Sunday, August 30, 2015

The starry wisdom Owned by the Baron And he's got the cure
[Recall the dream of Luxor
How fluids will arrive]

What's that, Skippy? Lesley Hutchings and Trevor Banks of MAFActive.eu have signed someone up to be an Antipodean distributor for their GcMAF-labelled products?

This cannot possibly end well, for New Zealand already has a network -- joined at the nates to the coloured-light therapists at St Benedicts Health Care -- to distribute the magic immune-modulating molecule. And the network is reaching the customers, as evinced by the proliferation of crowdsourcing sites seeking contributions from strangers to help with the price of NZ$1,500 per round or NZ$4500 per month

As for Australians, they can mix a Bravo Probiotic Yogurt Kit with camel's milk and the specially-formulated bacterial microbiome will transmute its molecules into the human immunomodulator. Those who lack culture can obtain it from the supplier, Jason Sourris up in banana-bender territory (camel's milk sold separately). The biggest Australian booster of GcMAF is Dr Heather Way, Nutritional Therapist and Certified Nutrigenomist. I like that title, it is a lexical turducken: any word can be made 50% more convincing by squeezing 'omic' inside it. Though it is not clear to me who issued Way's certificate since hers seems to be the only one in the world

I hope things do not go higgledy-piggledy with the advent of a new dealer, and slide down the beautiful downgrade of Scarface-themed competition into a bloody cocaine-cartel ganglands war, but if they do then I'm rooting for injuries.

Way and Sourris and the St Benedicts people know their way around a knife-fight, but Dr Fleming has spent his entire life in the mean streets of Melbourne's homicide hotspot, so 400 quatloos on the newcomer!

No doubt the MAFActive team have conducted due diligence on their new representative.³ They will have observed approvingly that Dr Darren Fleming is Sunbury's #1 naturopath, where his World Naturopath practice has enjoyed a series of enthusiastic 5-Star reviews (which in turn I recommend to devotees of the Amazon Book-Review Genre) from clients whose cancers he has cured. In fact the only thing missing from the catalog of positive report is any indication of how one would contact Dr Fleming to avail oneself of his naturopathic expertise.

His World Naturopath site is no more helpful. The domain was registered by "David Jones", at dazzdazz@hotmail.com, with a St Albans PO Box and phone number. The site is strangely aspirational in nature, promising to provide
a range of products that will be of assistance to our many clients that are unable to attend our clinics. These products are based on over 20 years of experience and on the clinical experience of 1000′s of clients
and non-specific talk of
a large range of protocols to assist our clients reach their health goals in the most cost effective and timely manner as possible
but under "Appointments" there is only further aspiration:
We are currently expanding our clinical operations in Australia and Japan and are in negotiations with a number of clinics in a range of countries to offer our services.
We will update this page shortly with a list of clinics we consult at and their contact details.
The Wayback archives indicate that World Naturopath has languished in this state of unrequited expectation since July 2013. It was not always thus; in earlier incarnations -- going back to February 2012 -- World Naturopath was a flourishing practice staffed by
  • Dr. Darren Fleming, N.D., M.D. (Natural Medicine)
  • Dr. A. K. Jain, Ph.D (Ayurveda)
  • Dr. Arun Dhelia, N.D.
Together they offered specific treatments for HIV, Alzheimers, old age, and every cancer imaginable; they were equipped and trained to offer teleradiology, laboratory management, infertility treatment, and divers other services to other less-capable practices. I cannot imagine what happened in 2013, except perhaps Drs Jain and Dhelia went back to the Alt-Med establishment in Kolkata from whence their names had been hoicked.

