Always...uh...never...forget to check your references #4

There would be nothing wrong with a survey of all the different grifts that medscammers have presented as surefire cures for autism... such as Boyd Haley, whose snake-oil of choice is industrial chelator rebranded as a 'food supplement'; or the Geiers père et fils, best-known for augmenting chelation with chemical castration.*

... or those stalwarts of the annual AutismOne mountebank trade-fair, Frye and Rossignol, who variously prescribe (inter alia) melatonin and folic acid...**

...or Antonucci and Siniscalco who trade as agents for garage stem-sell charlatans, grooming patients and trafficking them to Ukraine.

Alas, this paper by Pistollato et al. (2019) is not that survey, and it takes all those rorts seriously. The take-home message for practitioners is that if the previous six lucrative modalities of treatment have failed to normalise a patient, never despair for there is always a seventh, and an eighth. It is a field-guide to the "Defeat Autism Now!" malpractitioner fraternity. A dumpster dive disguised as a literature review.

The sine quia non of autism-cure chicanery is probably Bradstreet, Vogelaaar & Thyer (2012), and to everyone's relief, that is not neglected.

Now Bradstreet et al. (2012) was a trifecta of fabrication. Or possibly a pentafecta. The third author is currently in French custody pending trial for her role in David Noakes' charlatan charivari. The second author was found guilty of medical fraud and fined €1.6 million for pimping fake NAGAlase tests.*** Bradstreet, of course, vented his spleen shot himself after the FBI turned up on his doorstep with questions about GcMAF prescriptions. Part of an advertising campaign for David Noakes' GcMAF fraud, and purporting to show that testing NAGAlase activity can diagnose autism (because GcMAF deficiency), the paper was published in a scammy little journal set up primarily as a pukefunnel for Andy Wakefield's fraudulent claims. I am not entirely convinced that Pistollato and co. actually read the paper, as the journal went tits-up after six issues when the parasitical publisher 'Libertas Academica' discovered the backstory and were all "We're scammy predators but we're not that scammy'.

Similar questions arose with Ref [184], which caused some perturbation here at stately Riddled Towers and sent us to seek assistance from the Library Pixies. For "Nutrition and Behavior" is not to be found in the (predatory) journal's TOC. Have Pistollato et al. progressed from citing papers that shouldn't have been published, to citing one that doesn't exist at all?

Despite its spurious pagination, "Nutrition and Behavior" has a bibliographic history. It is the Nutraceutical equivalent of the Necronomicon. It was previously cited by the present authors in "Prevention of Neurodegenerative Disorders by Nutraceuticals" (Pistollato & Sachana, 2016):

Before that, in "The role of nutraceuticals in the management of autism" (Alanazi 2013).

Copy-pasted from there into a supplement-pimp website:

Fortunately the Riddled library procurement is not hindered by mere non-existence of tomes and the Library Pixies regularly send us overdue notices for loans of Whiffle's "On the Care of the Pig" and Volume 5 of Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming".

[Sprague de Camp, 1972]

In this case they took delight in advising that the paper does exist in a different issue... but Alanazi (2013) garbled the page / year details, and the first author's surname, setting off a trail of authors who simply copy-pasted the erroneous citation into their own References section without bothering to read the feckin' paper.

The 2010 details are cited correctly in "Herbal supplements or herbs in heart disease" (Sharma & Moffatt, 2013). Well done them! Someone in the class was paying attention!

[h/t @AnnMemmott]

* Ref [3] was not the only exercise in toxicological incompetence extruded by Geiers der Ältere and der Jüngere in collaboration with Tapan Audhya, Vogelaar's business partner in bogus blood-testing. Audhya voluntarily puts these on his "Selected Publications from our Laboratory" web-page, so I can only surmise that he is proud of his association with them.

** Bonus methylcobalamin / folinic acid treatment. For hyperbaric oxygen treatment of oxidative stress, and sundry throw-pills-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks, see here.

