@Randem

In the battle between science and religion, it looks like science has just won a major victory.

The most scientifically rigorous investigation into the effectiveness of prayer to date, spanning 10 years and involving over 1800 test cases, has concluded that prayer does no good, and may even be bad.

PRAYERS offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people undergoing heart surgery.

In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had higher rates of post-operative complications

Of those being prayed for, 18% had serious complications, compared to 13% of those for whom there were no prayers.

Every week begins with a team meeting in one of the small, poorly ventillated conference rooms at the end of the hall. Today, like every Monday before it, my reminder popped up on screen at the specified time, and I joined my four coworkers in the tiny room.

Like every other day, I found the monotone voices of my four fellow nerds gently lulling me into a sleep-like state. Body odors stagnate in the air as we all try to pretend not to smell them. Like clockwork, I found myself gazing around the room for something — anything — to keep my attention so I wouldn’t commit career suicide by falling asleep in front of my boss while he’s talking.

And then suddenly, there it was.

As I glanced just below the table, I could see that the coworker to my right — let’s call him Bill — had apparently stepped in dog shit. A thick, brown, caked-on mess, with bits of dead grass smashed into it, clung to the bottom of his ancient shoe, telling me that it wasn’t body odor I was smelling — at least not today.

Sufficiently distracted, my drowsiness gave way. Soon enough, it would turn to panic. As Bill crossed his legs, the offending excrement started to hang perilously close to my $80 Calvin Klein dress pants. With catlike dexterity I slid back in my chair, my leg (and pants) barely ducking under the approaching dog shit.

Then, as if I wasn’t already being tortured enough, this sadist started to shake his foot. What a time for restless leg syndrome to pay a visit. He was practically waving dog shit under my nose like a freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookie!

I had to readjust in my seat and fight off the urge to vomit. When I did, I coughed, and Bill must have thought that was a subtle hint because he saw me coughing and looking at his shoe. So he looked and saw the shit on his shoe.

At this point, the smell is making me light-headed and the proximity is making me downright nauseous, but nothing could prepare me for Bill reaching down with his bare hand and scraping the dog shit off of his shoe. Then, for lack of a place to discard it, he sat through the remainder of the meeting holding this dog shit in his hand!

I don’t know what the project status is, and I honestly can’t say that I remember much of what was said in the meeting. All I can be sure of is that I’ll probably wake up tonight with nightmares about what he touched with those hands before finally washing them.

Are you kidding me? Do we really need to perform scientific research — even on obscure test groups — to find such obvious data?

“Our study showed that upper body strength and muscles improved more than lower body,” Ohira said. Since previous studies have found aerobic exercise such as walking is also good for improving the quality of life in breast-cancer survivors, Ohira said he now believes that adding weight training to aerobic exercise “could improve the quality of life even more.”

The women who trained with weights had increases in lean muscle mass, compared with those who did not. Those who pumped iron also “had a moderately improved quality of life,” Ohira said.

How much money did we, the taxpayers, pay for this research? Of course weight training and aerobic exercise will result in improved quality of life!

North Korea is on a mission to prove — with serious consequences — that America has the wrong President. In a recent statement, a North Korea spokesman said:

“Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.”

That’s as clear a threat of war as I could imagine, and there can be little doubt that it’s a fire stoked by President Bush’s utter lack of diplomacy skills. The tough-talking John Wayne wannabe and his Don’t mess with Texas attitude could bully a couple of mid-eastern countries with no serious weapons, but it doesn’t work when the other guy has nukes.

Well, the tough talking Texan routine is the only thing Bush knows, so with his political capital all spent, the only way he can get things done is to go back to the old playbook and call some country a threat to our security. It’s not actually about North Korea or Iran being a threat to us, it’s just a matter of Bush needing more excuses to keep the war machine running so he and his buddies can get rich spending the next generation’s tax money.

The problem now is that his tough-talking rhetoric called North Korea — among other things — a serious nuclear proliferation challenge. The North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman rebuts:

“In a word, it is a robbery-like declaration of war. Through this document, the Bush administration declared to the world that it is a group of war fanatics.”

And he’s right. And if this thing continues to escalate, it could have grave consequences.

Now how’s this for a press release?

“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!

Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies… You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!”

Hot damn! I can’t wait to see tonight’s episode.

I eat healthy. I work out twice a day. I don’t take vitamins and I don’t use any medicines. I don’t drink soda. I don’t eat fast food. Nothing fried, nothing cooked in a microwave oven.

Whenever any of this comes up, people immediately feel the need to comment on it, probably, I imagine, to justify their lack of discipline or their unhealthy diets or whatever complacency they have. When you say you exercise, people immediately respond with “Yeah, I really should do that”. When you say you don’t eat fast food, people say “yeah, me neither” as they push the McDonald’s wrappers under the seat in their car.

But it’s not just about being healthy, or being thin. It’s not about saving money or having low cholestrol. It’s really about fighting the all-too-American urge to over-consume. Here in the good old U.S. of A. we’re not citizens, we’re consumers. It shows in everything about our country… they don’t say “we can’t do this or that because it would be wrong”… instead they say we have to listen to the voters (politics) or the stockholders (business) or the viewers (television). Why does McDonalds continue to make the crap they make? Because people continue to eat there. Why does Wal-Mart continue to sell low-quality imported crap? Because people continue to buy it.

