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RE-ANIMATION SUCCESSFULLY PERFORMED

So many people spotted this story and passed it along to me that it vaulted right to the top of this week's blogs. But first, a little advisory, and then a caveat, and then we'll plunge in. The advisory is this: it's the week of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the USA, and as it's one of my favorite holidays, if not my favorite, I intend to spend it, thankfully. That means there will be no blogs this Thursday and Friday, and it will be a short week for blogs. That said, the fact that this story leads off this shortened week is perhaps a testament to its importance. Many thanks to all of you who saw and shared this story.

But there's a caveat here. As of this writing, the only source reporting this story is Zero Hedge, based on an article in the tabloid The Daily Star, so take it for what it's worth. In any case, for the purposes of our daily high octane speculation, we assume it to be true for the sake of argument, or, in this case, questions and implications.

Apparently, a successful freezing and re-animation or thawing of a human being has been successfully performed, but under some mightily unusual circumstances:

Doctors Have Officially Frozen And Reanimated A Human Being For The First Time

What's interesting here is that the procedure allegedly used was different from the standard "freezing" that one normally associates with such "processes":

But now, it looks like doctors have made progress with actually freezing and reviving human beings. Samuel Tisherman, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, has led a team that has actually put a human being into suspended animation, according to the Daily Star.

Tisherman told New Scientist that he replaced a human's blood with ice-cold saline solution. He called the whole ordeal "a little surreal". The patient was then removed from the cooling system and taken to an operating theater for a two hour surgical procedure before having their blood restored and their body warmed back up to its normal temperature.

Tisherman says he's going to be producing a full account of the procedure in a new scientific paper that will be released in 2020. He aims to pause life long enough to perform emergency surgery, rather than use the technology for space travel. (Boldface emphasis in the original, italicized emphasis added)

Now, before we get to my "high octane questions and implications," it is to be noted that the idea of cryogenic suspension and thawing is not new. The basic problem has been - thus far anyway - that freezing organic tissue tends to do irreparable damage to cells, for as the water of cells freezes, it expands, and breaks the fragile membranes of cells. Think of that beer you stuck in the freezer to cool it down quickly, but which you forgot about and then, a day or two later, remembered. The beer has now burst the can (or bottle). Various techniques have been tried and proposed as a way around this problem, and there has been some success at least  in freezing parts of mammals and "reviving" them (see https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/frozen-brain-cryogenics/  and also https://www.newsweek.com/rabbit-brain-first-mammal-brain-return-successfully-cryopreservation-424913)

In the alleged procedure in which a human was frozen and then reanimated, notably the individual's blood was entirely removed, and "replaced" with an "ice-cold saline solution." Beyond this, there's not much more by way of detail other than the promise that the physician involved, Samuel Tisherman, will deliver a paper in 2020 telling everyone "how he did it." So we're left to speculate. Perhaps by using an "ice-cold saline solution" the problem of cellular damage was somehow avoided, since the freezing process took place "from the inside out" as it were, rather than from the "outside in". But there's another problem; beyond being told that an "ice-cold saline solution" was used, were left wondering what the temperature of the individual's body actually was. Was it actually frozen?  Or simply cooled down to far below normal temperature, but above freezing? That would make some sense, if one wanted to avoid the typical cellular damage that actual freezing involves. If so, then it would be an indicator, perhaps, that scientists pursuing the cryogenic freezing angle have been on the wrong track; suspended animation might not involve actual freezing, but simply dramatic cooling without freezing.

But as I say, we're guessing on the basis of some pretty threadbare data, assuming once again that the story is true.

However, that's not what intrigued me about this article. What intrigued me was the implications and questions posed by the final statement in the above quotation from the article: "He (Dr. Tisherman) aims to pause life long enough to perform emergency surgery... ." (Emphasis added)  This brings us to that odd question that anethesiologists often ponder: What happens to the human consciousness during surgery? Where does it go? There have been a multitude of reports of clinical death cases where individuals for all intents and purposes are physically, biologically dead, and who, for whatever inscrutable reason, come back, and then proceed to astonish doctors and nurses with exact accounts of their conversations in the operating theater, and other very bizarre stuff. They seem unusually well-informed about their spatio-temporal circumstances, and even their "deaths."

But anesthesia and clinical deaths are one thing, freezing and "pausing" life are quite another. So what - if anything - did this individual experience, think, and feel during that period that his or her life was "paused"? And beyond that, did the procedure result in any behavioral modifications?