A melancholy mood of wistful unreality begins to linger around the MAFActive distributor, in the manner of a Maxfield Parrish painting, or of someone who took "little flights of fancy at first, dwelt all day in his dreamy way on fields and rivers lying in the sunlight where it strikes the world more brilliantly further South. And then he began to imagine butterflies there; after that, silken people and the temples they built to their gods."
December 2014 - A new volunteer for the
Cancer & Natural Therapy Foundation
No matter. We must hie ourselves to Darren's various business and social network entries to learn that his full qualifications include a 2001-2004 Business-admin Masterate from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, preceded by a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.B.S.) from the National University of Singapore (1995), and a Bachelor of Health Science from Charles Sturt University... which not bad for someone who was still a pupil at Keilor Downs Secondary College in 1992. His CV includes a year as Project Manager at Trinite Medical Research Institute (an organisation which otherwise lies beyond the ken of the Goofle), and since 2005 he has been manager of World Naturopath, where he is
Currently developing my own system of CAM protocols based on over 20 years and 1000's of clients. Also much of my work involves working as a private consultant of a number of offshore specialty clinics and working with their patients.
and as of March 2014,
After much research and trial and error we are bringing GCMAF probiotics to market at a reduced cost. Our long term aim is to be able to supply this product as a ready to consume product near the price of a tub of normal yogurt.
His intentions of breaking the Way-Sourris Probiotic Cartel are further detailed in a flurry of March 2014 press releases from gcma4all@gmail.com to advertise his new website:
GcMaf Yogurt is a natural symbiosis of milk ferments and microorganisms that combines the health benefits of different products derived from milk fermentation with the added benefit of containing GcMAF. You will be able to purchase GcMaf producing yogurt shortly. Our long term aim is to be able to supply GcMaf yogurt at a lower price.
June 2015 - C&NTF contributor
But the sense of unreality grows stronger, enmeshing the reader slowly, strand by strand like cobwebs. Perhaps we can dispel the mood with a visit to Dr Fleming's profile at a cancer support board:
  • About darrenf
  • Researching GCMAF, cancer vaccines.
  • currently developing the Fleming cancer protocol.
Details of the Fleming Protocol are nebulous. Evidently he joined the support group so as to ask patients about their experiences with Sodium Dichloroacetate, "Resan cancer vaccine" and 3-Bromopyruvate, so it may combine any or all of these. But at least he's decided what to call it, which is the important part.

In Darren's entry at the Russian social-network site VK, he falls victim to an immodest degree of modesty, hiding his light under not just a bushel but an entire haystack, and describing his qualification as merely a Bachelor degree in Business from RMIT (Class of 1997). He further explains that
I have many interests I own a large number of companies and I fund raise for a number of local and international charities. While I head a number of pharmacy companies my real passion is running my private barons club.
"The Baron's Club", one wonders? Slowly he built up Larkar: rampart by rampart, towers for archers, gateway of brass, and all. And then one day he argued, and quite rightly, that all the silk-clad people in its streets, their camels, their wares that come from Inkustahn, the city itself, were all the things of his will—and then he made himself King.

Without further delay, meet the Rt. Hon. Baron Fleming of Merlona: educated at Harvard Business School (MBA) and "Melbourne Grammer School", with 10 years experience as CEO of International Marketing Group, "an international company who brought a whole range of luxury brand products to Australia. Marking directly to high net worth customers worldwide". Conceivably this is linked to the entry at Alibaba for the Baron's Club (in the 11-50 employees, $50 Million - $100 Million sales volume bracket), which pimps out Darren's expertise in golf-course and holiday resort high finance.

There is only one possible ending to this kind of story. It must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.

At the top of those old, worn steps, going down we know not whither, stood the king in the emerald-and-amethyst cloak, the ancient garb of the Thuls; beside him lay that Sphinx that for the last few weeks had advised him in his affairs.
Slowly, with music when the trumpets sounded, came up towards him from we know not where, one-hundred-and-twenty archbishops, twenty angels and two archangels, with that terrific crown, the diadem of the Thuls. They knew as they came up to him that promotion awaited them all because of this night's work. Silent, majestic, the king awaited them.

Tell us more about Darren's "Baron's Club", uncle Smut!
No no no, you should visit The Club yourself, I cannot describe the level of aspirational grandeur it attains. The goal appears to be a cheap Ashley-Madison knock-off, offering a social portal in which hoi polloi could rub shoulders and other body parts with an exclusive invite-only elite... so the promises of hot-totty-matchmaking are interlarded with Vegas High-Roller life-style signifiers of cigars and scotch and poker chips and private jets, all with the understated refinement of Donald Trump filming an advertisement for Lynx. When the Baron's Club emerged on FB in the course of June 2013, it could already boast of a two-decade history of wild success, so who am I to doubt that membership ever exceeded 1? There is aspirational talk of a luxury cruise liner for the club members, private islands, buying French chateaux. The most charitable interpretation is that the brashness is carefully cultivated to appeal to parvenu Moscovite oligarchs.