*** "Vogelaar contrives to combine the barmy beliefs of orthomolecular psychiatry with the even barmier intellectual scholium of Steiner Anthroposophy. He has argued that Steinerian and homeopathic treatments are cheap; so by performing and billing for tests for those treatments, he was saving money for the insurance companies and the medical system, even if they had not requested them."

"History is a nightmare in which I am trying to get a good night's sleep"

[h/t Greg Jenner]

It is a consolation to know that current events will ultimately prove to be a wholly fictitious farrago of imaginary, non-eventuating non-events -- decades (if not centuries) that never happened -- at least in the accounts of future History Truthers.

History Truthers, Uncle Smut? Like 'Fake not-News'?

Phantom Time theorist Illig

Totally a thing. I have learned, for instance, that the current date is really about 1720, because the 297 years from 614 to 911 CE were spurious interpolations into the historical record. The entire Carolingean epoch of operatic violence and incestuous dynasties was script-written by George R. R. Martin in a previous incarnation and staged by Crisis Actors; artworks were faked; documents were forged; new scripts were devised for those forgeries. All arranged at the behest and through the connivance of Pope Sylvester II and Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, all to let them celebrate the 1000 Millennium although the date was only 703 CE. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

All that pales in comparison beside Fomenko and his New Chronology, or lack thereof, in which nothing happened before about 1500... or more accurately, whatever did happen had to be suppressed to further the political ambitions of non-existent countries like 'Ukraine'.

According to Fomenko's claims, the written history of humankind goes only as far back as AD 800, there is almost no information about events between AD 800–1000, and most known historical events took place in AD 1000–1500.

All of Classical, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Middle-Ages "history" was cobbled together by cloning and copy-pasting the few events and biographies that were available, and papering over the gaps with hand-waving and pebble-dash.

Fomenko claims that the most probable prototype of the historical Jesus was Andronikos I Komnenos (allegedly AD 1152 to 1185), the emperor of Byzantium, known for his failed reforms, his traits and deeds reflected in 'biographies' of many real and imaginary persons.^[19] The historical Jesus is a composite figure and reflection of the Old-Testament prophet Elisha (850–800 BC?), Pope Gregory VII (1020?–1085), Saint Basil of Caesarea (330–379), and even Li Yuanhao (also known as Emperor Jingzong or "Son of Heaven" – emperor of Western Xia, who reigned in 1032–1048), Euclides, Bacchus and Dionysius. Fomenko explains the seemingly vast differences in the biographies of these figures as resulting from difference in languages, points of view and time-frame of the authors of said accounts and biographies. He claims that the historical Jesus may have been born in 1152 and was crucified around AD 1185 on the Joshua's Hill, overlooking the Bosphorus.^[20]

Fomenko was stealing from my own theory, which I have rigorously proven to the satisfaction of Mrs Spat the Cat, that Jesus Christ and Oedipus Rex were actually the same person... both kings, with pierced feet, who fucked their own mothers, and no-one ever saw them in a room together (the corollary follows that Tiresias and John the Baptist were also a single character). This creates interesting mash-up-scenario situations, like the oepisode where the Sphinx leads Oedipus up to the summit of the mountain and tempts him with sovereignty over all the nations of the world if only he will pledge his allegiance.

Fomenko's mode of reasoning is strangely seductive when you think about the implausible similarities and echoes and reflections that link so many supposedly-different historical actors. I mean, most of them were kings or queens or nobility, and when you think about the tiny proportion of the population who were actually Nobles, how likely is that? Also, most of them were played by Nicolas Cage, Udo Kier, Klaus Kinski or Mads Mikelssen.

1066 and all WTF?

With new centuries of Past pouring out of the forgery factories to fill the needs of various conspiracies, there is no need to stop now. Here at the Riddled Museum of Comparative Clionics and Chocolate Hob-Nobs, we are in favour of pushing back the milestones of the past still further with even more centuries of freshly-woven dramatic tapestry, retro-fitted into the time-line. The important thing is that they be well-scripted, and entertaining, with good special effects. But NO ALIENS, and no Hitler-inna-time-machine, that just looks like the authors ran out of imagination.

