"I'd like to ask your opinion about a problem in Hamlet. You see, if I cast a Great Dane in the role, they're gonna accuse me of being..."

Dog auditions for a role in an all-dog production of "Endgame".

[H/t Boing-Boing]

Casting scene from 9th Configuration

The Encephalitic Cry: not just a Durutti Column / Psychedelic Furs crossover band

The search for hilarity to ensue took me to the Twiddle machine, and introduced me to the concept of the Encephalitic Cry.

It turns out to be an accepted, unquestioned fact within the Antivax belief system that a distinctive high-pitched infant cry is a diagnostic symptom of (post-vaccination) encephalitis. "Unquestioned" because to question that part of the catechism would be to deny parental experience. The cry is so well-known as to need neither a medical-textbook or academic citation, nor actual reports from the throngs of parents experiencing it. Instead it is brought to us by the impersonal They Say and the all-powerful Passive Voice (is there anything that can't be accomplished by it?).

Some people call that scream the "encephalitic cry" because it sounds similar to the high-pitched crying often associated with encephalitis

[Pediatricians] even have a name for it. It's called an encephalitic cry, meaning that it is caused by inflammation and swelling in the brain.

I tried to engage the twitters in friendly corrective badinage, for "Clinical diagnostics through acoustic analysis of baby cries" was once my area of expertise (a few regenerations ago), and I can happily bore people at parties with idle talk of vocal stridor and subharmonics and jitter index and prematurity crying and cri-du-chat syndrome. Also I have memories to share from the 4th International Cry Workshop in Munich (1992)... of learning the proper way to hold a stein, and losing drinking races with Mechthild Papoušek, while Freddy DeHaen explained his rubber-band device for eliciting controlled, calibrated pain cries. But it was not to be.

In contrast, Russell Blaylock's expertise in cry acoustics (and pediatrics) came from his training in neurosurgery. For it was from Blaylock's forehead that the whole construct leaped fully-formed, in the manner of Athena Pallas, in a 2008 word-dump at the Mercola supplement-scam webstore.

Mothers and fathers are familiar with the high-pitched crying their babies have after such a series of vaccines. .... This is not due to the pain of the injection, as the pediatrician will assure you, rather it is secondary to brain inflammation – what we call an encephalitic cry.63

We are referred to a 1990 paper for proof that "we call [it] an encephalitic cry". Alas, although crying and "an encephalopathy" are mentioned in [63], they are separate -- one is not a symptom of the other -- which is to say, Blaylock was lying giving artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

Wrong Blaylock, but nice un-Athenaed forehead!

Blaylock's fabrication was distributed by CIA Parker, who is admired in the Antivaxosphere for her energetic on-task willingness to copy-paste identical comments to countless newspapers and blogs. Parker's Origin Story is that she refused the offer of a HepB vaccination for her infant. However, the infant later cried, proving that she had encephalitis, proving that the vaccine had secretly been inflicted contrary to instruction... together constituting incontrovertible proof that vaccines do cause encephalitis, which causes the diagnostic cry (and autism). Parker's response at the time of her diagnosis of a life-threatening brain inflammation was to rush the child to hospital sleep through it.

she reacted with four days and nights of endless screaming, vaccine-induced encephalitis, and was later diagnosed with autism.
it caused four days and nights of endless screaming, vaccine-induced encephalitis, and she was later diagnosed with autism.
she reacted with four days and nights of endless screaming, vaccine-induced encephalitis, and was diagnosed with autism at 20 months.
She reacted with four days and nights of constant, inconsolable screaming (vaccine-induced encephalitis, see Merck Manual), and was later diagnosed with autism.

However, the title of "Second stage in the human centipede" properly belongs to Christina England, another antivax Thought Influencer, who has found the EC construct useful in her day-job of "Apologist for Infanticide".

Professionals often refer to high pitched screaming or seizures shortly after this vaccination, indicating a problem. Neil Z Miller an American medical research journalist, anti-vaccine and natural health advocate wrote the following in the Vaccine Safety Manual.
“Many of the mothers noticed that their children had a high-pitched cry soon after their vaccination or vaccinations. This is called the encephalitic cry, meaning that it is caused by an inflamed, swollen brain. It also explains the difficulty many mothers have in waking their children, the vomiting, passing out and irritability following vaccinations. These are all signs of an inflamed brain.”