One part of the whole fabulist farrago turns out to be true. Dr Darren Fleming does indeed (or did) "head a number of pharmacy companies". Or at least, he sold his name and contact details to be used by northern-hemisphere predators to set up "on-line pharmacies", for harvesting credit-card details from sufficiently gullible would-be purchasers of boner pills and white-trash speed. Thus 'David Jones' at dazzdazz@hotmail.com became the proud registrant of an entire virtual empire:
Best-Online-Pharmacy, Mail-Order-Pharmacy Online-Pharmacies and MexicanPharmacy (all India-based, and brokered through an Indian domain-name broker operating out of the boondocks near Mumbai... even the last, truly a name that shouts out "Reliability"). Not to forget "Pharmacybid.com" and Pharmacy Express Online.

One reason I follow the unfolding GcMAF soap-opera so compulsively is the high calibre of individuals it brings me into contact with.

Under his real name (but the same PO Box), as dogcat1234@dodo.com.au, Darren registered BestOnlineDrugs
and no-rx-pharmacy: the latter is in abeyance due to legal complications, but both can be seen to best advantage at their Russian social-network sites.

And in the course of their due diligence into their new distributor, Lesley Hutchings and Trevor Banks will have noticed that he used his togethersearch@hotmail.com e-address to register OrderOnlinephentermine, ViagraOnlinePharmacy and the more laconic Valium.in.

That may even have been the deciding factor in their judgement that he was a person they could do business with.
-----------------------
1. Do not google "GcMAF + GoFundMe" unless you are in the mood for a long parade of sadness and exploitation, in which the phrase "rejected Western chemotherapy" recurs like a Wagnerian Leitmotif farted out on a tuba.

2. Heather Way and Sourris and their "The Autism and Gut Centre" (Australia's Leading Autism Nutrigenomic Researchers) do not really come into the Riddled wheelhouse, whatever a wheelhouse is, presumably it's somewhere to stockpile spare wheels. But given the failure of Australian bloggers to deliver their own ridicule, suffice to say that two years ago Way was appealing to the kindness of strangers to help her attend a griftfest in Dubai -- writing of the miracle cures for autism which are waiting for her to bring injectable GcMAF back into Oz -- all sounding to a cynical mind like an admission that the yogurt product doesn't actually work.

Way espouses the work of Natasha Campbell-McBride, a darling of right-wing talivangelist / Dominationist bloggers on account of her theory that contraceptive pills and vaccines cause autism by drilling little holes in the gut lining.

It is a cause of lasting regret that no-one has ever paid for me to travel to a conference on curdled dairy products. I would like to be able to say that I went on a junket.

3. The question arose earlier this month of why Amanda Mary Jewell (erstwhile bleach-enema impresaria) was referring her GcMAF clientele to the Hutchings/Banks company 1stProEngineering to buy the protein, which they in turn obtain from Noakes' blood-extraction operation, even though she herself is purportedly importing "2nd-Generation GcMAF" (i.e. curdled colostrum) from the Japanese snake-oil specialists Saisei-Mirai, through her industrial park luxury clinic in Bulgaria. "Professional courtesy", I thought. Ms Jewell continues to patrol the FB recommending 1stProEngineering. Now it transpires that they have teamed up and are now two buttocks of a single bum; Hutchings and Bank use the Bulgarian industrial park as their physical mailing address (though retaining the UK phone number):
Write to us:
First Pro Engineering, Smolyan, 4700, Bulgaria

Friday, August 28, 2015

A paltry offence

"The former chief executive of Taranaki's Air Ambulance Trust has been fined for breaching the Civil Aviation Act, including removing aircraft seats to fly chickens cross-country.

"Warren Leslie John Fulljames appeared before Judge Chris Sygrove in the New Plymouth District Court on Thursday for sentencing on three charges of breaking the CAA rules.