I have not mentioned the Centuries of Darkness school of Bronze Age revisionism, because it is a minority position of scholarship but it is not completely condamine calenture fishsticks. The general notion is that there are missing centuries from several parallel columns of Bronze Age chronology (Minoan, Levantine, Egyptian, etc.), bridged with wattle and daub and vague postulations, but the gaps can be parsimoniously removed by sliding the two halves of the jigsaw together with some readjustment of the links between those parallel columns, without the need to assume missing pieces. Personally I find jigsaws easier to complete if I turn the pieces picture-side-down to eliminate the distracting shouty colours on them and I can concentrate on the geometrical niceties of their shapes, but that is why I was never invited to be a Bronze Age archaeologist.


* The printed version of De Selby's speculations on this topic are neither cogent nor coherent. Hatchjaw ascribed this to ambiguities in the holograph original, exploited by malicious editorial intervention by an unknown party. If Hatchjaw's tentative recension is correct, De Selby was drawing the corollary that many centuries of the future are also spurious interpolations, possibly fabricated but possibly the result of genuine error.

SMUT DON'T EAT IT

The story of Chew Chong is not well-known enough (which is to say, I didn't know it until recently so therefore everyone else must be equally ill-informed). Around 1870 (1868, in one version of the tale) he came to the neighbourhood of Mount Taranaki (New Zealand), where native bush was being cleared for dairy farming, intending to start a butter factory and export business, but he saw a niche for a different extractive industry. He started and dominated the export trade of saprophytic fungus to China.

When he died (aged 92) in October 1920, Chew Chong was an honoured member of the community and a wealthy man...

It would make a good children's book, or even a Netflix miniseries. There is a biography.

The fungus in question was Auricularia cornea (or possibly A. polytricha) which is or are so closely related to the Northern Hemisphere A.auriculajudae that only the mycologists can tell the difference, and they're probably making it up. It is 'black fungus' in Chinese-restaurant menus, and 'wood-ear' or 'mouse-ear' in English. The fruiting bodies dry out during drouth but soak up water when it rains and go back to being flubbery and cartilaginous...

And now I have my own, without having to forage!

Well, it's really growing on a neighbour's elderberry tree, but it is near enough to the fence to GET IN MAH BELLY.

"Those who study WWII Jewish history are still condemned to relive it" *

Eminent French-Jewish historian specialising in Vichy France (and the subsequent historical amnesia) detained at Houston Airport and held in custody for 10 hours to show his papers.

https://twitter.com/Henry_Rousso/status/835655881362636800

* Stolen cheerfully from BoingBoing commenter LearnedCoward

The noselessness of man

Not many people know that Tycho Brahe had a range of prosthetic noses, including an ornate Cloisonné replacement with built-in salt-and-pepper shakers that he used at formal dinners, and another which dripped saline solution, which he wore when he had a cold.

BigHank:

Will I be a better person if I think that Tycho Brahe had among his prosthetics a plain, non-reflective working nose, a gold party nose, and a plainer silver nose which he wore for occasion where he didn't wish to upstage any royalty? His Fabergé nose with the tiny erotic scene inside, a present from his mistress? The bulletproof one, made from solid wolfram?

Now I want a Scandi-Crime series set in the Renaissance, in which Tycho Brahe and Kepler solve crimes through a combination of intuitive brilliance and backroom laboratory analysis, aided by prosthetic-nose concealed gadgetry and Brahe's beer-drinking scene-stealing pet elk.
In Season 2 the action shifts from Uraniborg to Prague, because of Rudolf II and Dr Dee. Also to save money filming in Czechia.