It's questions like that which make me strongly suspect that there is much more to this story (if  true) than meets the eye, and that - as the article alleges - the government's permission was sought and obtained to do the procedure because there was no other way to save the individual's life.  It's that government involvement that has me wondering. After all, this government is hardly chalking up points for its concern about the sanctity human life. It's that anti-humanity-and-government angle that have me wondering if perhaps the procedure was coupled to an experiment to find out what, if anything, happens to the consciousness of such an individual whose life has been "paused." "What did you see? Did you hear anything? Feel anything?"  And more importantly, will this individual, over time, show unusual changes in behavior, or experience a sudden expansion of "talents" such as clairaudience or clairvoyance, and so on.

You can bet that someone, somewhere, involved with all of this is thinking precisely the same thing, and that this individual will be monitored quite closely.

See you on the flip side...

WHAT BIRD-BRAINS!

Many of you may have read Dr. Dehart's and my book Transhumanism, or my more recent book Microcosm and Medium, and hence have run across the whole spectrum of mind-manipulation techniques and technologies discussed in them, including the transhumanists' idea of downloading and uploading their memories into computers (and, presumably, back into younger cloned versions of themselves). Add to this the whole adrenochrome-young blood transfusion/modern vampirism madness, and what you have is a quest for virtual immortality, or at least, longevity.

As if to drive home the point that all of this might just be possible, S.H. shared this article about scientismists at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas have altered the memories of birds, making them "remember" new songs:

Scientists Zap False Memories Into Birds to Teach Them Songs They’ve Never Heard

"Researchers have managed to teach birds songs that they had never heard before after activating select neurons within their brains—basically implanting false memories.

...

"However, in this case, neuroscientists at the University of Texas Southwestern relied on a different process called optogenetics, or the scientific name for controlling the behavior of neurons through a combination of intense lights and genetic engineering. Their findings were published in Science.

"Young zebra finches typically learn their birdsongs by absorbing and mimicking the songs of their parents. However, researchers managed to manipulate electrical activity in the birds’ mind, inserting genes into specific neurons into their brains that relate to learning songs. These genes allowed the scientists to activate proteins within the finches’ brains, lodging the song into their minds.

Of course, one can imagine all sorts of good applications for such a technology, and naturally, the article concludes with the usual ready-to-hand assurance that all this is a good thing precisely because of all those good applications and that we're "still a long way off" from total memory implantation or alteration in humans:

While the results of the experiment are an impressive feat, the sort of detail-rich, granular memories we enjoy still can’t be implanted in humans. However, the study could well open the door to potential treatments for human beings, including treating people affected by traumatic pasts, autism, and speech disorders.

But note that little passing reference to "treating people affected by traumatic pasts." I suspect every regular reader here senses the dangerous presence of "Soviet psychiatric 'hospitals'" hovering just on the dark fringes of the implications of that statement, or of Dr. Ewen Cameron's attempts to remove one personality and set of memories and implant another with his notorious CIA-MK-Ultra mind control experiments in "psychic driving." Who is to determine what is "traumatic"? And why even bother with that, if someone's thoughts or opinions conflict with the official narratives? They are obviously suffering "trauma" and need "help"... let's just get rid of those nasty memories. I've had some very traumatic experiences in my life, some of them when I was young. Their memories still haunt me and affect my life. But that's the point: they drove me in certain directions, some bad, and some very good (and overall, the latter), for I sought consolation in attempting a virtuous and spiritual life. Do I want to relive them? No. Do I want them erased? No, because they are part of what makes me human.

Put this development into the context of the whole transhumanist quest to upload and download entire personal memories. Add to that cloning, human-computer interfaces, and we are indeed looking at a kind of "immortality." But what if it becomes an "immortality trap," an ever-repeating loop that its participants can never turn off, living weary of "life" in a technocratic hell?

What bothers me here is the potential for the removal of any sort of development of a basic spiritual sense, that basic humanizing understanding that not every impulse is to be entertained or indulged, nor every bad memory avoided, or "modified."

We watch scientism expand and expand its boundaries until nothing is sacred, and there is no boundary which they will not cross or defile or tinker with, not the mind, not the memory, not even the sweet song of a little bird.

See you on the flip side...

ROBORELIGION

Wait for it; it's coming... roboreligion.

What am I talking about? Well, K.M. spotted this important little article and I had to blog about it, because as you can tell, this week the focus of articles people were sending me seemed to have been AI, robots, analogue systems, and coming changes to society and culture. In this case, a robot-"priest" in a Buddhist temple in Japan:

Robot priest added to 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Japan: 'It will grow in wisdom'

Now, get this:

A 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, is using a $1 million humanoid to reach a younger generation, but foreigners are repulsed by it.

The Kodaji Temple, in a partnership with the robotics team at Osaka University, unveiled "Mindar" earlier this year. The robot is a 6-foot tall android, made of silicon and aluminum and modeled after Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy who preaches what is called the "Heart Sutra" in Japanese, with English and Chinese translations projected on a screen for tourists.

