Friday, August 6, 2010

from stress research to global conspiracy

Sometimes I despair of our civilization I really do. The level of scientific literacy throughout our culture for a society whose continued development so relies on understanding science and technology is nothing short of appalling when things like below can happen.

On 28 July I read a ‘Wired’ post titled Under Pressure: The Search for a Stress Vaccine drawing on the work of Professor Robert Sapolsky an neuroendocrinologist at Stanford University. Sapolskyo wants to create a vaccine like treatment for chronic stress.

It was an interesting piece and I thought no more about it, the article itself is 6789 words long according to my Microsoft word count tool so I realise a lot of people won’t bother to read the whole thing let alone not seek out the original published articles by Sapolsky on the subject.

Then on 2nd August a London Daily Mail article claimed “developing the first vaccine for stress - a single jab that would help us relax without slowing down”. A bit shorter and omitting a few of the subtlties of the first report but still okay.

From here it transformes in the hands of Paul Joseph Watson on American talk radio host Alex Jones Prison Planet website

‘establishment Media Pushes Brain Eating Vaccines’

Really?

What really annoys me is the article concludes with “promoting a new viral Google search term in order to attract much needed attention to this grave issue. Search for “brain eating vaccines” and by elevate this term to the top of Google trends, we can reach millions of new people who would otherwise never have come across this information".

Then on the 3rd of August the terms ‘brain eating vaccine’ shot to No.3 on the Google trends search terms. Thankfully for my own stress levels it has been replaced by such important trends as ‘Emma Watsons haircut’ and ‘Wyclef Jean president’.
The stupid it burns I found at Phil Plat's bad astronomy website I hope he doesn't mind me using it.

Can I suggest a new viral google search term in order to attract much needed attention to this grave issue.

Paul Joseph Watson is an incorrect loud mouth, how about that?





4 comments:

  1. 'The stupid, it burns' could be the most appropriate search term of the lot.

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  2. I dunno but it makes for a helluva good t-shirt in my opinion.

    But this whole idea of an injection for stress sounds like an interesting premise for a zombie flick. Kinda reminds me of "Serenity" where they pumped similar shit into the air to calm the population and ended up getting "Reavers".

    I'll stick with my PRN dosage of weed and Xanax.:)

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  3. Dr Yobbo
    I limit myself to being able to use the phrase once a day else I'd just scream it all day long.

    Heidi
    Indeed, I am glad to see you saw Serenity and I agree its a cool premise for a zombie flick and I think it was used in one but I can't recall the name.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alex Jones. Proof that humanity does not deserve to survive.

    ReplyDelete