Post truth, post hole

It seems that we live in the era of "post truth" politicians. An interesting take on the matter, considering the amount of lying that has gone on in recorded history. Perhaps a more accurate description would be the Couldn't Give a Bugger About the Truth era? It would certainly enliven future textbooks about the early 21st Century.
 "At this point it became obvious just how few buggers were actually given by politicians as it was conclusively proven that Trump was of an alien species but his voters continued to say he connected with real heartland Americans".
 New Zild has had its own share of non-fact-connected politicians but the current Prime Minister must be in the top 5 in the top No Buggers Given list. In the past he has opined about all and sundry with no scraps of credibility or knowledge to impede his decision making. For instance we know he has peed in the shower but not masturbated, he thinks Iraq is a safe place and he would not have shot the Gorilla. Many of his National party colleagues breathed a little easier after that one.
But he doesn't just limit himself to shower antics or zoo animal preservation, he also comments upon things that are central to the modern, go ahead Conservative government he leads.
Conservative governments have a bit of a checklist of things they will do, a comment I have made on this blog before, hopping into the poor people, lowering taxes for rich people and helping businesses to oppress their workers etcetera, etcetera.
This government has ticked all of those boxes and made a special point of Great Specialnesss about how they had "reformed" employment laws with the introduction of the 90 day rule. After they realised that this not a relaxation of the 4 second, dropping food on the floor rule, many New Zilders reacted with "Wahhht... my...did...rugby on". Unbeknownst to them the government had introduced legislation that allowed people to be employed for 90 days at low pay rates and even more excitingly dismissed with no reason and no backsies at any time in the 90 days.
At the time this was greeted by government spinners and lackies as a Great Leap Forward for industrial relations and the benefits would flow to all and young folks would get jobs and possibly everyone would get a panda to keep as a pet.  
Of course, it did no such things.
Five years on from the introduction of the 90 days rules a Treasury report has concluded that the introduction of the 90 day rule has had little to no affect on NZ employment issues. This is the Treasury, mind you, Friedmanites to the core and paid for by the Gubblement to find shit out when the troooooth is needed.
So the PM was in a bind, since his fairytale did not have the right ending and the people collecting the data are his inquisitorial shocktroops. Brilliantly he ignored that dumb ole report. People, he said, talked to him all the time as he went around NZ  and they said it had gone swimmingly and everyone was happy as two clams in whatever place would make clams happy. So there! To make sure that The Base would get what he was on about he noted.

"You can have a piece of academic research but it's quite different from the small cafe owner whose money is on the line, who is taking the risks and who actually rely on this kind of policy.

Academics amirite?

Still, quite brave of him to bring up small cafes after the ponytail pulling incidents of last year. But he is nothing if not something or other.

Mao Tse-dung

Courtesy of commenter BiloSagdiyev at LGM:

Stalin 'used secret laboratory to analyse Mao's excrement'
According to Russian newspaper reports, in the 1940s Stalin's secret police had set up a special department to get its hands on people's faeces.
The ambitious aim: to analyse samples of foreign leaders' stools.

Apparently Stalin maintained an extensive network of informers and stool-pigeons. Did they keep samples in storage? I am imagining new opportunities in the fiercely-competitive Celebrity Fecal Transplant market.

Snakes on a Trireme

Scientists in Italy rediscover snake that was used by ancient Greeks as a weapon of war

Scientists in Italy have rediscovered a type of snake that the ancient Greeks used to hurl at their enemies to create panic and confusion during sea battles.

The Javelin Sand Boa had not been officially recorded in Italy for 80 years, but sightings by locals suggested that it might still survive in a region of Sicily.

The story does not record whether the Greek Strategoi would use treboachets, boallistas or mambanels.

Isn't it always the same? (Valley of the Kings edition)

You wait and wait for Egyptologists to discover concealed burial chambers that have remained undetected and undisturbed for millennia, and then two come along at once.

The race for funds and headlines can be ascribed to competition between the two groups. Archeologists are always locked in deadly rivalry; it must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.

