Because I can’t resist the word “conspiracy”

I stumbled upon this, and several others here.

Maple Syrup Smell is Really Bio-Weapons Testing

The first time the sweet fragrance wafted through the city in the fall of 2005, penetrating every stank corner, infiltrating every orifice—even overpowering the locker room B.O.—we tried to ignore it. “I thought I was having a stroke, and this was some phantom scent,” a guy admitted sheepishly after it turned out to be experienced by everyone with olfactory abilities in Manhattan, some locales in northeastern New Jersey and as far as Queens and parts of Brooklyn. Could it be a sweet-smelling dirty bomb? A syrup slick on the Hudson? We were later assured it was just some sort of leak from a factory that produces chemical scents, but the smell has turned up several times over the years—most recently this past May. Turns out it’s not so harmless after all but is a form of bio-“weapons” testing. The CIA has been testing New Yorkers with the smell of American breakfast over the years in an attempt to determine if it will pass unnoticed in Middle Eastern countries who don’t traditionally dine on pancakes or waffles during brunch (see halal carts). We’re still unsure if it’s simply a means of distraction or actually has some sort of paralyzing effect. As soon as the pigeons start dropping dead—the New York version of a canary in a coal mine—it’ll probably be too late.

Kind of reminds me of the time I was driving down the highway and a weird chemical smell came into the car.  All of a sudden I started coughing and kept it up for 15 minutes, long after I passed the source of the smell.  I was starting to wonder if I’d been gassed… aaaaghh! Chemtrails!

Using the homeless as vaccine test subjects in Poland

The homeless in Poland may have more hazards than the elements to deal with—it seems some unethical scientists viewed them as easy pickings for tests. Oh, and don’t take any ambulance rides there, either.

I figure this story deserves passing along in its entirety because it’s short, and it’s weird enough on its own without any commentary from me. I added the italics.

Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland

By Matthew Day in Warsaw
Last updated: 11:17 PM BST 02/07/2008

Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus.

21 people died after being given the vaccine

The medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.

Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug.

The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well above the average of about eight.

Although authorities have yet to prove a direct link between the deaths and the activities of the medical staff, Poland’s health minister, Ewa Kopacz, has said that the doctors and nurses involved should not return to their profession.

“It is in the interests of all doctors that those who are responsible for this are punished,” the minister added.

Investigators are also probing the possibility that the medical staff may have also have deceived the pharmaceutical companies that commissioned the trials.

The suspects said that the all those involved knew that the trial involved an anti-H5N1 drug and willingly participated.

The news of the investigation will come as another blow to the reputation of Poland’s beleaguered and poverty-stricken national health service. In 2002, a number of ambulance medics were found guilty of killing their patients for commissions from funeral companies.

Drunken Russian space pig

We send our astronauts into space hammered, but the Russians just got their test animals drunk before they shot them into space.  There’s a weird pic of a poor little piggy being fed a bottle of booze over at BoingBoing.  Yes, I’m too lazy to provide it to you here.

Gee, back in the stone age when I was a little tyke I never thought of doing something to calm the critters down when I was shooting frogs and mice up in those Estes rockets…I don’t think it would have helped much.

Creepy old ads

There’s a collection of creepy old ads here. This one is more than creepy, really—an old Union Carbide ad from long before Bhopal.

Seen on BoingBoing.

Conspiracy theory of the week: HAARP

Another fun post from Danger Room today discusses HAARP, that’s the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a collaborative research project from your friends at ONI, AFRL, and DARPA designed to study the effects and uses of “extremely low and very low frequencies (ELF/VLF) generation, artificial optical emissions, and space research.” Or, as another site describes, HAARP is intended to:

…conduct investigations to characterize the physical processes that can be initiated and controlled in the ionosphere and space, via interactions with high power radio waves. Among these were: (1) the generation of extremely low frequency/very low frequency radio waves for submarine and other subsurface communication, and the reduction of charged particle populations in the radiation belts to ensure safe spacecraft systems operations; (2) the control of electron density gradients and the refractive properties in selected regions of the ionosphere to create radio wave propagation channels; and (3) the generation of optical and infrared emissions in space to calibrate space sensors.

Notice the phrase, “‘among these…” leaving ample room for the uses claimed by the tin foil hat crowd, including beaming electricity to big oil companies, mind control, and weather control.

