just now – so who knows what advances have been made in the interim?

Another intriguing report in today’s Drudge involves this report from Extreme Tech, which describes upcoming trials in human suspended animation. From the article:

At a hospital in Pittsburgh, surgeons are now allowed to place patients into a state of suspended animation. If a patient arrives with a traumatic injury, and attempts to restart their heart have failed — if they’re on the doorstep of death — they will have their blood replaced with a cold saline solution, which stops almost all cellular activity. At this point, the patient is clinically dead — but if the doctors can fix the injury within a few hours, they can be returned to life from suspended animation by replacing the saline with blood. Or at least, that’s the theory.

I, for one, would be very happy if Drudge stuck to bringing us woo-based news, because his politics are annoying as it gets, and frankly suck donkey balls through a straw.

PARADIGM SHIFT: HELL ON EARTH IN AUSTRALIA

The fire has been raging out of control, underground, since February 9th. Firefighters can't fight it because they get sick when they approach within a few hundred yards of it. Find out more at this link.

PARADIGM SHIFT: APOCALYPSE NJ

What does the future hold in store for America's major metropolitan centers? This Rolling Stone article gives you a pretty vivid portrayal of one possibility, using one of New Jersey's most dangerous hot-spots as a test market for the Apocalypse...

The first thing you notice about Camden, New Jersey, is that pretty much everyone you talk to has just gotten his or her ass kicked.
Instead of shaking hands, people here are always lifting hats, sleeves, pant legs and shirttails to show you wounds or scars, then pointing in the direction of where the bad thing just happened.
"I been shot six times," says Raymond, a self-described gangster I meet standing on a downtown corner. He pulls up his pant leg. "The last time I got shot was three years ago, twice in the femur." He gives an intellectual nod. "The femur, you know, that's the largest bone in the leg."
"First they hit me in the head," says Dwayne "The Wiz" Charbonneau, a junkie who had been robbed the night before. He lifts his wool cap to expose a still-oozing red strawberry and pulls his sweatpants down at the waist, drawing a few passing glances. "After that, they ripped my pockets out. You can see right here. . . ."
Even the cops have their stories: "You can see right here, that's where he bit me," says one police officer, lifting his pant leg. "And I'm thinking to myself, 'I'm going to have to shoot this dog.'"
"I've seen people shot and gotten blood on me," says Thomas Bayard Townsend III, a friendly convicted murderer with a tear tattoo under his eye. "If you turn around here, and your curiosity gets the best of you, it can cost you your life."

It only gets better/worse from there. Keep reading this depressing goddamn screed at Rolling Stone.

PARADIGM SHIFT: THE END OF THE AGE OF ANTIBIOTICS

A rather sobering assessment of the situation in which we currently find ourselves...

A high-ranking official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared in an interview with PBS that the age of antibiotics has come to an end.
'For a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about "The end of antibiotics, question mark?"' said Dr Arjun Srinivasan. 'Well, now I would say you can change the title to "The end of antibiotics, period.”'
The associate director of the CDC sat down with Frontline over the summer for a lengthy interview about the growing problem of antibacterial resistance.

Srinivasan, who is also featured in a Frontline report called 'Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria,' which aired Tuesday, said that both humans and livestock have been overmedicated to such a degree that bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics.

‘We're in the post-antibiotic era,' he said. 'There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can’t.’.

Read the whole article.

PARADIGM SHIFT: SINLESS SPIRITS?

Respected psychopharacologist David Nutt wants to use cutting edge science to create safe, non-addictive, synthetic alcohol that gets you just as sauced as the real thing and comes with its very own sober-up pill.

He said: “I think this would be a serious revolution in health... just like the e-cigarette is going to revolutionise the smoking of tobacco. “I find it weird that we haven't been speaking about this before, as it's such a target for health improvement.”
The scientist said 10 per cent of drinkers become addicted, and that addicts account for most of the one and a half million people killed by alcohol every year. The Professor said that the drug would be taken in the form of a range of cocktails, and added: “I’ve done the prototype experiments myself many years ago, where I’ve been inebriated and then it’s been reversed by the antagonist. That’s what really gave us the idea. There’s no question that you can produce a whole range of effects like alcohol by manipulating the brain.”

So... a product with all the anxiolytic and euphoria-inducing qualities of alcohol that doesn't wreck your liver, rot your brain, and cause you to plow your SUV into a bridge abutment on the way home... sounds like a no-brainer, doesn't it? Who on Earth could possibly object to such a thing?

Well, how about the rather deep-pocketed and morally ambiguous alcohol industry, for starters?

Keep your eyes on this story, folks. If Nutt ever gets any serious backing for his endeavor - and a recent appearance on Dragon's Den suggests that he's looking - the corporate shenanigans it will invariably lead to will involve some serious popcorn-bait.