"The Civil Aviation Authority laid the charges after Fulljames, who was issued his private pilots' licence in 1990 and gained his commercial pilots' licence in 2014, removed seats from aircraft to fly chickens around, failed to keep a correct log book and flew at night without the correct certification."
I for one sleep more soundly at night for knowing that New Zealand has such tight regulations governing the use of seat-belts in chicken aviation.
In an ideal world, poultry-delivery pilot Fulljames would skip the country without paying his fines, so that we could say that he has flown the coop.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Brew News (from the Zyme Times)

1. An Australian Federal Minister is unclear on the concept of brewing,  and wants to control the sales of Vegemite -- not because it is a substitute for axle grease being marketed as a foodstuff, but because he is under the impression that it can be used to ferment sugars.
Australia's government says some communities should consider limiting the sale of the popular Vegemite spread because it is being used to make alcohol.
It says the yeast-based product is contributing to anti-social behaviour in some remote communities.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion described the salty spread as a "precursor to misery".
He said it was being bought in bulk to make moonshine.
Brewer's yeast is a key ingredient in the spread and is used in the production of beer and ale.
In communities where alcohol is banned because of addiction problems, Mr Scullion said Vegemite sales should also be restricted.
"Businesses in these communities... have a responsibility to report any purchase that may raise their own suspicions," he said.
The minister added that in some cases, children were failing to turn up to school because they were too hung-over, and that Vegemite was an increasingly common factor in domestic violence cases.
Minister Scullion also believes that a packet of chicken stock can lay eggs. We will not be inviting him over the ditch to visit Riddled Manor as the celebrity Braumeister to preside over production of the next batch of Christmas Ale.

2. In other salty-spread news, a local bar commissioned a batch of novelty beer with stag semen as its distinguishing ingredient, though it is not clear whether they added enough to the boil to make a vas deferens to the flavour. Disappointingly, they did not call it "Bucks Jizz" so I cannot predict whether the gimmick will sucseed. "Buckfast Tonic" or "The Last Roes of Summer" would also have been acceptable.

3. Berlinerweisse appears to be the style of the month among NZ brewers, and was well-represented at the recent beer festival, though not all the adjuncts are entirely canonical.
Just saying, Berlinerweisse requires a side-serving of Currywurst to taste truly authentic, not to mention Herbert Grönemeyer on the jukebox singing "Bochum" or "Alkohol".

4. A nascent style of saline Weizenbier loosely inspired by Gose is also popular with the cool kids:
Someone made a goose-infused beverage but was it a Goose Gose? WAS IT BOGROLL. Reality, be more funny. Memo to self: brew with Chenopodium quinoa flour, call it "Gosefoot".
5. Other novelty beers included a Tiptop Jellytip Iceblock-inspired decoction, which had the potential to become a sad debacle, but the skill of the brewer made it a triumph... the cocoa and vanilla and raspberry tartness all melded in synergistic comity rather than end up shouting at one another. Would drink again. Repeatedly. How come one never hears of a diumph, or a tetraumph? It is a mystery.
Pushing Envelope Girl is not advisable
At Riddled we eschew these post-modern attempts to push the envelope and transgress the Rheinheitsgebot in as many ways as possible; we stick to the fine old time-honoured tradition of enhancing the grist with hum'rously-shaped vegetables. And if the vegetables have been irradiated in the Evolvamat beforehand to awaken their Silent Genes, that is all valid tactics within competitive novelty brewing.

I did not try the Marmite-on-Toast beer but someone needs to send a bottle to Federal Minister Scullion.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Two versions of H.P. Lovecraft seated upon a high throne


Let's face it, a single version is never enough.

What are we wearing to celebrate
H.P. Lovecraft's 125th birthday?

In my day we couldn't just go on-line to order a "Sexy Cthulhu Costume" and we had to make it ourselves, with some glitter and tentacles and PVA glue.
The results were sometimes less than ideal.

It remains to be seen if Another Kiwi will bring out his usual costume and come to HPL night at the Old Entomologist dressed as Wilbur Whatley, as is his wont (I hope it's a costume).
Happy birthday HPL!

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

UNLEASH THE SKWIRLS!