If you Google HAARP along with a variety of other creative keywords, the conspiracy theory cup runneth over profusely. Yes, HAARP shot down Columbia; HAARP steers hurricanes; HAARP is a WMD; HAARP is involved with chemtrails; HAARP is behind noctilucent clouds? Oh yes, and “Angels Don’t Play This HAARP” is most certainly on or near that bookshelf I showed you just a couple of posts ago.

The particular HAARP site that has our mind-controlled pals all abuzz is located at Gakona, Alaska. In the image below you can see the rows of antennas set to beam their dark instructions, like “…support the military-industrial complex…” and “…free ice water at Wall Drug – 2,749 miles…” to hapless minions worldwide.

Since this conspiracy theory has seen fit to once again raise its trepanated head above the tin foil shroud, I thought I’d share a photo of the contents of my kitchen cabinet—just a peek at an interesting coffee mug (no, silly, not the Spock cup!). Now if that doesn’t generate some reaction from the lunatic fringe, I ask you, what will?

For some good clean fun, see my new list of links under the heading,
“From Strange to Nuts.”

Some pics from my latest travels

After gallivanting about the foothills of the Rockies and the Midwest for the past 10 days or so, I’m forced to return here to the land of misfit toys. I’m not ready to pick up any “on topic” blogging yet but the Armchair Generalist has been covering that pretty well (terrorist nukes? Don’t you stuffed shirts have something more likely to worry about?)

Anyway, I thought I’d just share a few pics from my recent travels. Here’s the Poudre River, which was running high and full of rafters.

Here are some old folks on the street just holding up signs saying things like, “U.S. Armed Forces – Thanks” and “Fort Collins Thanks Our Troops.”

The Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, CO was a neat place to visit, although I’ve been there before.

Further into my travels I found myself on Highway 29 north of Omaha, just outside the town of Little Sioux, Iowa, where I was compelled to pull off the road and snap this:

People of Little Sioux, you guys really need to get a massage or something. Although as some of the more sophisticated Iowans to the north of you informed me, your most immediate concerns probably have more to do with getting some teeth. Oh yes, Little Siouxans, the other towns do tell stories about you.

Finally, people sometimes wonder about my quirky interest in other people who are interested in things like UFOs, aliens, black helicopters, chupacabras, cattle mutilations, Roswell, psychic phenomena, past lives, and general tinfoil hattery. I just enjoy the hell out of that stuff, especially after having been in a black helicopter. To explain why, I took a picture of a dusty old bookshelf in my folks’ basement. It speaks for itself (click to see the whole bookshelf). While I haven’t known my folks to have such open minds that their brains fall out, we’ve certainly had some entertaining conversations over the years!

Yes, that book really is called “The Psychic Sasquatch.”

I think I just felt something pop

I have not laughed this hard since…my brother water-skiied in beer on the kitchen floor. But that is a story for another day. For today, try not to injure yourself while reading:

Donkey-Donkey-Hobbit Junkie-Bilbo Pony-Yankee-Jumbo-Donkey

Seen on BoingBoing

Historical look at smallpox in Korea

In the late 1880s, Western visitors to Korea wrote how nearly every Korean that survived to adulthood bore the scars of smallpox.

…up to 50 percent of Korean children died from smallpox before they turned five years old. So prevalent was the disease that many Korean parents fatalistically did not even name their children until they had contracted and survived the disease.

Smallpox, which entered Korea in the late 500s, was thought to be the work of a demon. There were a variety of ways to placate it, often involving the activities of witch doctors called mudangs.

When a Korean child died from smallpox, he was taken just outside the gates of the city and laid in plain view so that the smallpox demon would be reminded that it had already taken a soul and need take no more.

Koreans inoculated their children with the smallpox virus itself:

About 60-70 percent of the children were inoculated in the Chinese manner: a pustule was placed in the left nostril of a boy and the right for a girl or in some cases mixed in sweatmeat, which the child ate. The other 30-40 percent contracted the disease naturally, and less than 1 percent managed to reach adulthood without having contracted the disease.

Read the whole article here.

Speaking of disease, let’s move on to something completely different: paranoia blog of the week. The link takes you to the “Pestilence” category, which is quite entertaining (update: the blog moved and the Pestilence category is no more). For instance, the author proposes that a bird flu pandemic will be intentionally caused by the U.S. government as cover to keep the public occupied with its own problems while our military attacks Iran. There’s lots more weirdness where that came from, so enjoy!