England affects to be a Journalist and Independent Researcher. As such, she is unfamiliar with the possibility that the Foreword of a book can sometimes be written by someone other than the author of the book per se, so here she is crediting Neil Z. Miller for a passage which was in fact from Blaylock again.

Later in Blaylock's Foreword we meet a population of Schrödinger's Pediatricians. Simultaneously they (1) know about the Encephalitic Cry, but conceal it from parents for fear of lawsuits, and (2) are unaware of the EC because they confine themselves to mere evidence as a source of knowledge rather than Blaylock's superior Aristotelean intuition, unsullied by observation.

The reason that pediatricians are telling these mothers that their children’s reactions to these vaccines are normal is based on at least two factors. One, most pediatricians, in my experience, know absolutely nothing about a child’s brain. When I was practicing, if anything happened to a pediatrician’s patient that in any way indicated something was wrong with the child’s brain, the doctor was on the phone with me in an instant. Most admitted they knew nothing about the brain. The second reason is that they are trying to avoid a lawsuit. If they can convince the mother that everything is well, they may avoid a trip to the courtroom.

But the notable point here is Blaylock's formulation -- "It is called..." or "We call it..." -- with its simultaneous appeal to objectivity, popular acceptance, and the authoritative voices of the leprechauns in Blaylock's underpants. It was conserved as the construct entered the antivax catechism of consensus fact. Perhaps it fitted well into the lab-coat-&-stethoscope Clinician Cosplay that dominates the antivaxosphere. It also minimises any personal investment in the claim one stakes. At any rate, the word-pair of "Encephalitic cry" is seldom encountered on its own: the whole phrase is the unit or single building-block for conceptual prefabrication.

The Argument-by-Encephalitic-Cry is preserved in an almost prototypal form, down in the archives of a 2017 Respectful Insolence comment thread.

That high-pitched encephalitic scream after vaccination–don’t worry, it’s all perfectly normal...
So many parents have noted a distinctive high-pitched scream in the hours or days following vaccination...
Some people call it the “encephalitic cry” because it is similar to the high pitched scream observed in children with encephalitis. Some theorize it is caused by a swelling of the brain following vaccination.

I can only speculate that Blaylock's thought process, such as it was, worked by magical-thinking analogy with a whistling kettle. Just as the pitch of the whistle goes up as the kettle boils and the pressure increases, so the inter-cranial pressure of imaginary encephalitis would manifest as a higher-pitched cry. If babies' skulls happened to be kettles.

You can't spell "icon" without 'I' and 'con'

Wellington, city of pageantry, home to the iconic British Museum and Buckingham Palace...

THAT IS NOT MY COW Wellington. That is the Wellington Arch in London, viewed from behind.

London, sun-soaked jewel of the South Pacific...

THAT IS NOT Wellington MY COW. That is GLASGOW - home of an equestrian statue of Wellesley Duke of Wellington, who sports a road-cone on his head on festive occasions as is the traditional costume of his people. It is almost as if some shiftless grifter was sent to the Interlattice tasked with searching out scenic icons of Wellington, but had given his last fuck.

Wellington, capital of New Zealand (population 67,659,683), where the languages are English, Maori and Lorem Ipsum...

-

This is just really sad now.

OK. There exists IASED ("International Academy of Science and Engineering for Development"), whose physical address is an anonymising / virtual-office service in Hong Kong (popular among tax-evaders and money-launderers). They have one telephone number, and a secretary who is willing to pander to a caller's tastes by becoming Ms.Amy L. P. Yeung; Ms. Jessily D. M. Cheung; Ms. Yedda Q. Ye; Ms. Anna H.M. Wong; or Ms. Tiya T. Deng (among others) depending on the nature of the call. For IASED exists primarily to instantiate ad-hoc professional and academic bodies from its flanks... bodies that exist primarily to arrange scabby little scamferences at monthly intervals around the world, while inviting suckers to pay $570 of their employers' money so as to attend.

The IASED-spawned CCVPR, JCRAM, ICCSSE and ISEEIE all invite you to their December meetings at the James Cook Grand Chancellor hotel in Wellyton, in the same three days (13th-15th Dec) and indeed in the same conference room. A one-day meeting, really, since the 13th and 15th are scheduled for registration and a tourist outing respectively. They claim different organising committees but the same keynote speakers for all four events.

