The wrong kind of bees

Inspired by Tony Fisher and his functioning Rubik Ice-Cube, here at Riddled Research Laboratory we are making good progress with our plan to create the first Rubik Cube constructed out of bee-hives. Like the freezy version, it will provide the hobbyist with strong incentive to solve it as quickly as possible

Staff retention remains a problem.

Worst Fear-&-Loathing-in-Las-Vegas hommage EVAH

We can't stop here, this is wind-turbine toilet-block country!

[h/t Brisbane Times, RW]

I have a noble cause for skin, there's just too many of them #2 Pigments of the Imagination edition

I programmed the Riddled Ktistec machine to scour the Interweave for exemplars of the type and synthesise them into an updated Mission Statement for the Riddled Research Laboratory and Institute for Extreme Country-Dancing... ideally something more legible and less beer-stained than what we have at the moment. It came up with a list of noble and chivalrous ambitions:

• To act as the directing and co-ordinating organization in the field of medicine;
• To be the worldwide, authoritative organ of the medical profession;
• To provide leadership on health matters, form the health research agenda, articulate norms and standards, evince evidence-based policy options, and monitor and assess health trends;
• To assist governments and national medical associations in jointly tackling health problems and improving the welfare of their citizens;
• To chart a successful course for health care delivery globally by articulating health guidelines and standards and helping nations address their public health issues;
• To study and evaluate all aspects of the medical health continuum, including the development of programs approved by the officers or members, to ensure an adequate continuing supply of well-qualified physicians to meet the needs of the public;

When I accused the Ktistec machine of plagiarising these items in all their grandiosity from the World Health Academy it turned off its auditory inputs and has been sulking ever since.

The Academy is primarily a vanity outlet for a New Jersey cosmetic dermatologist (insufficiently assuaged by his self-penned Whackyweedia entry), so it need not detain us for long. But before we continue to the other member of WHA -- its Secretary-General or sometimes President of Dermatology, one Professor Torelli Lotti -- the Academy's website deserves a moment, for it is a trichobezoar of whackyness.

Building upon its goal of transforming the world (one unsightly skin condition at a time) and its claim to represent the entire global medical profession, it lists a coterie of researchers and philanthropists and Nobel Laureates as "our people"... without explicitly claiming them as members.. and few of the sterling individuals whose images festoon the site are aware of the honour bestowed upon them. Whoever was paid to construct the site got bored and finished half-way through, so the continue reading links, they go nowhere.

The WHA site (also the Whackyweedia adaptation of it) refer to its International Journal of Medicine:

The International Journal of Medicine is an international open-access, peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is a publication of the highest academic profile that will bring new and important information to the medical, scientific, and policymaking community worldwide. Board consist of Nobel Prize laureates, Lasker Award winners, and other distinguished persons. Our devotion to international health guarantees that research and analysis from all regions of the world are vastly covered. We aim to publish first-rate clinical trials that will change the way medicine is practiced.

Publication Charges
To provide open access, the International Journal of Medicine levies an article publishing charge which covers our expenses, such as journal production, and online hosting and archiving. The charge (exclusive of VAT for UK and EU authors) is $500. There are no submission or page charges, and no color charges. We understand that some authors lack funding to defray publication costs. Where only limited funds are available, the journal will either accept partial payment or offers a waiver. As a matter of policy, the International Journal of Medicine offers a 100% waiver to corresponding authors based in Hinari Band 1 countries, and a 50% waiver to authors based in Hinari Band 2 countries.

No other record of the Journal or its editorial panel of Nobel Laureates can be found on the Interlattice [unless it is coterminous with the IJM issued by some little parasite-publishing start-up in the UAE].

Never mind, there is still Dermatologic Therapy, which acquired the WHA logo and became its emergency back-up journal in 2010, also acquiring Torello Lotti as Associate Editor.

At this point the franchising of WHA Official Journals becomes confusing, for a third journal joins the party! -- Global Derpatology, extruded by those mendacious low-life turdmuffins lovable rapscallions at OAText, who bill it as the Official Organ of the WHA. The OAText people lie about everything (like claiming to operate out of London rather than Hyderabad), but the founder and Editor-in-Chief is a Professor Torello Lotti, and surely his word can be trusted!

But wait! A challenger appears! Lotti is also credited with founding and Editing-in-Chief a competing Journal of Figmentary Disorders for the OMICS griftdozer!* Which is also the Official Journal of the World Health Academy.