Okay, I’m getting a little carried away. Let me rein it in a bit. My point here is that when Brinker Intl. (parent company of Chili’s, On the Border, Maccaroni Grill, etc) is having board meetings to discuss how they can make the seats bigger without reducing their quantity, it might be time for us to re-evaluate our diets. (And did you know that an Onion Blossom at Chili’s has 2400 calories in it?) When the best selling item at Hardees is a single hamburger that contains the entire recommended daily allowance of calories for an average adult, we may have a little bit of a problem — and that’s before mad cow disease.

I would like to think that 9/11 has changed things a bit, too… but the reality is that it hasn’t. Why do so many foreigners hate us so much? Perhaps it’s our wasteful attitude. We overconsume. We think we deserve more than anyone else, and to that end, we’re not only wasteful in the portions we consume, we’re also wasteful in the packaging and wasteful in the creation of that packaging, and wasteful in the shipping of that product, and wasteful in the acquisition of resources to manufacture that product — all on the backs of other people who are less fortunate than us. I would love to think that we opened our eyes a bit when 19 guys flew planes into our buildings, but the truth is that we’ve kept right on doing it. “Don’t let the terrorists win” we say. Hah! We’ll just waste more! That’ll show ‘em…

I hate eating out. The food is great everywhere, but there’s just so much of it. I’ve learned that the only way I can maintain my diet, my health, my way of life, is to throw all this great food in the garbage. I hate doing it, but I have to throw food away because if I clean my plate — like mom and dad taught me to do — I’ll get charged for two tickets on airplanes and in theaters: one for me and one for my fat ass.

It’s the same when i buy DVDs. All I really want is that little disc. You could wrap it in a thin cardboard or paper sleeve, and it would still work the same. In fact, cardboard or paper would be far more environmentally friendly — trees are renewable, oil (that’s where plastic comes from) is not. So what’s the point of the giant plastic case then? It’s ostentation. It’s a better display in the store, and it’s a better display at home. We all have to buy expensive racks to put our movie collection on display. Bullshit. I throw those stupid cases away, and contribute to the non-biodegradable landfill.

People like me are not in the majority, however. That’s why little discs come in enormous plastic boxes, and a single American meal could feed a family of four in Europe. That’s why our landfills are full and our asses are big. And maybe that’s why dirty, hungry people with no food and no air conditions… people who work all day for a few dollars (and often less!) doing jobs we hate… people who could live like kings on nothing more than the scraps we throw away… maybe that’s why they hate Americans. If so, I can’t say that I blame them.

Apparently someone likes the Colbert Report, and wanted to share the love with the rest of us. The result is Snubster, a site which allows you to put people on notice, and when it gets really bad they can be upgraded to dead to me.

Give it a try.

Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance

by Godfrey Reggio

I woke up at 5:30 this morning, the same as every other day, and went down to the gym to work out. When I came back, Koyaanisqatsi was on my tv. I had no idea what I was watching, but I was quite interested in it. This is art unlike anything I’ve seen before, and I was so impressed by it that I went to the local underground movie and music store to buy a copy as soon as I was done at work.

I don’t know how I could describe this movie to someone who hasn’t seen it, except to say that it’s like photography in motion. I highly recommend this film to anyone capable of enjoying art.

See more about Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance

Suspect engine cut-off sensors are the cause for yet another delay of a space shuttle launch. My question is this: all this time, while the shuttle has sat idle — while highly paid experts inspect o-rings and insulators and sensors — how many satellites did Rupert Murdoch safely place in orbit? How many spy satellites has the military launched into space without incident? CNN? Time Warner?

We can launch a rocket and safely land a man on the moon, and then safely return him back to Earth. We can launch two seperate rockets and land them both safely on Mars. We can launch hundreds of satellites into orbit around the Earth without incident. Meanwhile, the ridiculously impotent and expensive shuttle program has lost TWO entire crews and wasted millions — maybe even billions — of dollars sitting on their hands because of heat shields, o-rings, and cut-off sensors.

When are we going to scrap this stupid shuttle program, and return to the rockets that have cost less, have been more powerful, and have been consistently safer?

Somehow, people still find the ignorance in their hearts to believe that the landing on the moon was made somewhere in a Hollywood studio. This recently came up in a conversation I had. In case there’s any doubt, I submit two arguments:

• The moon landing was in 1969. Star Trek (the original series) aired from 1966-68, and even the biggest idiot in America would not have believed in a lunar landing filmed by the film crew from Star Trek. By way of comparison, the most realistic sci-fi film of the day (2001, A Space Odyssey), shot by one of the best directors of the time (Stanley Kubrick), didn’t have quite the feel of actual footage of a moon landing.

• In 2002, after being confronted by conspiracy theorist and filmmaker Bart Sibrel, Buzz Aldrin — the second man to set foot on the moon — punched Sibrel out. Slow down and read that carefully: after being called a liar, Buzz Aldrin — then 72 years old — was so enraged by Sibrel that he punched him out. (watch it in slo-mo!)

I find it astonishing that people could actually believe that was faked. But then again, there are people who believe the pentagon crash on 911 was faked too. And I guess if you’re dumb enough to believe there’s an invisible man who lives in the sky, well, I guess we’re really not as evolved as we’d like to think. Sheesh.