Are YOU what you eat?

Sometimes woo sites do encourage you to do stuff that is good for you, but they encourage you in the wrong way. An example of this would be this pic from Raw for Beauty:

While in a technical sense this is true because your cells are made from what you eat, but this is done through a complex chemical process where chemical components are broken down in your digestive system and then used by your body's cells. By the time these chemical components reaches your cells they no longer resemble anything that you've eaten and whatever is left is discarded in your poop and pee.

So, does this mean you can eat whatever you want? No.

Eating fatty and greasy foods is not good for you, nor is not exercising, which is what the picture is trying to convey, but it's overshadowed by the woo above, but the what the second sentence says is correct because if all you eat is junk food then all you'll have is a junk body.

Dude... you're not helping your cause.

Sometimes fundamentalist Christians say the dumbest things. Sometimes they don't. And sometimes they hold up signs saying the dumbest things:

I know this guy is trying to make Satan look bad, but he's doing a horrible job at it.

With the exception of witchcraft, which is just another religious belief that can be as irrational as fundamentalist Christianity, none of those things are bad to learn about and should be taught to all children, with the exception of sexuality which should probably be taught to a teenager rather than a child as a child would probably be to young to understand and might even get a bit freaked out by some of the thing you're talking about.

There is nothing wrong with teaching a kid about evolution either as evolution is science and all children should learn about science of all types, even ones that certain highly religious do not believe in.

As for psychology I can't imagine why even fundamentalist Christian would want a child to not learn about how the mind works, unless they are a fundamentalist Christian that thinks that all psychological issues are the result of demonic possession.

Regardless, this guy is not helping his cause. He's hurting it... badly.

Richard Gage was on C-SPAN. Why?

Richard Gage, the founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth was on C-SPAN the other day, and my only question is why was he on there? There's really no reason for him to be on there at all.

Anyways, the first thing he claimed was that only three buildings were destroyed. This is false.

All of the buildings there were several damaged to the point where they had to be razzed due to debris from WTC 1 & 2 hitting them. The reason why 9/11 truthers continue to insist that only three buildings were destroyed that day is because that's all we saw that were destroyed.

The second thing he claimed is that there is evidence of a controlled demolition, especially with WTC 7. This is not true. We know how WTC 7 collapsed. It's a result of the lower floors being heavily damaged by falling debris and the tower being on fire for several hours. The combination of this caused the structure to collapse on it's own, and in a way that looked like a controlled demolition for most people.

He then goes on for several minutes about how WTC 7 is a smoking gun, which as I explained is not true. He also claims that most people don't know WTC 7. This maybe true, but I imagine that most people are more focused on the WTC 1 & 2, and the nearly 3,000 people that died in those towers, and not the zero amount of people that died in WTC 7.

He also continued to insist that the towers came down due to thermite charges, but if this was true then how come they didn't go off immediately when those two jets hit the towers, because those towers clearly began to collapsed at the impact sites? Also it would take an awful lot of thermite to actually cut through those steal beams.

The only logical answer is that there was no thermite charges there and that the towers collapsed as a result of massive structural damage due to the jets hitting them and jet fuel fueled fires weakening the steal beams holding the towers up.

C-SPAN should not have given Gage any time because not only is he just spouting off the same debunked BS that the 9/11 truth movement has been spouting off for years, it also gives the 9/11 truth movement and his group a false sense of legitimacy.

It also keeps a conspiracy theory that needs to die alive.

P.S. before anyone says anything about his group's 2200 members I feel I need to remind you that not everyone in his group is an architect or engineer, and even if everyone in that group was an architect or engineer it still wouldn't mean anything because they are less than 1% of all of the architects and engineers in the US.

So why aren't they lining up to treat the Ebola outbreak

Recently @rayne_2 of Insufferable Intolerance tweeted something that should make a person think "so why aren't you people doing something if you believe your so called medicine works?"

I've noticed Homeopaths without Borders aren't lining up to treat the Ebola outbreak..
— Rayne (@rayne_2) July 31, 2014

Now I did check their website, and yes they aren't there.

I even did a check on the site's search bar for both "ebola" and "Africa" just to make sure, and I came up with nothing. Infact they've never been to Africa as far as I can tell.

So why aren't these people over in West Africa along with Doctors Without Borders?

I'm aware that these people are just pushing water and sugar pills, and that it's best that they not be there and get in the way of real doctors who are there to combat this disease, but the fact that they shouldn't be there has never stopped pushers of alternative medicine before from going where they are not wanted.

I could go to their contact page and ask them why they aren't there, but I probably wouldn't get an answer.

