Don’t eat the solar system! It contains lead.
Hmmm, this gives me an idea. Will Jenny McCarthy, David Kirby, RFK Jr., and all the rest of the pro-measles crowd leave the solar system if we tell them it contains Mercury?
Tip o’ the Voyager probe to Fark
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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March 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
We can only hope! At least, we can surmise one thing: They WILL get worked up into a hysteria because they lack any ability to think (critically).
March 19th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
ba-dum CHING!
March 19th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I wonder if Jenny McCarthy knows that thiomersal (C9H9HgNaO2S), is widely used in the manufacture of mascara that she is fond of using — judging by her picture in Wikipedia?
March 19th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
But the solar system also contains botulism, which as we all know is the best thing evar!!
March 19th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Furthermore, does Jenny McCarthy know that low-energy “environmentally friendly” light bulbs use gaseous mercury? On learning this, will she remove them from her house?
March 19th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
At least mercury is completely natural. The solar system also contains dangerous chemicals like dihydrogen monoxide, which is a significant greenhouse gas and accounts for more than a hundred times more deaths than mercury.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Good point. You know it’s found in biologically significant quantities in all tumors, and there’s an extremely high correlation between cancer victims and ingestion of DHMO?
March 19th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
That definitely means she’ll be opposed to any futher moon shots . . . .
March 19th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
The REALLY scary thing is the number of people killed every year due to recreational DHMO use. DHMO . . . the secret killer.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Yeah, I think we should switch from the chemical DHMO to the more natural mercury in all applications. While DHMO kills, mercury makes you merely forgetful.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I just had a bottle of DHMO, I don’t feel so well.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Did you know that you can find DHMO in Baby Food? WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
March 19th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Man…Mercury in our skies, DHMO in our food. It’s getting to be so a person can’t be safe anywhere.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
If you inhale DHMO it can be fatal in mere minutes- and its like people dont even care!!!
March 19th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I just found out that some all natural foods that I’ve been eating are not only highly contaminated with DHMO, but it turns out that they also contain fructose!!! Egad! I’m going to die young.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
How can Mercury be bad? It can be found in all sorts of traditional medications and doctors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used to swear by it. If it was good enough for George Washington, it should be good enough for you.
http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2008/05/the-mercury-mav.html
March 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
‘Don’t eat the solar system! It contains lead.’
ROFL
March 19th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
May I suggest adding a mixture of ethyl hydrate and dextrose monohydrate next time? While you may not feel better, at least you will feel less.
Oh, and if you caramelize that dextrose monohydrate in your biochemical processing plant you may end up with Guinness.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
your poking fun at the DHMO straw man does nothing to prove the safety of mercury (and other ingredients) in vaccines.
- were you also poking fun at the people critical of use of DDT pesticide?
- were you also supportive of cigarette smoking when medical doctors were recommending certain brands?
- i’ll bet you were laughing at the critics of live polio vaccines and DPT (pre DTaP) vaccine?
- would you have been ridiculing of Semmelweis’ hypothesis?
For those of you who think a vaccine is safe because it is FDA approved, go take some Vioxx. Do some reasearch on the conflicts of interest in the bodies that approve drugs. Like our political system, economic system, and our war machine, our medical industry is awash with corruption.
That is not to say that mercury is causing autism, but we should allow opposing points of view in science.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Don’t forget DHMO is an industrial solvent, capable of eroding solid rock, as well as *the* major component of acid rain!
albert: your poking fun at the DHMO straw man does nothing to prove the safety of mercury (and other ingredients) in vaccines.
Oh wee, another anti-vax troll. Nobody’s using DHMO to argue about the safety of mercury, we’re just using humour to point out that the toxicity of anything depends strongly on the dosage. Chill out, save the serious arguments for a serious thread.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Please, all of you fear mongers saying DHMO or “dihydrogen monoxide” are being ridiculous. Hydrogen hydroxide is completely harmless!
First off, it is hydrogen hydroxide. People calling it “DHMO” are playing on the fears based on the word “monoxide,” as in “carbon monoxide.”