To the extent that this is non-tedious, it is because the episode provides a rare example of a shared sockpuppet -- a non-existent person who serves as Lotti's Editorial Assistant and featured in spam from two competing scamshops.

'... Beall noted the ostensible existence of one Amanda Venis, a high-functioning $NAME parameter who works both sides of the street. "Her" FaceBukkake page primarly peddles one of the dismal OAText travesties (Global Derpatology) but the advertisements that comprise "her" Twitter stream alternate between that journal and the Journal of Figmentary Disorders from OMICS. Of the three LinkedIn entries set up in that name, one has her working in SF as an Editorial Assistant for OMICS, while the other two have her in London, as OAText Managing Editor for Global Dermatology or, possibly, for the Interdiciplinary Journal of Chemistry.'

[Text self-plagiarised recycled from here]

As well as the Potemkin Academy, Lotti, Schwartz and their colleagues share an interest in a Californian biomed stat-up company. If any dramatic results emerge from their research in rebranding existing hair-growth placebos in exciting new packaging, they will not lack for suitable journals to announce them.

In the time he can spare from founding new journals, Professor Lotti abuses his powers-for-good as an OMICS / iMedPub editor to pimp "low dose medicine" -- which is to say, a quantum-bullshit neologistic acronym-ridden rebranding of homeopathy.


I was shocked, SHOCKED to find grifting going on in the placebo-vitiligo speciality!



Perhaps the multiple journals are intended to strengthen Lotti's reputation by diluting it repeatedly.

Before and after pigmentary disorder

* Pigmentary Disorders was evidently too specialised under Prof. Lotti's editorship to bring enough of a moneystream into the OMICS trough, so they recently booted him out and changed the title to the more lucrative and all-encompassing "Dermatology and Dermatologic Diseases".

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

UPDATE What's this? Instigating punctuation? THE MONSTER.

...Once again we seem to have buried the lede, as often happens at Riddled. I can only say in our defense that the lede showed no perceptible vital signs and Dr Benway signed a death certificate before the burial. In this case "the lede" was Vitiligo.

Lede, buried

Duke Vitiligo, the decadent and psychopathic ruler of Chancre, whom we last saw in Act II Scene IV, conspiring with Psoriasis the court jester -- who is really Maculato, the legitimate heir to the Duchy, returned from exile in disguise?

Shut up. And try to be more sensitive about a skin condition that turns one into the map in the frontispiece of a 400-page fantasy novel.


Vitiligo is a purely cosmetic condition, with no life-threatening complications, so it is tailor-made for mountebanks and charlatans with placebos to peddle... especially as there is no effective treatment, i.e. no Standard of Care to compete with snake-oil-infused ointments, Low-Dose Cytokines, fractional ablative photothermolysis lasers, or whatever.

Of course there is a Vitiligo Research Foundation -- a charity, devoted to raising awareness and funds. It grew out of the World Health Academy (or possibly vice versa), so any donations are administered by Torello Lotti, Robert Schwartz, and like-minded friends, through probably not Amanda Venis.

Also, a special vitiligo-themed issue of Dermatologic Therapy composed of Lotti-authored, Lotti-edited papers promising new cures.

This is very insensitive, people; victims

of vitiligo are not for journey planning

Inquiring minds were wondering about the shift in Torello Lotti's academic affiliation in 2010, from the University of Florence to the Università Telematica Guglielmo Marconi (Rome)... the latter being a distance-learning institution, "set up by a consortium of private and public companies" ["diploma mill" is such an ugly term].

[h/t Ocasapiens]

This coincided with his appearances in Italian courts on charges of corruption, peculation, selling patients to drug companies, selling conferences to drug companies, generally being open for business, and instigating punctuation. Lotti's original sentence was increased on appeal (despite his lawyer arguing that the peculation was on behalf of the University and not for personal profit); then reduced again, with the Court of Appeal dismissing some of the charges and calling for a retrial on others.

He remains an acclaimed and honoured member of the cosmetic-dermatology fraternity. It is almost as if the entire profession is parasitical.

