Shameful Human of the Week: Jenny McCarthy

For years we’ve had to endure Jenny McCarthy’s ignorant rantings about how childhood vaccinations supposedly caused her son’s autism, despite a complete lack of scientific evidence, along with her insistence that chelation therapy actually did something to help him. Well, now Jenny’s theories have been thoroughly laid to rest, and that’s a great reason to make her Shameful Human of the Week.

It seems her son never actually had autism, but rather “a rare childhood neurological disorder” called Landau-Kleffner syndrome. LKS can cause speech impairment and neurological damage, but affected children have been known to regain their language abilities. That would explain why her son kept getting better, despite her fake science having long been proven bullshit.

Jenny’s backpedaling like crazy. She’s decided she just wants vaccines better researched, and not eliminated entirely, as she once pushed for. McCarthy claims that she will continue to be a voice for autism, although I would hope all of this finally ends the shred of credibility the mainstream press was giving her.

As a formal apology for making the world dumber, and for endangering the health of everyone by publicly promoting the boycott of vaccines, I’d like to see McCarthy free Jim Carrey and return him to reality.

[source]

Religion make brain bad

Just days after it was revealed that a correlative link exists between atheism, liberalism, and higher IQs, right wing lunatics in the United States have offered up some definitive proof.

Obama didn’t meet with representatives from the Secular Coalition for America, but officials from the Justice, Health, and Human Services departments recently did. That was enough for conservative religious groups to fly off the handle and claim Obama has an anti-religious bent. Bishop Council Nedd, chairman of the advocacy group “In God We Trust” exclaimed:

It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints, but it is quite another for a senior official to sit down with activists representing some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation.

Wow, hate-filled! The Secular Coalition’s agenda for the meeting included the issues of using “faith healing” (read: dangerous non-functional bullshit) on children, and anti-atheist discrimination in the military. I wonder if Council Nedd has ever heard of irony.

[source]

The empire crumbles: PS3s succumb to Y2K10, PSN inaccessible due to “APOCALYPS3″

Update: Sony has confirmed that service has been restored, and the company will sadly not be going out of business. The morons of the world still have a functioning piece of pathetic black plastic to play with. [source]

Original post:

As Shufflingdead was ecstatic to report last night, Sony’s PlayStation network is inaccessible to millions. Most older-model (non-Slim) PS3s appear to be affected by a bug in the internal clock of the system. Those encountering the issue find that their PS3s have been transported back to the dawn of the Willenium, with the confused internal clock resetting the OS’s clock to January 1, 2000. Broken systems are unable to access the PlayStation Network (PSN), play PSN games, or use DLC. Any content which requires use of the internal clock doesn’t appear to work either.

It is currently thought that PS3s the world over will begin working again come midnight GMT, that’s when their internal clocks should skip ahead to a logical date. From what I understand, the problem stems from the PS3′s internal clock thinking the date is 2/29/2010, which the OS clock refuses to believe.

Word from the official PlayStation Blog is that the company hopes to resolve the issue within the next 24 hours. Convenient. In other words, Sony’s hoping the system’s clocks will fix themselves when the OS and internal clock can agree on a date which actually exists. Right now, some users are risking their PS3s by taking them apart, removing the clock battery for several minutes, and then returning it. That particular fix is risky, but it actually works, according to many online who have tried it.

Stay tuned to find out if this thing fixes itself. If it doesn’t, a mass-recall may be necessary. If that’s the case, the PlayStation brand would surely be irreparably damaged, and Sony’s entire business may even be put at risk.

The full update on the situation from Sony after the jump.

… Continue Reading