Assuming that the staff have cleaned up the room after the hard-core festivities of 10-12 December, when the IASED sockpuppets ICCAEE, JCMME and JCRAI hold their combined monthly meeting.

Many of these meetings were initially promoted as occurring under the auspices of the Museum of New Zealand (which came as a surprise to the not-well-pleased Museum)...*

... or at the Wellington Convention Centre.

This has the minor disadvantage of not existing, forcing the scammers to relocate to the James Cook hotel. Updates will follow if I hear back from the hoteliers.

[Thx John Chen for the heads-up and for research]

* Museum, not-well-pleased:

I seem to have buried the lede in a recent post

The lede subsequently clawed its way out of the grave and is now staggering and lurching and groaning about “brainzzz” through the Riddled archives, where it blends in perfectly and is hard to locate.

The post concerned itself with ITNJ member John Walsh, who is a real-world person and not a character I plagiarised from an unwritten Tom Sharpe novel; and Alex Wymarra and his invisible friends - the 'United Tribal Nations' and the 'Treaty Council'. It alluded in passing to a little pompom-shaking cheerleadership story in the Australian, about a land-lease co-prosperity agreement between Bill Moss (retired banker turned medical advocate) and the Gudang-Yadhaykenu tribal grouping.

Recently the 2000-odd members of the tribe regained title of 360,000 hectares of land that no-one else wanted at the Northern tip of Queensland, making them a prime target for carpet-baggers and monorail salesmen. Hence the Australian item... clearly a press release written by Bill Moss or Alex Wymarra and baited for the editors with introductory paragraphs about Gubblement ineptitude and the virtues of private enterprise / private philanthropy, to ensure they stovepiped it straight into publication with the signature of Turi Condon (who is the real-estate columnist for the newspaper and therefore need not fear losing dignity or self-respect).

Former Macquarie Group banker Bill Moss and a group of trad­itional land owners have struck a deal over a vast area of land at the tip of far north Queensland, hoping­ to do what no government has managed and create an economic ­future for indigenous communities.
Mr Moss and the Gudang-Yadhaykenu clan native title holders, which have about 2000 family members living on the Cape York land and others living around the country, aim to lease out parts of the 360,000ha to ­establish tourism and agriculture businesses, with a proportion of the funds going to indigenous trusts for education, health and employment.
This will be a business venture, with a social and charitable outcome, but without government involvement, Mr Moss said.
“We don’t need the government. My experience is that everything is then caught up in bureaucratic red tape. This is a business model,’’ he said.

Set in stone

Some Wikieditor copied the link into the Yadhaykenu Whackyweedia page so now it is set in the stone of social reality. We also find Wymarra repeating his account of the deal, and foreseeing a radiant future of tourism development and monorails, in a dictation session interview sockpuppeted through Paul Gregoire at the latter's blog. Alternative Journalist Gregoire types commendably well for someone whose right hand is perpetually upraised in a clenched-fist salute of righteousness, but I digress.

The Treaty Council organised an economic treaty agreement between the Gudang-Yadhaykenu people of Far Northern Queensland and former Macquarie Group banker Bill Moss in February last year.
The deal involves the local native title holders leasing out 360,000 hectares of land in the northernmost region of Cape York to establish tourism and agricultural businesses.

A band of Alternative Journalists
Note upraised clenched-fist salutes

A different version of events was written for an actual news service by an actual journalist, who asked questions and interviewed people, so it offers details about the priorities of the locals and what they hope to see out of the deal. The author notes that rather than representing the tribe (as in his own account), Alex Wymarra was on Bill Moss' team as an advisor... it is possible that he worked both sides of the street, which is economical but has down-sides.

Indigenous land owner representatives of Gudang Yadhaykenu nations earlier this year [...] teamed up with Financial expert Bill Moss AO and his team from Boston Leisure and Tourism and the Northern Cape Group.
Bill Moss is the former CEO of Australia’s Maquarie Bank and head of Boston Leisure & Tourism and Co-Chairman of The Northern Cape Group. He was represented by his team led by his N.C.G. Co Chairman Alex Wymarra.

Inquiring minds are led to wonder, "What is this 'Boston Leisure & Tourism' group?" Also, "Why is all this of any possible interest to the Riddled readership?" But the Riddled mission statement has not been published in the Whackyweedia so it is not set in stone... also the whole story features journalistic dereliction at the Murdoch Press and that always ensues the hilarity.

