If you have never heard the name Phillipus Aureolis Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, you can be forgiven; it's not one of those that rolls off the tongue very easily. It is the true name of the man we call "Paracelsus", regarded as the father of modern toxicology and pharmacology.
His true contribution to Medicine, however, was his insistence that because something has been written down, and it has been referred to for years, often centuries, it is not necessarily right, particularly if what is written does not match what one learns from the observations of Nature. His point, way back in the 1500's, was that "medicine" as it existed in those days was slaved to dogmatic reliance upon ancient texts -- Aristotle, Avicenna, Galen, Hippocrates, among others -- that experience had proven, repeatedly, were useless.
And yet, the practice of Medieval/Renaissance medicine was based on the absolute crap they churned out and repeated for centuries in the medical schools and universities of the West. Whether it was the idea that illness was the just wages of sin, or an imbalance of "humours", or caused by bad smells, "doctors of physik" learned and continued to peddle absolute quackery. The crap became the "established" text; it's author the "authority". To question the veracity of such things was to insult the profession, and in some cases, to commit heresy.
If people died, despite years of bleeding them, or shoving thistles up their ass, or maybe getting them to drink concoctions predicated on sheer guesswork and often containing dangerous substances, well, that was God's Will, you see. Not the doctor's fault...he followed the 1,000 year old procedure with a history of failure in both letter and spirit, just like they did in Ancient Egypt.
There were reasons for it, of course. The "Medical profession" of the day was protected by Church and usually Monarch, as well. The things they dealt with were a great mystery shrouded by Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, languages not usually accessible to the uneducated or even the curious. Their education was still largely dominated by subjects like astrology and divinity that tended to prejudice their knowledge and views. The doctors of the day were largely itinerant: upon graduation from university, they took to the roads, seeking wealthy patrons and official appointments, until their dumbfuckery and debts, usually both, caught up with them and then they hit the road again.
But the greatest weakness in the field at the time was that there were few, if any, who dared challenge their authority or methods. To do so was very dangerous. It could get you arrested, excommunicated, imprisoned, perhaps even stoned to death, if the local authority didn't like the cut of your jib.
Which is why Paracelsus is such an important figure; he challenged the medical authority of his time, told them they were full of shit, that their methods were moribund and useless, and castigated them for their reliance upon ancient texts that prescribed ineffective methods. His point was that they weren't doing anything useful; they simply were rewarded -- with money, jobs, prestige -- for failure. They failed because they did not try to examine and evaluate the words of the Ancient Ones through the lens of experience.
He accused them of being shoddy scientists. He EXPOSED them for the shoddy scientists they were.
As a result, he died penniless and almost forgotten. The Profession closed ranks against him.
I mention Paracelsus (for reasons other than he's one of my favorite historical figures) because we need another like him, these days.
Here we are in America, in the 21st Century -- we have cracked the human genome; we can perform surgery on people while they're still in the womb; we have cured diseases once thought impossible to solve -- and we're all sentenced to a grim existence of being in an extended Time-Out because the medical profession has become dogmatic once again.
To take the example of hydroxychloroquine. The CDC says it's no good for Bat Flu; the FDA says it's no good for the Peking Pox, they both say they need to do intensive, long-term, double-blind studies, and yet...the same institutions have published studies saying the exact opposite. More than once.
Medical journals all over the world have published the results of similar studies.
Somehow, all those studies and results don't count, for having overreacted and also losing so many people to a malady that 98% will normally survive WITHOUT medical intervention, for having the public see the Public Health System at all levels absolutely fail, The Profession has, once again, closed ranks. It is now cleaving to "studies" in the same way the Ancients clung to Avicenna; it points to "other studies" or "a lack of studies" to alternately explain today's "best advice" and tomorrow's "ooops, we fucked up!". We seem to be at a complete loss as to what to do.
About a virus that you can kill with fucking soap and water.
(Stop with the "novel" thing. It's a fucking Coronavirus, like all the other Coronaviruses. It has the same effect on the human body as the other six Coronaviruses known to infect us. What makes it "novel" is that it has evolved (or had engineered?) an appendage that makes it a better cell penetrator).
And I was wondering WHY the "authorities" seem to be clinging to this dogmatic belief that a proven drug and treatment regime is suddenly not good, and why they seemingly change their minds on all manner of things from the utility of face masks to why people hoard toilet paper from day to day?
The thought occurred to me, given all the sloppy science we've been subjected to in the last two decades -- Michael Mann's Hockey Stick, Climategate, The Autism/Vaccine Lie, the failure of "Pandemic Modeling", and many others -- you start to almost believe that the people involved in making the decisions don't know what to believe, anymore.
The Scientific Method is dead.
We know studies are faked; we know peer review is perverted and often by-passed in order to make headlines; we know our universities engage in poor scholarship that is politically-motivated; that scientists are on payrolls that color their activities.
Is it possible that all the most-recent studies of Coronaviruses, HCQ, and much more, are so useless, so poorly done, deliberately engineered to produce a pre-determined result, that no one has any confidence in them? Even the well-done ones? And rather than have to guess as to which study is good and which poor, the best stance to take -- as an institution -- is take no risk, whatsoever? Something on the order of medical inertia.
Now it's become a national inertia.
Theophrastus, please pick up the white courtesy phone, you magnificent motherfucker.
On to the stupid liberal front (sorry, that was redundant).
Vis-a-vis the latest "tragedy" unfolding in Minneapolis, a few words.
If you don't want to find yourself in a circumstance where you might get killed by the police, either accidentally or deliberately, follow these simple guidelines:
1. Stop doing stupid shit.
2. Don't be a criminal.
3.Co-operate when confronted by a deputized man armed with a baton, pepper spray, a taser, a firearm, and sometimes a vicious dog.