One can only hope that in their haste they do not cut corners and neglect elementary precautions. One does not want to release the revivified mummy of a nameless, cursèd renegade and malefactor. Or to disturb the Four Elements in the absence of the Fifth Element that is necessary to unify their energies. Or to stumble down a concealed shaft and enter a nightmare underground warren of tunnels and caverns and monstrous undead hybrids.

The "thermal anomalies in the Khufu Pyramid" story from Tayoubi's team  is calculated to inspire religious loons to yank the anomalous blocks from the base of the pyramid (in the hope of discovering Joseph's granary and vindicating Ben Carson); then the whole stack of stones will come cascading down on them like a supermarket tower of tins in a Mr Bean episode. One can only hope that the authorities have numbered all the blocks for ease of reassembly afterwards. The 'thermal image' is in fact a clumsy fake plagiarising the work of Hergé.

Meanwhile the National Geographic team interpret the results of Watanabe's radar probe as showing that the tomb of Tutankhamun is in fact only the hastily-repurposed antechamber of a larger, sealed-off tomb. In accordance with THE PROPHECY moar infra-red scans, and Reeve's iconographic theory.

There is some wet-blanket skepticism towards the expectation of discovering the mummy of Pharaohess Nefertiti, if only because an existing mummy has already been identified as hers, several times, though it could have been her mummy when she was younger.

Nefertiti scanning equipment

At last night's meet of the Amateur Egyptology and Comic Songs Working Group at the Old Entomologist, members voted in support of Joann Fletcher's "Younger-Lady Mummy = Nefertiti" theory. Mainly because the one-sided eye make-up on the Amarna bust of Nefertiti (in the Bodemuseum) shows that she had received right-hemisphere brain damage at some point, causing left hemi-neglect [below, left, neglected]; and this is also evident when she was mummified.

Our arguments did not entirely convince head barmaid Evangeline van Holsterin, who vouchsafed her assessment that the working-group members were "both loonies".

The Rule of Three dictates the existence of a third secret-chamber quest. Lo, so it came about, with Dormion and Verd'hurt's claim to have detected a cavity in the Khufu pyramid, centred on the vertical axis but lying below the Queen's Gallery. Their quest is currently in a Beyoncé but this would be an opportune time to revive it.

Athanasius Kircher did not hold with any of this 'entombment' nonsense and maintained that the Pyramids were the original 'ships of the desert', built to float upon and sail across the seas of sand, hence the bow-wave shown below.

In your burning tight leather you're a firebomb

The plan is worthy of Baldrick in its cunningness. The falcon is wearing false boobies so the crew of the U-boat will be distracted by the view through the periscope and will not notice the explosive-laden toy boat it is towing just below.

Just when you thought you were safe from the bats carrying fire-bombs.

Postcard #40 - Bristol Brass Band bus accident

We continue our historical series of "Tragic Accidents involving Brass Bands and Horn Instruments". This week, a postcard in the archives of Bristol, Connecticut.

"A bus which was used to transport the Bristol Brass Band, crashed through the railing on Riverside Avenue. The hood of the bus is in the Pequabuck River. The gas plant of the Bristol & Plainville Tramway Company can be seen on the right. The Down Street Bridge is visible on the left in the rear of the picture."

Clearly that upstream gas plant contributed to a powerful morphogenic field to attract or even compel the bus ineluctably into the mire of the river-bed. Let the Whackyweedia explain the Pequabuck River's unhygienic nature:

The river's lower drainage basin consists of industrial and urban areas, effluents from these areas pollute the river's water

"What are you on about?" Another Kiwi vouchsafed.

"Where there's muck there's brass," I explained.

Short man seeks balcony for mutual fulfilment

Rudy Giuliani -- authoritarian shitweasel and security advisor to Middle Eastern feudalities -- said something sufficiently stupid that his compadres saw little prospect in trying to defend him, preferring to focus on the bias of the media (because anti-Republican bias could be the only reason for them to publicize embarrassing outbursts from someone they should be ignoring). There's a lot about his unimportance:

...observing Giuliani’s diminished stature today

Thx Alicublog!

