Apparently these champions of the sciency and something I'm sure they would call "reason" hold that I wasn't supposed to learn anything when I read that 2011 Scientific American article about the health hazards of tattooing, including exposure to known carcinogens in the ink being injected under poeples' skin, permanently, and the article listing a number of the diseases you can get from being punctured with a dirty needle, including those known to include the development of some of the most deadly of cancers,hepatitis B and C and HIV.
I knew about the cancer causing properties of cadmium and arsenic because, you know, scientists had studied them and found them to be carcinogenic. I also remember that getting them listed as hazardous substances to be treated as such by industry was not an easy thing back during the Reagan and Bush I years, as I recall. Perhaps they were too busy with pop music and 80s movies to remember. As to the diseases, I was paying, perhaps, closer attention to what the scientists and medical professionals were saying about the consequences of both forms of hepatitis before and during the AIDS epidemic than these champions of science and public health, though as I found out when you mix the pubic into issues of public health, the very same people will go totally stupid, as well.*
Apparently the college-credentialed champions of science at Eschaton hold that the greater good is following a fad which an ever larger and irresponsible industry benefited from.
It's too bad that I can't post the hilarious comments of Simels in which he accuses me of mathematical illiteracy because I corrected him on a fairly simple logical consequence of set theory, that a subset of a larger set cannot have more elements than the larger set does, his claim that Queens can be more diverse than the New York City it is a mere borough of. I'm surprised that his great admirer Grandmere Poisson hasn't corrected him on that one.
He also proves his illiteracy by attributing a passage from a Pew report which I cited and set off in the typical bold italics I use when I am directly quoting something as something I said.
I have to conclude that the amount of grade inflation they practiced in private colleges in the late 60s and 70s in order to pretend those raised on American TV had been educated was more serious than I'd realized, as a grad of Land Grant universities. It's clear that Simps was credentialed but never learned the most simple of things and, apparently, he, his fellow Eschatots, his host, the wider world of play-lefty leftism have never learned a thing since their credentials were granted.
Tattooing strikes me as a typical cause celebre among the college-credentialed white, play-left, it is stupid,it is a contradiction of other stands they take, it is dangerous, it is expensive, it is an absurd fashion statement, the kind of "individualism" that consists of following the fad, it is something that benefits an amoral and irresponsible set of industries and shady businesses - which real liberalism would probably regulate to make a lot less dangerous but that won't happen because, you know "freedom of expression" - and I could go on and on and on. It's not unlike the entirely stupid, decades long campaign to keep public property free of manger scenes which benfitted Republican-fascists over something that was a complete and utter waste of time, resources and attention. Though it helped clarify my thoughts on the total idiocy and futile counter-productivity of the college-credentialed, white, middle to upper-class, play left.
I wish the old Haloscan comment threads were still up so I can see how many of them were ga-ga over Richard Dawkins when he was groovy, back in the 00's. Clearly the first Oxford Chair for The Public Understanding Of Science, failed in his mission - and among some of his biggest fan guys and gals - though,as I've been pointing out the last few days, Dawkins' is the kind of understanding of science these idiots have.
Have I mentioned that Dawkins' great inspiration in his selfish-gene science, W. D. Hamilton died as a result of his own anti-vax quest to prove that HIV had started in a polio vaccination program in Africa? The ass, frustrated that peer reviewed journals wouldn't publish his speculations, went to Congo to find evidence, didn't find it, and caught Malaria which ended up killing the ass. I have to wonder if it wasn't a personal thing he had against a specific scientist, a far more accomplished one, whose work in virology and immunology probably saved millions of lives. I may get around to seeing if I can find evidence to support my speculation, it's what I was taught to do, not in college, in sixth grade in public school, when we were assigned to write our first practice research paper. Apparently they didn't teach that in the more "progressive" schools that Duncan and the Eschatots attended.
* Just last week at Echidne's I had occasion to remember when I set off a fury at Salon and Alternet by pointing out that even as they had multiple articles up slamming, correctly, anti-vaxxers for putting people at risk of being infected with life threatening diseases, they had up articles encouraging the then new thing among hetero-sexual kewelsters, anal oral sex which did exactly the same thing they were slamming the anti-vaxxers for, only the exposure was far more likely. I could have pointed out that if it were the meat industry irresponsibly exposing people to such things as e-coli they would be doing a back double flip to cover all of the positions they were advocating at once.
Update: "You're the scientific illiterate."
I once noted that Simps was so dense he should be The Wizard of Osmium. I don't think he got the joke.
Update 2: Now he's repeating the idiocy that "Queens is a separate place with its own government" when the last time we went over that I listed, from the official website, the representatives on the city council who represent Queens as they represent all the other boroughs. Not only did they not teach that idiot member in good standing at The Brain Trust (see above for explanation) basic math or science, they never taught him anything about civics. Not to mention that "Queens" as all such political subdivisions are entirely artificial human constructs which are whatever they're defined as being at any given time.
These secular-sciency-play-lefties are only marginally smarter than the Trumpsters on a few things. Some of them important, many of them counter-productive. They are idiots the real left must dump after watching them lose us elections since 1964.
Update 3: You remember I said that I'd only quote the Simp if it wasfor a good reason? Or implied that? Well, he just said, "Queens is a seperate place onto itself. With its own government, defined geographical borders and its own culture, which is different from that of the rest of New York City," not realizing that a. he admits in it that Queens is a part of New York City, which would mean that New York City would have to be as diverse if not more diverse than Queens, b. that even if that were true that it has a political status different from the other boroughs it would still make it a part of New York City (I doubt it's true but I don't care enough to fact-check, it doesn't matter for my point.) and c. to claim that Queens has "its own culture" as a means of proclaiming its diversity would seem to be rather at cross purposes and, d. that if Queens had "it's own culture which is different from the rest of New York City," which is doubtful, it would prove that the larger set, New York City, which contained both the "culture" of Queens and any different "culture" in even one of the other boroughs is more diverse than Queens, alone.
Mentally retarded by choice. Typical of the play-lefties.
Update 4: Maybe he'll get it if I do it by picture. I figure he's still stuck at the Colorforms stage of development, something he shares with Trump.
Sorry, couldn't find one that has his name on it, to help him focus.
A tattoo is a permanent reminder of a passing whim.
ReplyDeleteAlas, my uncle isn't around so I can ask him if he was too drunk for whims when he got his. I suspect it was on a dare. It may have been the first one I saw and the pigment had rather disturbingly drifted under his skin. It was creepy, never thought any better of them over the years.
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