The Riddled Manor ornamental fountain is not a paddling-pool, people.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Astigmatism and Face-palm Eldritch

Conventional wisdom tells us that vertical slit pupils in humans are found only (1) in cases of bilateral coloboma; and (2) among the indigenes of Werel / Alterra and among their Tevaran / Farborn hybrid descendents, in whom it signifies their ability to resist the mindspeech deception of the Shing.

It is therefore a surprise to encounter D. Vendramini and his "Neanderthal Predation" theory, in which cat eyes were also a feature of Homo neanderthalensis -- along with gorilla-like pelage and a taste for human meat.

Vendramini is evidently an outside-the-box thinker. So far outside that the box in question is lost over the horizon somewhere and the prospects of finding it again become vanishingly small; it was probably thrown out with the rest of the $mas packaging.
Below: Inside-the-box thinking
Right: Still thinking inside the box
Skipping Vendramini's NP thought-shaped stylings for the moment (in order to pretend that they were not already covered by a smarter blogger several years ago), let us look first at his TEEM theory. This is a kind of psychic Lamarckian evolution. Intense emotional trauma lays down inherited cellular engrams, so that future generations can re-live those traumata and learn from their ancestors' near-death experiences. Our gonads have 'write mechanisms' to record these experiences in the non-coding segments of the genome (a.k.a. "junk DNA"), which "contains a hidden natural language" (the exact language is not reported though it is unlikely to be Esperanto). This comes as a disappointment to those of us who had hoped that the 10 esoteric strands of 12-strand DNA (their existence denied by mainstream geneticists) would somehow be involved. But as consolation, there is a paper! In Medical Hypotheses! Shit's getting real!
Vendramini's novel and challenging concept has much in common with L. Ron Hubbard's ideas about past-life engrams (which breed endless neuroses until they are cleared), and I deduce that it propagated backwards down the time-stream to inspire El-Ron, in the manner of shadows racing into the past.

Returning to Neanderthal Predation... imagine our early hominid ancestors as they spread to Europe and the Levant. Suppose that Homo erectus came under evolutionary pressure from the Neandertals already in occupation -- super-predators, devouring the weak and the slow -- forcing our ancestors to evolve strength and intelligence and hairlessness, traits which would never have developed otherwise.

Not only does Neanderthal Predation account for our transformation into Cro-Magnons; it proves capable of explaining any feature of the human condition -- if not as a response to evolutionary pressure, then through nightmarish cellular memories, or sexual selection as our ancestors chose mates who least resembled the hated Neandertals; or conversely if any traits seem more Neandertalic, then they were acquired by inter-breeding. It goes without saying that the Neandertals regularly raped their female captives instead of eating them -- Cro-Magnate women being sexier than their own -- producing fertile offspring, and contaminating the pure germline with their own genetic taint. This always happens; it must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.* In fact the only point left unexplained by Vendramini's theory is why an earlier wave of H. erectus migrants evolved strength and intelligence when they reached Europe and the Levant, and transformed into H. neanderthalensis, in the absence of evolutionary pressure from themselves.

Cellular memories of those dark days of pre-history explain why we find cats' eyes so sinister.** They bring to mind their bloodthirsty predatory status... unlike lions and tigers which have round pupils so seem benign, and in total contrast to the horizontal pupils of goats and Palmer Eldritch (not scary at all).

This all comes as a surprise to those of us who thought that the Neandertals were the Old-Testyment Nephilim, half-human hybrids bred through artificial insemination by the invading Starlords to be the agents of their occupation; or else they were the Lost Civilisation of Lemuria. But NP theory is SCIENCE so there is no room for argument, Neandertals were the Most Dangerous Game of all.

How much will big-game sportsmen pay for a ride in the Riddled time machine, 50,000 years into the past, for a chance to match their skills against them, to hunt and be hunted? I do not know but it's worth finding out.
-------------------------------------------
* Why Hi there Stanisław Szukalski, creator of Zermatism:
"The history of mankind up to this moment is the enumeration of STRUGGLES caused by the elemental foes of mankind, the results of the rapes of human women by Manapes who, having been born among us and speaking our languages, are mistakenly taken for our own countrymen. But it is these hateful, deadly and fiendishly exterminatory descendants of the Yeti that, on having been throughly admixed with the Humans, think up all the ideological Isms that create subversion, treason, revolution, wars, and the eventual downfall of all Civilization and Culture."