Looking at the outburst itself, Giuliani does not think the US receives the tribute it deserves.

“What country has left so many young men and women dead abroad to save other countries without taking land?”

He wants land? Hardrudy can have six feet of English soil – or a bit less as he is such a little man.

World Cup of Goodness.

Ronny Raydon: Good evening and welcome to "Sports and Politics Should Not Mix" with the goalkeeper of Nottingham Forest and Chavdar Etropole football teams, Dimitar Evtimov!

D.E.: Thanks Raymondo, well it's a bumper programme tonight with talk of the Australian political goalmouth scramble and the imminent Cricket World Cup of Cricket in New Zealand. And who better to tell us about this from the Sofa of Truth than Another Kiwi!!

A.K. (snoring noise)

D.E. Ha hah, wake up Kiwi!

A.K. (mumbling) Is that you mother?

D.E. No it is not your mother it is Dimitar Evtimov at "Sport and Politics Should Not Mix" You are on the Sofa of Truth to talk about Australian politics and the Cricket World Cup of Cricket.

A.K. Righto, Dimitar, the Sofa of Truth should be called the Sofa of Snoozing.

D.E Ok, now, what happened in Australia?

A.K. Captain Cook discovered it Dimit, he was in a boat.

D.E. Ah yes, maybe we could move on to more recent events concerning the Prime Minister, Mr Abbott

A.K Ah ha Mr Bloody Abbott and his reneging on his promise to outlaw Global Warming! A promise is a promise in my book Dennis.

D.E. He promised to outlaw Global warming or the research that proved it?

A.K. Same thing Demist, same thing. And he didn't do it, so the people in Australia said they wanted a change but the Liberal party couldn't get their act together to roll him. They are all about efficiency in government so they didn't have the time to get the coup organised.

D.E It seems that it is popular result with the opposition, though.

A.K. The Labor Party seems to think that Abbott is good for their side!! Ha Ha it's no secret that he's on the other side of them. Ha ha. He's not like that Julia Gillard who had 1/3 of her own caucus against her!

D.E. Yes, Abbott got 39 votes against and 61 for. But moving on to the Cricket World Cup of Cricket.

A.K Yeah, bring it on NZ is ready!

D.E. Yes they had a very good game against Zimbabwe. Sadly the weather robbed the NZ team of bowling out the Zimbs for 120 runs after the kiwis had plundered the bowling. Bit of a comedown after the 350 they got against Pakistan. They aren't choking are they?

A.K. No Demitri they are not, it was a speed wobble as the momentum builds to a great tournament!

D.E. Goodness, are you getting paid by them?

A.K. Only in sponsors products Demerit. Pillows and umbrellas mainly.

D.E They have had some good results, do you think they can springboard off them?

A.K (Snoring)

D.E. Phew

(A Walk in The Black Forest plays)