When Great Gatsby cosplay goes terribly wrong

Some magnificent bastard is scamming wannabee start-up entrepreneurs, selling $3500 and $6500 tix to Exclusive Society Soirées where they can network with Venture Capitalists and Investor Angels, sealing deals in a soft-focus milieu of champagne and nose-candy. The VCs and IAs get to slip past the bouncers almost for free, much as in Ladies' Night at a Courtenay-Strip titty bar.

Another Kiwi is refused
entry to the Yale Club

New York Private Equity Forum hosts America’s best investor-attended national funding venues for early and later-stage companies.In light of the recognition, the Forum has received applauds from the investment community and entrepreneurs seeking capital.Equity forums are exclusive invitation-only events designed to assemble a select group of business visionaries, entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, investment professionals, and money managers. In addition to presenting " one-of-a-kind " private investment opportunities, this prestigious event at the Yale Club New York is designed to be an ideal setting for new business development, exchange of ideas, creation of deal flow, location of capital sources and ultra-high-end networking.

Give them all the applauds!

The afternoon program, ending at 5:30PM, will provide ample time for effective networking, breakout sessions and one-on-one meetings with the senior management of presenting companies. A gala private reception will immediately follow the day’s program. Guests will enjoy first-class networking and Live Jazz along with a great selection of wines and hors d’oeuvres.

Classiness from Oglaf

The whole thing reads like Baron Merlona's Private Club, all Lear Jets and cigars and well-bred hookers cortisones courtesans, except the Baron's Club was the aspirational grift of a dumbarse bumblefuck who wants to think of himself as a Dirty Rotten Scoundrel without putting in the hard yards of actually scoundrelling; whereas the New York Private Equity Forum is a real working scam. They have evidently hired a conference room at the Yale Club, and therefore cite that desirable address as their headquarters, which is a nice touch. My censorious disapprobation is mingled with schadenfreud on behalf of the suckers, and annoyance that we didn't think of the grift ourselves, here at the Riddled Experimental Ethics Laboratory.

There have been 67 of these Fora... not bad for an entity that sprang from nowhere six months ago, in the manner of a quantum fluctuation birthed from the forehead of Zeus. Whoever could be the instigator of the Equity Forum? They have anonymised the domain registration...

...NO WAIT, it's just another pseudopod of the OMICS skinwalkers. The phone number resolves to that of OMICS, and various LinkedIn accounts link it to the company's gombeens and cockwombles. Evidently CEO Gedela -- Ersatz Haderach of the Open-Access Revolution -- is not content with the income from the parasitical-publishing and mockademic-meeting rackets, and aspires to some of that sweet Hamptons-scented Money Manager dosh.

So Messrs. Trahison & Clerisy, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths (also Riddled's legal advisors) are all agog to hear from this dude, Sr Counsel for NYPEF and OMICS and its IMedPub subsidiary...

"Not so fast," says the reader, paying closer attention to Mr Vattikoti's affiliation. "We know of Allied Academies, and Pulsus Group or CME Society, assimilated into the company's congressive empire in the hope of shedding the stink of the OMICS reputation while they clog our email with spam for their production-line cookie-cutter scamferences. Not to forget Conferenceseries. But who is this EuroSciCon?"

an internationally renowned medical peer-review publisher and conferences organizer established in the year 1984 publishes and hosts the work of researchers in a manner that exemplifies the highest standards in research integrity.

Who indeed? EuroSciCon / EuroSciConOnline / LifeSciEvent purport to be English, operating out of a virtual-office mail-drop in High Barnet. But sure enough, these details are as corroborative fraudulent as ever, and once again the company is a fuckpuppet for Hyderabad's finest. Whatever EuroSciCon may have been for the 15 years after Shara Cohen founded it, OMICS have kept only the name (and the corporate repute), restuffing its skin with their usual business model of drowning the academic world in Alt-Facts mendacity so that legitimate conferences disappear in the noise.

[h/t Jeffrey Beall, in August]

Recognition at last! 'Suzan Brown' is well-
versed in my "expertise and experience" in
neurology, though not in my name & gender

The IMedPub e-address schandra@imedpub.com usefully leads not only to this new acquisition, but also to meetingint.org, confirming it as yet another tentacle.

[h/t Matt Hodgkinson, in July]

The pursuit of further tentacles is left as an exercise for the reader. I just want to say, Kudos to whoever came up with the name of "Pubicon" as a small Indian on-line publisher with only seven "American Journals of W", two "British Journals of X", two "International Journals of Y" and one "Global Journal of Z" -- though that was before OMICS acquired them.