Szukalski's notions about the sub-human strand of human nature, and of the half-human miscegenation-born Yetysyn who walk among us, are clearly inspired by Vendramini's themes, casting their shadows backwards into the past AGAIN. Say what you like about thinking inside the box, you don't have to worry about your insights back-propagating along the time-stream and troubling mankind's dreams.


** [Explaining Voice] A key constraint on the design of pupils is the optical quality of the mammalian lens, which is shite. And the quality gets worse in the lens' outer zones. If for reasons of drugs or ancestry your pupil opens out to F-stop 0.7 there are weird cruciform halos and the focus goes cattywumpus, although this is an acceptable price for being able to see at all while skin-walking in deep forest by starlight, or so I hear from a friend. So a round pupil is generally the best option as it restricts vision (as much as possible) to light passing though the lens' central zones, where the quality is not so crap. Vertical slit pupils produce an image on the retina that is always all jam-smeared and soft-focus along the vertical axis, in a trade-off for better focus along the horizontal axis.[/Explaining Voice]

None of this deterred Banks et al. from running a science-fair comparison of pupil shape and ecological niche, and coming up with their own half-arsed Just-So story in which they claim that small cats have slit pupils to achieve worse focus along the horizontal axis, because ummm depth perception. BUT their press-release has KITTIES, so science churnalists could reprint it without expending any effort of their own, and it has gone prokaryote (as the kids are wont to say) across the Interlattice.

A cynic might suppose that Banks et al. are angling for an IgNobel Prize but I could not possibly comment.
---------------------------------------------------
Belatedly UPDATED with Bonus Cat Pupils.
Turns out that Neandertals are still funny-looking even after you shave off all the hair.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Harvestman of Eyes
(Workshop of the Telescopes #2)

"Why are you fitting those spiders with little pairs of spectacles?" tigris asked.

"It is an experiment in treating their colour-blindness, so they will stop biting when they can see the blood and realise they are hurting people," I explained.

"One red lens and one green one," Another Kiwi vouchsafed. "Like the psychiatrist character from Twin Peaks."

"We were relaxing in the Wigglesworth Lounge at the Old Entomologist when we thought of it," I said, "kicking around a few ideas for research projects..."

"-- Also a pickled spleen which makes a serviceable substitute for a hacky-sack," AK interrupted. It turned up in one of the carboys labelled "Gin" and "Rum" and "Akvavit" but otherwise indistinguishable, which we bought cheap as office supplies from the vile Throgmorton.

"...Why should Jay and Maureen Neitz get all the headlines and acclamation for their gene therapy for colour-blindness in spiders?" I continued.

"I think you will discover," said tigris, in tones of no-encouragement, "that the Neitzes work with spider monkeys."

"That would certainly explain all that mysterious talk in their papers about colour vision and recognising ripe fruit," AK conceded.

And now commentator ITTDGY alerts us to the fact that the spiders have cured themselves of colour-blindness by evolving their own little filters, in front of one spot of the retina, made of red oil droplets. Well done Evolution! See how much you can accomplish when you sober up?

It should come as no surprise to the Riddled readership that spidras have big telephoto paparazzi lenses for their main pair of eyes. At the back of the eyes they have boomerang-shaped retinas which scan back and forth across the focal plane like misplaced windscreen wipers sweeping up the photons, tilted this way or that to pick out linear features slanted at different angles. Scientists put so much time into the study of spider optics because they hope to discover better boomerang designs. Not many people know that.
Compound eyes #1: Dragonfly, Japan
So rather than processing everything in parallel -- in the manner of insect compound eyes or the flat disk retina of vertebrates -- spiders actively explore their visual world, running invisible virtual fingers across it, searching for angles and lines that distinguish legitimate prey from another spider of the same species and the appropriate sex. No wonder they get bumfuzzled by big warm Soft Ones -- all curves, not enough lines -- and go all bitey.
Compound eyes #2
This requires big Spidrabrains given over entirely to processing the time-multiplexed stream of visual information. Cute little spiderlings can barely fit their big spidrabrain into their cephalothorax body segment so it bulges into their legs.
Scientists put so much time into the study of vertebrate retinas because they hope to discover better Frisbee designs. Not many people know that.