A Turnip For the Books

In response to a large number of reader's requests for more information about Turnip, the cat belonging to the uncle of James Cook Riddled is publishing extracts from the 7 volumes of the diary of  Nicholas Esquire, the uncle.
1 Jan 1730: Moar trubble wythe Turnip the Cat. Mr Thatcher did come and saye that Turnip is a devil cat and is going about Byting and Scatching peeple. He brought a mobbe of villagers wythe him and they shouted "Burn the cat!' "It is a witch" and such.
I larfed at there sillyness and threw cow pooze on them.
 Mr Thatcher sayed "This cat is evil and probably made the cobbler's sign falle on my head whenever that happyned"
The Mobbe sayed "Burn the cat" and "Boo down with thee cat" and "Don't throw pooze on us anymore, it is badde for our self esteeme"
I sayed to them "Mr Thatcher, the lady cat's notte for burning"
The crowd were silent as though expecting somethynge but nothinge happned.
Thenne Turnip appeared at a top storrye windowe and sayed. "Go home puny Humans orre I will eat yore eyes and make ratatouille with yore braynes instead of Aubergines"
The mobbe arked "What sorte of ratatouille? Provencal or Basque. because you carnt get black olives at the moment whatte wythe The War of Jenkin's Elbow."
Turnip sayed "Whatte is rong wyhte you peeple? Provencal ratatouille is awful. What the actual fuck?"
Mr Thatcher sayed "My motherre would not have a Provencal ratatouille in the hoyse. She said it was in all ways inferryorre to Basque"
The mobbe sayed "Pardonne us forre having an opinion, we wasse only saying as we findde" And went home in a grate huff.
Mr Thatcher watched them go and shook his head, "Inne, my day, a mobbe had somme staying power and woulde not go off in a huffe over a gastronomic disagreement" he sayed. Thenne he went away singing a songge about a cabinboy called Roger.
2 May 1730; A Mr Throgmorton Portcullis has been to see me about his ownership of Turnip the cat. He sayed "I wonne it in a hospital raffle and have thee tykett to prove it"
The tykett had a false dayte on it saying 2015. I sayed "You varlet, sir this is a wrong tykett"
"Noe" he sayes "Thisse is inne the future"
"Of corse" I sayye "Turnip is waitying for you behynde this door"
He steps through and thenne I hear the splash and watch him crawl out of the moat. Turnip appeers at  a crenlaytion and  shouts "Fuck offe Throgmorton!'
 Howe does shee noe his nayme? She sayes he just looks lyke a Throgmorton.
6 August 1730: A letter arryved from my idyot nefew Jaymes Cooke. I sent hym 6 pence and he says he will use it to equip 3 ships and sail South to find new lands for the Empyre. He is suchhe a dorke.
I wryte to Joseph Banks saying he should get in touche with Jaymes and go with him. I would payye 3 pounds to be ridde of themme both.

The Land Leviathan

Two motorbikes are smashing a path through Legoland!

Followed by a remote-controlled bathchair! You would think that the proprietors of Legoland would learn from experience and put up a sign.

In fact that lower image is a rare still from the 1919 movie "Earth Against White Slavers from Mars" from Edison Studios, their first venture into the alien-invasion genre. It was mocked mercilessly by movie critics of the day on account of the shoddy special effects -- "The Martian war machine," wrote one critic, "looked like a remote-controlled bathchair smashing a path through Legoland" -- and the studio was overcome with embarrassment and destroyed all the negatives. Thus it is little-appreciated except by members of the Riddled Time Travel and Film Club.

The original concept was stolen from Frank Shuman's cunning plan to win World War I with a 5000-ton three-wheeled crushing machine which would crash through the countryside at 100 m.p.h  killing civilians (it was not designed to survive an encounter with artillery), powered by 1000-horsepower steam engines yet to be built, until its oil or coal ran out. In short it was the Project Pluto of its day.

You might ask yourself, "So how do we transport a 5000-ton backwards-driving 'Land Battleship' from the shipyards of Sheffield to the shooty places? Fording rivers is all very well, but isn't there an English Channel in the way, or even an Atlantic Ocean if the giant future-destroyer is constructed in the US?" You might especially ask that if you are a paid shill for the rival Submarine-Land- Dreadnaught lobby or the printing-in-red-ink lobby.

But Frank Shuman was a distinguished engineer whose concrete piles, wired glass, wool- degreasing machines and other inventions have made him famous,* and he has thought of everything. Once we have built the dykes and drained Doggerland, our 5000-ton Wartrikes can drive to Europe directly. Take that, Submarine-Land- Dreadnaught lobbyist!

The last time we were visited by a lobbyist for the Printing-in-red-ink industry it was not a pleasant experience.

Bonus giant tanks here and here!

-----------------------------------

* Also a remarkably prescient pioneer of solar power.

...Belatedly UPDATED because readers keep asking "Uncle Smut, what's a Juggernaut?" Kids today! I hope this helps.