Confusingly, the entity also operates as the Boston Indigenous Leisure & Tourism. Domains were staked out on the Interducts for BILT-related websites, but they remain as desolate, vacant building lots, frequented only by crickets and the occasional prowling dingo. And there does exist a BILT FaceBorg entry, which was fleetingly active in March last year at the time of peak Moss-deal publicity before slumping back into desuetude. This is not the philanthropic / entrepreneurial vigor that we expect from a player. "Desuetude" turns out not to mean "deprived of suet", by the way chiz chiz.

So we come to one Jason Irvine -- named in those news stories as BILT Executive Director. Also "Director of Business Development" and Core-Team member at FSHD Global (Bill Moss' medical-research philanthropy / fund-raising foundation).

Jason has had a career in business management in the areas of sport, leisure and tourism. He currently works part-time with FSHD Global as our Business Development Manager. For the balance of the week Jason wears his other work hat as CEO of Boston Leisure and Tourism, a company focused on creating strategic partnerships with Indigenous groups which will create important education and wealth opportunities for local communities.

In contrast to BILT, FSHD does have a functional website... one that has been recently cleansed of almost all acknowledgements of Jason Irvine's existence.

My commitment to the causes of accuracy and exhaustive completion obliges me to note that according to his FB page, Jason moved on to a new job in May 2018... that is to say, his ZoomInfo record and LinkedIn entry are out-of-date and lying jades. I am further compelled to observe that last year's fraud charges against him ("knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime, dishonestly obtaining property by deception, and acting with intent to pervert the course of justice") were dismissed as insufficiently conclusive. Though the magistrate was not well-pleased with Mr Irvine's shenanigans, which were "deeply troubling" and "very strongly suggestive of guilt". The back-story there was a complicated made-for-TV saga of money-laundering and illegal payments in the foopball industry, involving Irvine and more than one generation of Moss, details of which are TL;DW. I am just here to congratulate the Gudang-Yadhaykenu tribe on their choice of business partnership.

The best-case scenario would be for the 50-year land-lease deal to be forgotten and never mentioned again... apart from another round of invoices from the negotiators, and another impassioned communiqué from Alex Wymarra (channeled through Greg Pauloire) about paternalistic bureaucracies keeping indigenous peoples in dependency by stifling their right to exploit their own assets.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We had hoped for more whacky hijinks from the 
judicial-robe cosplayers of the ITNJ, Uncle Smut.

Nag nag nag. Content yourselves with this recent public preening, capitalising on the West Island Pry Minster's grudging apology to the victims of institutional church-based child abuse, in which Chief Justice Sir John Walsh of Brannagh co-opts it as a vindication of the ITNJ's business model (i.e. begging for money to help them publicise imaginary crimes).

Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued the national apology at parliament, in front of hundreds of victims and advocates of this horrific generational complex. The apology earmarks a sea-change in the willingness of the establishment to acknowledge such crimes, not least because in Australia some of the highest ranking people in government institutions themselves have been named as alleged perpetrators of historic child sex abuse.
The fact that the Prime Minister included in his address the term ‘ritual abuse’ was another victory for campaigners and advocates of truth and disclosure in this arena. Ritual abuse indicates the more nefarious aspect of child sex abuse, as it encompasses and acknolwedges [sic] the occultic Satanic element, which is vital in understanding the true pathology of historical child sex abuse.
The ITNJ, its justices, commissioners, and trustees thoroughly applaud the Australian government for taking this historic stance and have extended to Prime Minister Morrison an offer to cooperate and assist with any ongoing inquiries or investigations.

The numpties of the Morrison Gubblement have prior form for slack-jawed credulity in the face of self-conferred titles (or perhaps it is just professional courtesy), so it is possible that they did indeed waste one of the limited seats at the Federal Parliament event on this disbarred deadbeat.

I'm damaged, and I like it It made me what I am

When I vouchsafed to Another Kiwi that "We need a stalker", what I had in mind was someone to venture into the Forbidden Zone and bring back more incomprehensible artifacts of alien technology. Someone to take the place of Louis Carthorse, who has not been much use for anything since his last foray into the Zone.