Great Failures of Our Time

#78. Early Renaissance false eyelashes.

Hardcore body-mods, dudes!

To remove themselves from the section of cultivated grass, vile first-instar hatchlings!

Because the Intertubes need more Groaci.

Insect Human

The Van Dusen Meditation Garden was closed when I was there (or so it seemed) due to the distractions and the phantasmic eidolons of Samsāra.

OK, Phantasmic eidolons. And the veils of Māyā. And fire ants.

The truth is that the fire ants only wanted to chill out and practice their Ānāpānasati breath mindfulness but the management lost their shit and over-reacted.

"Reporters should know better than to highlight a handful of random attacks by kids and call it journalism."

Remember, there is more to a career in journalism than just being a kid and attacking at random. Other skills are also required.

Colours out of space (and time)

Back with Another Kiwi and I were young, the world was monochrome as shown in old photographs, and if we wanted any colours we had to make them ourselves, by taking a spatial pattern of black-&-white edges and overlaying it with time variations. Kids today have everything handed to them on a plate but you try telling them that and they just laugh. I think they're laughing, anyway; it's hard to be sure until they give my ear trumpet back.

The effect was noticed in 1831 by Wheatstone when he was waving a page of lines and letters in front of his eyes, as was the custom of the time. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

The prototype of the Wedgwood Patent Ceramic Bong -- designed by Brewster -- had recently been presented to King William IV at the latter's coronation for the greater glory of the Commonwealth, and all over England the physicists were staring intently at the Paisley wallpaper or asking one another "Have you ever looked at your hand? I mean, really LOOKED at it?" In fact Prévost had discovered the same flicker effect several years earlier, but he failed to publish it (being distracted at the time by his "Looking-at-the-world-through-a-cardboard-tube-at-each-eye-pointing-in-slightly-different-directions" experimental program) so he has only recently received the credit he deserves.

Hell has turned soft and is just not the same as it was in our day. I blame do-gooders

At a well-attended press conference today, called at short notice to put an end to what was described as "baseless and irresponsible speculation", a Spokesimp for the interim administration of Tartarus announced that certain minor changes would be made to some of the torments.

Asked how the residents felt about these changes, the spokesimp noted that some of the longer-term guests of Tartarus were rather set in their ways, and reacted negatively to anything different. He expressed confidence that the likes of Ixion and Sisyphus would soon come to see the benefits of futility and frustration expressed through a Zorb and a set of rebounding rubber skittles, rather than fiery wheels and rocks and mountain-sides with all the risk of injury and repetitive strain. He assured his audience that these changes had been under consideration for some time, and the timetable had been brought forward to meet new workplace safety standards. Cost-cutting was not a factor.

The spokesimp stated, in response to a question about converting Tartarus into a theme park, that the administrators were "open to all possibilities". However, rumours that plans were afoot to close the venerable institution were emphatically rejected as "unfounded".

At the end of the press conference, journalists were presented with printed and electronic copies of the full press release, dangling just out of reach.



Chaining with hooks to a slab of rock for eleven hundred years does not meet current Health and Safety regulations.

Halo Payload The hubcap of this life

If I've told you kids n times, I've told you n++ times: just because something is levitating and circular, doesn't mean it's a halo, so putting it on your head won't make you all saintly and canonised.

It could be the circular crushing mouthparts of a ghost Anomalocaris canadensis.*

Fossilised while swallowing a 1-cm ruler

Ha ha silly Uncle Smut! We know an Anomalocarid when we see one!

Ghost Anomalocarids are tricksy. They can turn invisible, apart from their mouths. Sometimes they disguise themselves.
Even if it was a halo, you don't know how old it is. Some of the
early models had bugs in the dimension-stability device drivers, and no safety cutoff. Unless you want to end up like Cousin Nicasius... ever since his 'little accident' he's only been fit for appearing in public-service warnings about the dangers of reckless trepanning, and modelling for designer egg-cups.

Novelty eggcup now available from the Riddled Gift Shoppe

Next time you kids find a 'halo', ask the staff to test it. That's what they're paid for.

This Blemmya's kneecaps are frog
faces. Your argument is invalid.

Kids today. It's as if they paid NO ATTENTION AT ALL when I showed them those public-service documentaries about other circular things hovering in the air that aren't halos.


* Way much cooler than ghost sharks.