Secondly, studies have shown that hydrogen hydroxide actually PROMOTES growth in many life forms, humans included!
Thirdly, hydrogen hydroxide is perfectly natural! Hydrogen hydroxide has been around for far longer than humans have. What gives us the right to ban it?
If you want a source for my claims, click on my name, and open your eyes. We NEED hydrogen hydroxide!
March 19th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Don’t listen to Jack Mitcham! He’s an industry shill, and you can totally tell by his webpage. It’s nowhere near as big as the one for DHMO, and they couldn’t find a single person to quote.
Go with your gut: ban DHMO! Educate yourself by clicking on my name!
March 19th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Whoops, forgot the www. This time, I’m linking to the real McCoy!
March 20th, 2009 at 12:24 am
albert Says: “your poking fun at the DHMO straw man does nothing to prove the safety of mercury in vaccines.”
It’s not a straw man. It’s a parody.
- Jack
March 20th, 2009 at 2:55 am
This isn’t about which chemicals are bad or good.
This isn’t about which chemicals are natural or unnatural.
This isn’t about vaccines and which we should take and which are superfluous.
Jenny McCarthy had a son diagnosed with autism.
Children in USA are becoming autistic.
For some this doesn’t mean they are savants or another Einstein or Newton.
For some it means never talking, never being able to look after themselves, never growing up.
And for many it means because of this they will be violent for whatever reason of frustration or what, when they are bigger and stronger and have only this way to exert their ideas on other people.
They can’t be like this bacause of genes as the explosion in numbers is being monitored almost week by week.
Jenny, Robert, David are now household names with good ideas as to the cause and to the remedies.
CDC, FDA, EPa are household names with no idea of the cause or how to cure the illness.
Injecting mercury at hundreds of times higher amounts than caused the death of Karen Wetterhahn cannot be a good idea for sensible people to advocate for the unborn foetus unless they have aggravated murder in their minds to cull a growing population.
But what will they do with the growing autism cases that survive the fate of Karen?
March 20th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Health Warning. This discussion may contain nuts.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:56 am
And they were made in China? How surprising is that?
March 20th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Potatoe, potato. Ever since Dalton we have known that it is still the same chemicals.
They can be put together in different orders though. Naturally an oxide is the resulting dirty ash from burning gas, while a hydroxide usually results from dissolving a base in clean water.
Obviously concentrated ash is more dangerous than diluted water solutions, think of for example smoking cigarettes as opposed to drinking tea. Therefore your sneaking a dangerous product under our noses pretending to use a cleaner but obviously more expensive production method is not going to work!
PS. And those “chemicals” we are talking about are actually atoms. Did you know that atoms may be radioactive? I wouldn’t come near that stuff!
Oh yeah? How come then that when ingested in sufficient amounts people can lapse into a coma and die? Or when prolonged contact can induce tiredness, slowing of movements and finally breathing problems and death? (It is well known to frequently happen among swimmers in particular.)
Obviously that stuff is poisonous!
Btw, did you know that the stuff naturally contains dangerous organisms? I don’t think a closer acquaintance with, say, a shark, will promote any growth of yours!
That is inconsequential.
Eggs are natural and have been around for far longer than humans have. Yet when people try to make lifesaving vaccines from them, people may be poisoned and die from bacterial infections – unless tested preservatives like, say, thimoseral are used – and we all know how the medical industrial complex shrinks from adding costly, proved harmless, preservatives just to make their products safe.
So if eggs can be harmful for you, what is to say that DHMO is perfectly safe?
Unless you can prove that DHMO is perfectly safe to be around, we will insist on the discontinuation of DHMO use. We need more tests!
PS. It´s “Green Earth”, not “Blue Earth”, for a reason. (As if Earth would look blue from space. The very thought!) Ever wondered why?
March 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Dear Albert,
We also laugh at Bozo the Clown.
Dear John,
Take a look at how much mercury is in coal. If ingestion of Hg has any influence on the development autism, please show me the statistics to prove the Victorian London had any more autists than we do today.