This is not what I had in mind. The Riddled Research Laboratory and Power-Pylon Insulator Museaum is a have for tranquillity and contemplation, it is no place for Drama. But here is Mr 'BrutalAttackOnScientists', overdosing on Melodramine, paying homage to Derpsichore the Muse of Intertube Excitement:

What is going on here is an outgrowth or appendage to the Nano Alchemy story a few weeks ago, which culminated in a couple of Indian professors taking penumbrage (which is one stage away from umbrage) to the level of scrutiny that their publications were incurring from the stickybeaks and data-integrity blackboard monitors at PubPeer. Helpful inquiries had been met with threatened libel suits to seek $50,000 Butthurt Compensation; the Cyber Police would be called in, to bring the miscreants to justice.

And Lo, an image did circulate on the Twittle, purporting to be the complaint in question.... but enlivened by fresh dramatic plot twists, with International Cyber-Criminals. Also an Extortion Attempt, with menacing phone-calls demanding moneys; I like to imagine that a thick East-European accent was used, although this crucial detail is absent from the ostensible Complaint.



This version of events allows the negative PubPeer reviews to be reframed as coordinated retribution, for the failure to pay the blackmailers' ransom (and nothing to do with actual image duplication and crayon-scribbled fabrication, spanning an oeuvre of papers). Indeed the narrative depicts an attack not so much on a team of Indian academics, but on Indian science and Indian culture themselves. This appeal to nationalistic defensiveness could gain some traction with the team's core constituency (i.e. academic / political patrons) and discourage them from reading the PubPeer critiques.

However, "BrutalAttackOnScientists" -- the circulator of the document -- is not necessarily moved by sympathy for Drs Sharma & Madhuri. His (or her) concern is centred more on their occasional co-author, one Ashutosh Tiwari. Tiwari had been employed for a few years in a Nanotechnology Centre at Linköping University in Sweden, but more of his energies went into his predatory-publishing company, and his parasitical journal (in which his Linköping students were encouraged to publish their work), and in his cruise-ship mockademic scamferences, and in the Research Institute he maintained at home in India... which appears to be a heavily-photoshopped version of a private diploma-mill, his father's "Dr Ganesh Prasad Law College".

All that came under scrutiny in turn. Then toys were flung, and trolleys lost their wheels, and the @StopBlackmailer twitter-egg sprang into existence, like grey-eyed Athene, Goddess of quantum-vacuum fluctuations, birthed from the head of Zeus.

Most notably, he (or she) has been lashing out at innocent bystanders in Swedish academia, looking for potential rivals who might have been behind Tiwari's unwanted exposure... Interspersed with allegations that Ulf Nilsson of Linköping U. is involved in the conspiracy and therefore should recuse himself from the LiU inquiry he's conducting into Mr Tiwari's business activities. The plot-line has elaborated to the point where Dan Brown would find it risible. Personally I think that anyone stuck in Umeå has suffered enough and should be left alone.

The twitstorms have acquired Trumpian proportions, with umpteen dozen copies of each denunciation blasted out in an hour to nearly 6000 followers who were acquired en masse from a Bot-broker.

Just saying, dude, when you are so over-wrought and loosely duct-taped together as to make the Riddled staff look like paragons of well-compensating high-functioning rationality, then it's time to put down the crack-pipe. Do not let that @SmutClyde troll encourage you, HE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.


Meanwhile, the collective attention of the PubPeer commentariat has moved on to a different Indian nanotech / material-science researcher. Though Ashutosh Tiwari need not feel neglected.

Onan, what is best in life? To crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to see the retractions of their papers

Imagine that various persons -- some anonymous, some identified -- have used fora such as PubPeer to criticise your alchemical announcements for consisting largely of half-arsed photoshoppery in lieu of actual experiments.

Do you:
(1) use the same fora to defend your work, refute your opponents and leave them humiliated and confounded? or
(2) Devise a bogus, fraudulent story of international extortion and gang-criminality, with which to pester the Cyber Police and pose as a victim?

Life of a post-publication peer reviewer is always intense. This is currently in circulation on the Twittle, emanating from an account created for the purpose.



I was not previously aware of my career as an international blackmailer and cyber-criminal. The worst part about being unmasked is that everyone at the Old Entomologist thinks I must be swimming in money, and they expect me to buy the drinks.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

Evidently Sharma & Madhuri (or their sympathisers) do not want anyone to read their papers. Understandably so. They have the consolation of knowing that at least the editors & peer reviewers never read them.

And there came a response:

Yet here the bumblefucks are, telling people in advance about the plan to complain to the Cyber Police. At that stage they had not dreamed up the bogus extortion attempt.