Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

WIPP: 'HuffPo Comedy OpEd So Stupid Its Dangerous - And Telling





Cat Urine effects on the right;



 Radiation effects, on the left. 



Any Questions?

                      



Problem is, I am so disgusted by this 'comedy' piece that I don't even want to explain.  This is a problem, as I have learned, because it is precisely the people who don't understand it that I would be hoping to reach, were I hoping to do anything useful with this post.

Perhaps it is not.  Perhaps all of you already understand why the following quote, from a recentish op-ed in the Comedy section of the Huffington Post, from one of their "signature lineup of contributors," is a problem:


from "I'm With Stupid," HuffPo (link to Google's cache)

Or perhaps you find it funny, and I am a stick in the mud.  Look at the comparison of the effects of cat urine and of ionizing radiation, above, again.  Am I? They are rather different.  Hard to compare, and not betray one's stunning lack of mirror neurons, but what do I know. 

I doubt such ignorance stems from a well coordinated effort to keep the population in the kind of ignorance that offers the least resistance to the machinations of the rich and powerful. It is, however, true that the barest amount of research provides enough information to create a healthy suspicion; a little experience with how hyperlinks, syntax, and layout signify, and with the meanings commonly signified, and a healthy resistance will be well underway.

Without a well honed critical faculty we are screwed.

One of countless illustrations of this, IMHO, below.  This merely happens to be the latest one:


from "Doctors want ban on thyroid cancer screenings — “A tsunami of thyroid cancer… Stop the diagnosis… We need to actively discourage early detection” — WSJ: Judge rules nuclear reactors causing thyroid cancers — Study: Fukushima-related tumors can spread very fast, must be closely monitored," Energy News.

Or this (uploaded by one samarabob, who uploaded this supposedly rough translation in video form, as well as the original PSA from 2011) :





Well perhaps it is time for a little of my own humour:
A Faustian Orginal Memegenerator meme featuring Dr. Shunichi "Smiling protects from Radiation" Yamashita.


Be seeing you.