4. Never assume that you're entitled to be a douchebag who can willy-nilly flout the rules of civilization and infringe upon the rights of others free of consequence. It's a sucker bet.
A note to the Huns...excuse me,, I meant
You cannot, on the one hand, insist that a man is dead because "there is no justice", and then, on the other hand, mete out injustices of your own. Like stealing and burning down other people's property...people who had nothing to do with the dead guy.
You cannot insist that your
What makes you look even stupider (and we must agree, the bar is really low here) is that in the process of
Enough with the bullshit about "oppression","slavery"and "equality"; you're not oppressed. In fact, generations of you have led a very unoppressed lifestyle of serial bastardy, drug addiction, criminal behavior, domestic violence, illiteracy (why doesn't anyone ever loot a bookstore?), and countless degenerate behaviors and activities, all of it supported by the State. None of you was ever a slave.
And you're not rioting for "equality" -- you're rioting for the right to be left alone despite being criminals or to be treated differently, with kid gloves -- by the police when they inevitably cross your path. In other words, you're rioting for a privilege the rest of us don't have.
To go with all the other privileges you have: Affirmative Action, Hiring Quotas, Preferential treatment in admissions despite poor academics, a shitload of Civil Rights Laws that favor you, and a political party that is addicted to your votes, paid for by other people's money.
Try getting some of that "affordable housing" you all want now that every developer in America has seen what you do to other people's property.
If you find life here a small, sad, cage, then leave. No one is keeping you here against your will. Otherwise, unfuck yourself and get with the program and learn how to behave like civilized human beings.
In the meantime, wait for the facts to come out and then let's see if justice is done.
Now, back to the regularly-scheduled Libtard bashing.
Events like the ones in Minneapolis bring out the absolute worst in Libtards in a way that even Donald Trump or a Stay-at-Home Mother can't. Naturally, all my moonbat lib friends KNOWS, with every fiber of their being, what happened here, and what the "solution" is.
Naturally, this is all because there is "No Opportunity" in the Inner City, and worse, there is no "Equality of Opportunity" for the Modern Urban Aborigine. Of course, the lib has alternate definitions for those words that make even less sense than uttering them in the first place.
For a start, there's a lot of opportunity in America. Sometimes, you have to leave the Inner City to find it. Funny thing about opportunity, but it never comes to your door while you're just chillin' at home with a Blunt and a 40, or making Baby-You-Can't-Feed-Number-8. If you're expecting an opportunity to just be handed to you, you won't get one.
If you think you're entitled to one just by virtue of breathing, then guess again. If you believe The Government will give you one, then take a good look at everything else The Government gave you -- housing projects, welfare, jails, bad schools -- and tell me if you're noticing a pattern.
Opportunity has to be hunted. It's only as good as the level of motivation as the person that seeks it out.
But that's not exactly what the (usually Upper Middle Class, financially-secure, employed in a useless endeavor that survives by forced extraction) liberal means. In their world, Opportunity needs to be granted to the would-be Opportunist in a neat package, tied with a bow, with a complementary blowjob included. And better yet, the Opportunity should be taken from someone else, first, preferably white and male.
Not them, of course. They "worked" for what they have. Apparently the rest of us didn't.
To believe otherwise is racist.
Of course, every last one of them pulled out the same example because they all read the same stupid websites and none of them has an original thought of their own:
"If Donald Trump can be a success because he inherited his father's money and went to Wharton, why can't everyone else have that same opportunity?"
Where to begin?
1. Donald Trump did not pick his parents, nor the circumstances into which he was born, any more than you did, you fucking refugee from a gated community.
2. Real Estate developers with deep pockets are in short supply.
3. You DO realize that Trump had casinos that went bankrupt? That many of his businesses have failed? Despite having "Daddy's money" (like you didn't, you stupid little bitch?) and a diploma from a tony school? You don't have a clue as to how the man made his money, do you?
4. Are you making the case that only people who have Daddy's money and an Ivy league education can succeed? If so, explain your own failure.
5. Why point to Trump when you have Anderson Cooper, Chelsea Clinton, The Cuomo Boys, and so many of your own to examine?
6. What makes you think it isn't racist to make the case that without government help and the cheering of irrationally-guilty white liberals who are hoping to buy security from The Mob by using everyone else as a Human Shield, emphasizing a systematic robbery of others, that The Mob CAN'T succeed unless you "help" them?
7. If anyone has to give something up or have it taken from them to see your dream of "Equal Opportunity" come true, then do the right thing and volunteer to be robbed and deprived. Why do I -- the kid from a Blue Collar background who grew up in Brooklyn -- have a "white privilege" (like someone yanked the silver spoon out of my ass?) and You -- son of a tenured professor and investment banker, graduate of Bard, from the land of manicured lawns and two Volvos in the driveway in Westchester -- don't? Put your money where your mouth is -- only them will you have any moral authority to lecture me, you stupid bastard!
Then they pretend to not understand a word you're saying. And call you "racist".
On the subject of haircuts: I finally got one last week.
This drew the interest of one of my neighbors, a woman so nosey she would crawl up your ass just to discover what you ate for dinner. Probably because her own life sucks and she has no friends.
Neighbor: I see you got a haircut.
Me: Yes, I did.
Neighbor: Where did you get it?
Me: None of your business.
Neighbor: You know, you're not supposed to get a haircut, nowadays.
Me: When did they pass that law?
Neighbor: We're all supposed to be practicing "social distancing", you know! If you got a haircut, you broke the rules!
Me: You obviously need more practice with the "social distancing" thing. You're not doing it right...you crossed the street to come talk to me. I don't think that's how you do it.
Neighbor: I should report you! You could kill someone!
Me: I might start with you. Get the fuck off my lawn.
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