Carnival of the Africans #2 – September 2008

This weekend saw the second installment of the Carnival of the African’s hit the inter-tubes. Wil Louw of the little book of capoeira followed up on Micheal’s first installment with a feast, a FEAST I tell you!, of skeptical reading.

I was very happy to see my posts on the top of the list, although I think that’s just because I submitted so late in the month, not because my posts are the best. Clearly we are all highly gifted, beautiful, sexy, African bloggers.

Please click through to Wilhelm’s blog and enjoy this months fare.

Manto’s new cabinet assignment

We all need a good laugh, especially in the current political climate. For all my Souh African readers; enjoy!

Former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has denied reports that her new job as Minister in the Presidency will be limited to serving double vodka tonics to visiting heads of state and cooking African potato snacks for President Motlanthe.

Her spokesperson also denied that she had been asked to return the new liver she received while health minister.

Speaking to journalists from the Presidency where the Salvation Army was loading the last of Thabo Mbeki’s belongings into a van, spokesperson Clitoris Labuschagne said that just because Tshabalala-Msimang would not have any specific responsibilities, it didn’t mean that she would have no responsibilities whatsoever.

“Mostly she’s there to keep the mood up,” said Labuschagne.

Witches and showtunes

“Tell witty stories about how antiretrovirals turn people into witches, play showtunes on her ukulele, that sort of thing.”

However, she conceded that there would be a limited bartending role for the minister, and confirmed that Tshabalala-Msimang had been entrusted with the Pik Botha Memorial Brandy Decanter.

However, she said this would be a ceremonial position and would not involve much actual drinking, “at least not until everyone goes home at five”.

She also rejected allegations that Tshabalala-Msimang would be a personal chef for President Motlanthe.

“While the Minister does make a delicious quiche using African potatoes, garlic, beetroot, olive oil, denial, belligerence and lingering death, President Motlanthe has indicated that his culinary tastes tend toward more ascetic dishes.”

She said that Motlanthe was trying to cut down on carbs, and that his diet now consisted almost entirely of stem-cells and capitalists.

Labuschagne also used the opportunity to deny that the minister would have to return the liver she received in a 2007 transplant. She attacked the “general belief” that Tshabalala-Msimang “only got the liver because she was health minister at the time, and that she pulled rank to jump the queue”.

She said the people who were calling on her to give back the organ were misguided and racist.

“There are two reasons we can’t give back the liver,” said Labuschagne.

“Firstly, the only three surgeons qualified to do the operation have just emigrated to Australia.

“And secondly, and more importantly, there’s the issue of a replacement donor. We’d need to find a suitably healthy young woman, ideally one who had once supported President Mbeki, kill her, and remove her liver; and ethics approval for that kind of thing can take weeks, even for someone in the Presidency.”

Minister Tshabalala-Msimang could not be reached for comment as she was reportedly preparing a Screaming Orgasm for Jacob Zuma.

It must be Halloween

you know it’s October when the paranormal  stories really start to make a show. Every crazy with a spooky claim gets heard because Halloween is near. Today’s tale is a little early, but if you can put up christmas decor in October, you can get freaky in September.

Kansas city news ran an article  today about a “ghost” light which appeared on the CCTV footage of a 24 hour gym, have a look;

The gym is open all night, so anyone can enter the premises. It appears that the light in the video does not cast any shadows. This may be caused by the high compression, but I think that it is caused by someone standing out of the camera’s range of vision, shining a small LED light directly at the lens of the camera. Furthermore, you will notice that the light is narrower at the periphery of the frame then it is in the center. Again, I think this is due to the fact that it is a light being aimed directly at the camera.

HOAX! Case Closed.

How to haunt a house

Have you ever felt like you are being watched by unseen eyes? Had the sensation of chills running up your spine? Heard someone callling your name?

Well, according to this list of 101 Signs that you have encountered a ghost, if any of these things have happened to you your house may be haunted. My personal favorite is “A foul odor comes from nowhere and then disappears.” I have two dogs, this happens to me all the time!

All of the items of this list can easily be explained by natural phenomena. At least, the ones that have actually been reported by people who claim to have experienced a ghost. I get the sneaky feeling that many of these “signs” come straight off the horror shelf at the local video store.

Not ghosts

One of the “signs” most often attributed to ghosts is so-called spirit orbs appearing in photos where none were seen with the naked eye. Due to the fact that neither the photographer of the orb, nor the person viewing the photo can think of an explanation, the theory that these orbs are spirits is driven by the argument from incredulity.

The professional explanation for these orbs is that they are reflections of the camera’s flash. Most orbs are photographed by amateur photographers whose cameras have a built in flash positioned directly above the lens. Any dust or moisture in the air will reflect off of the flash and this reflection is captured as an orb.