This should make one ask themselves that if homeopathic medicine works, as practitioners claim that it does, then why aren't these people over in West Africa right now helping "treat" the people that have been infected with Ebola and suffering?

It's not like it would be hard to push homeopathic medicine on the people over there since most of them are already using alternative medicine in an attempt to treat ebola infections.

Perhaps they just don't want to risk getting infected with Ebola and dying, which is exactly what the real doctors over there are doing right now. Risking their lives to help others.

Using fluoride bans to push other nonsense

Today on Facebook The Industry of Stupid posted what I consider to be a pretty ridicules screen shot:

(Let it noted that TIOS doesn't endorse this, they just posted it to show off some peoples' stupidity)

The first sentence says there has been some controversy over adding synthetic fluoride to water supplies, and sadly this is true. What they are claiming is that there has not been enough controversy. Many others would say differently and say that it's been to much controversy, and that there shouldn't be any controversy at all because the amount of fluoride added to most water systems is in such low doses that you would have to drink over three times as much water as the recommend daily intake inorder to ingest enough fluoride for it to be toxic to you.

Odds are you would probably die of water poisoning before you would die of fluoride poisoning if just from drinking water.

The sentence says that water fluoridation is a serious issue. This is somewhat true, but only in the financial sense and whether or not water fluoridation is worth the cost. All other concerns are are the result of not understanding the science behind water fluoridation, as well as fear induced paranoia brought on by conspiracy theories and junk science regrading water fluoridation.

The last sentence states that fluoride, along with GMOs and vaccines rank among the "greatest crimes against humanity".

Besides the fact that these two things have nothing to do with water fluoridation, this isn't simply not true, it's actually quite the opposite.

Both GMOs and vaccines are not only safe, they have also been two of the most beneficial things for humanity by decreasing starvation and decreasing one's chances of dieing from an infectious disease.

Not only is this person trying to push the made up controversies surrounding water fluoridation, they are also trying to couple this with the made up controversies surrounding GMOs and vaccines to make it sound like they are all the same in a sense.

The only thing these things have in common is the fact that people believe they are bad for you and that they are part of some conspiracy, as well as the fact they all have been beneficial to our overall health.

Last, the picture in the screen shot itself claims that 98% of all European counties ban water fluoridation. This is not accurate. Most places in Europe do not ban water fluoridation, they just choose not too.

(Pseudo)Science Proves Hugging Trees Is Good for (nothing) Health

Yesterday I saw an article from a website called Earth We Are One that claimed that hugging a tree can be good for our health (read the article here).

Obviously I am skeptical of this, and with a very good reason.

First, the title alone makes it sound like trees can affect your physical health, but in the third paragraph it clearly states that all it affects is your mental health (with the exception of headaches), particularly mental illnesses, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), concentration levels, reaction times, and depression, and that they can do all this through altering your "vibrations".

While being around and touching a tree might affect you mental health and help you with all the things stated, the effects are only temporary and can be achieved through other means, such as meditation or listening to soft music.

In other words hugging a tree is nothing more than a placebo, and doesn't alter your vibrations because the vibrations that are being talked about do not exist.

As for being able alleviate headaches, headaches tend to go away on there own, but a person can make a headache go away faster if they put themselves in a relaxing situation, which I imagine being near a tree and away from other stresses can do for a person, but the tree itself is not doing anything to help you, it's all you.

Second, there are only two references in the entire article, and neither one are even close to being reliable.

The first one is a site called Blinded By Science, which is a website created to sale a book that is nothing more than a bunch of New Age woo coupled with pseudoscience.

The author of the book, Matthew Silverstone, is not a scientist. It clearly states so in his "about" section, and that he has no scientific or medical degrees, just ones in economics and international business.

The second reference is from Natural News...

Besides the fact that the part that the article is referencing Natural News is talking about water vibration, which has nothing to do with what is being discussed, the Natural News article itself is pretty much just a rewritten version of the article from Earth We Are One, and it also only has links to two other sources: Natural News and Blinded By Science.

Plus, it's Natural News, the worst "science" website out there. Referencing it in any way other than to show why you shouldn't reference it would for most people automatically invalidate whatever it is you're talking about.

The third and final thing that stuck out to me is that the article talked about how other studies confirmed that hugging trees are good for you.

While this sounds goods and makes it seem like there may be something to this tree hugging thing, the problem is that there are no links to these so called studies. There should be atleast a few on there because the article claims that there are "countless" studies confirming tree hugging is good for you, but the only two references on there are from non-reliable sources.

This is nothing more than a mixer of pseudoscience and New Age woo, and despite it's claim it has no science proving that tree hugging does anything for you beyond the placebo effect.