Professional photographers position their camera’s flash further away from the lens and usually to one side in order to avoid the imaging of spirits orbs.

If a photo is taken when there is a natural source of light, orbs can be attributed to lens flair, particularly from the sun.

Some of the just plain ridiculous things are;

57. Light bulbs blow out on a regular basis (maybe there is an electrical fault?)

66. There’s blood running down the walls (erm……)

And the next few can be explained by hypnogogia;

65. You’ve awakened to see misty people standing around your bed.

100. You wake and feel a pressure on your chest that doesn’t have a medical reason.

I wonder if this list would have helped Nicolas Cage when he purchased the LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans. Nic paid $3,5 million for the most haunted house in New Orleans. Whilst the story of the sadistic Madame LaLaurie does make for some creepy reading (I would advise finishing dinner before reading it), there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of substance to this story.

The LaLaurie Mansion

I read a dozen different websites about this mansion and they all re-hashed the same story about the disturbed life of Ma’am LaLaurie, but that seems to be it. A few reports of shrill screams and sightings of apparitions are all the house has to claim.

I found this website run by “Haunted New Orleans Tours” which displays many photos of orbs and blurry lights, but there is nothing of any real substance. I tried in vain to dig up some real beef, but all I found was the same tripe, and in many cases the basic details of the story differed from one site to the next.

While I am thoroughly unconvinced as to the “haunting” of the LaLaurie Mansion, I do have a great scary story to tell around the bonfire…

I can feel it in my water

Today I have two water related news stories I would like to talk about.

I stumbled upon this story on CNN in which Nicole Kidman claims to have fallen pregnant because she was swimming in a waterfall near the town of Kununurra in the Australian outback. I assume she means the pool at the base of the waterfall, and not the waterfall itself.

Nicole and six other women who were in the middle of the Australian outback while filming a movie all happened to fall pregnant within that space of time. It must have been the waterfall and not the sex they were having while stuck in a tiny town in the middle of the nowhere.

How would a waterfall improve your fertility anyway, Nicole? I think that what she has done here is she has confused correlation with causation. Just because you all swam in the same pool, does not mean that you are all pregnant because you swam in the pool. How many women swam in the pool and did not fall pregnant? And don’t only count the lesbians for that answer, okay?

The second case I have read about today is that of the Maun Homeopathy Project. This offensive initiative was founded by Hilary Fairclough and Philippa Brewster in 2002. The aim of the MHP is to offer homeopathic treatment to people infected with HIV/AIDS, victims of rape and “people suffering from trauma, grief and stigma”.

Homeopathy is not medicine and any attempt to portray it as such is dangerous. Homeopathy was invented by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann and is based on the fallacious principle “Similia similibus curentur” (let likes be cured by likes).

Hahnemann came upon this idea while working as a language teacher and translator. He had heard that the bark of a Peruvian tree, the cinchona, was effective in treating malaria due to it’s astringency. Hahnemann claimed that other astringent substances were not effective against malaria and set out to test why cinchona bark was. As he could not conduct a clinical trial, he had to test the substance on himself. He claimed that the drug produced malaria like symptoms in him (shaking chills, high fever, sweating, fatigue, headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, dry cough, muscle or joint pain and back ache.) It’s a pity he did not suffer malaria’s most infamous symptom; Death.

Hahnemann concluded that cinchona would provoke similar symptoms in any healthy individual. From this non-exhaustive, not double-blind clinical trial he came upon the following healing principle; “that which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms.”

That’s it. That is how homeopathy was born.

Interestingly, Hahnemann’s reaction to the cinchona bark does not differ much from the symptoms of quinine allergy. Quinine is a drug which is given as treatment for malaria and it is present in the cinchona bark. For a detailed essay on this aspect of Hahnemann’s self-assessment please read this short page. One cannot help but wonder what would have happened had he not been allergic to quinine. We would surely have been spared the travesty that is homeopathy.

Furthermore, homeopathic “remedies” are diluted to such a degree that the homeopaths themselves cannot distinguish between a vial of water and a “remedy”. In a famous trial carried out by Jacques Benveniste and James Randi, Randi proved through rigorous, double-blind protocols that Benveniste’s team could not score more than 50% (which is no better then the probability of random chance) when trying to distinguish between water and homeopathic remedies. The results of this trial were published in the journal Nature in 1988 (the year in which the study was conducted).

What this means is that the people of the MHP are dispensing woo woo science at its most dangerous. The danger is not the temporary relief offered to the people who seek the homeopathic treatment. The true danger is that one day one of these people may decide to stop taking their anti-retroviral medication because he may believe that the homeopathic rubbish will cure him of AIDS. That will be a very frightening day indeed.