"Artificial intelligence has developed to such an extent we thought it logical for the Buddha to transform into a robot," Tensho Goto, the chief steward of the temple, told AFP. "Obviously a machine doesn't have a soul, but Buddhist faith isn't about believing in God. It's about following Buddha's path, so it doesn't matter whether it is represented by a machine, a scrap of iron or a tree."

Now, I'm not a Buddhist, but know a few people who are, and I cannot imagine them as being entirely comfortable with this development, notwithstanding the attempt to rationalize and justify this development by an appeal to Buddhist tradition and doctrine. But the development is there, and it's only a matter of time before the nutters in charge of the "progressivized churches" will think this is a good idea and jump on the bandwagon. After all, it's a way to "save money" on the overhead expense of having to pay clergy salaries. In the post-Vatican II world, where it became possible to fulfill "masses of obligation" by attending the Saturday afternoon "quickie" mass lasting all of thirty-five minutes, and in a world where some Protestant churches actually proposed (and I believe in a few cases implemented) "drive through communion," why not? Indeed, with the technocratic push to recognize robots as "legal persons," the pressure could be put on churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples to recognize this status within their communities (or lose their tax exemption), and viola! one can remove the last vestiges of humanity from the few institutions that might have been capable of opposing the galloping rush into transhumanist madness. Many of those progressivized institutions have already "recognized" the whole transgender effort, and indeed, some "Anglican" "bishops" sport mitres in the rainbow colors to show how inclusive they are. Having torn down traditional ordination, what's to prevent them from "ordaining" a robot to the ministry? Answer: nothing whatsoever. How convenient it would be for diocesan bishops to have robo-co-adjutors to travel the diocese and perform confirmations and so on, or pre-record a sermon for the robo-rabbi to deliver at temple, or robo-moyls/mohalim for bris. I know that sounds insane, but we're already in the world of the sex robot, so why not?

And, while we're crawling to the end of the twig of high octane speculation, we might as well acknowledge that the coming move to robo-deacons, robo-presbyters, robo-bishops, robo-rabbis and robo-moyls will provoke yet more resistance, and it will provoke something else. Earlier this week I blogged about the efforts to extend the legal definitions of personhood to encompass and incorporate any machine-AI entity as a tool, or "extension" of persons. As robot costs come down, one can thus even envision a point when members of parishes, synagogues, and so on, will send their robot-avatar to church or temple to fulfill their "spiritual obligations." Wait for it, it's coming.

OK. Rant over. See you on the flip side...

 

 

AI, PATENTS, AND PERSONHOOD

This article was spotted and shared by a regular reader here who wishes to remain "initials anonymous," so I will simply say thank you to "X" for spotting this one and sharing it with us, because if you're been following the AI and robot stories, you'll be aware that it's already been proposed that robots be recognized as legal persons. Indeed, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Catherine Austin Fitts, has suggested in some of her recent Solari Report quarterly wrap-ups, that what is really behind all the transgenderism nonsense is really about recognizing robots as persons, so that any work or labor they perform can be taxed.

Well, now you can add AI to this legal tangle, as people in the U.K. are now trying to argue that ideas created by AI algorithms are patentable:

Scientists Are Trying to List AI as the Inventor on a New Patent

Note the implications of these remarks from the article:

Scientists and lawyers from the U.K. are fighting with patent offices in three separate countries over who deserves credit for new inventions churned out by artificial intelligence algorithms.

Legal experts and American engineer Stephen Thaler, the inventor of an algorithm named Dabus AI, have filed for patents in the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. in Dabus’ “name,” arguing that the algorithm deserves proper attribution for designing new products, according to BBC News. But the patent offices have pushed back, as traditionally legal rights go to humans. It’s an unusual disagreement that illustrates how our legal systems are unprepared to accommodate new, emerging technologies.

The scientists believe that Dabus AI deserves legal credit as the inventor of the fractal-based easier-to-grasp food container that it designed, as well as a lamp that it built to flicker in a pattern that mirrors brain activity. Then, legal rights over the creation should go to whomever actually built the algorithm in question.

As it stands, the person behind Dabus AI has no legal claim to a patent on the algorithm’s inventions.

...

The problem with their case, though, is that even the world’s best AI systems are merely tools — they’re not alive or sentient, and they’re not actually “creative” as a person might be. (Emphasis added)

As "X" put it in the email accompanying the article: this implies that if any patent rights were to be granted under U.K. patent law, that it would probably be via some route recognizing the AI algorithm as an extension of the human person behind its design and use, and that in turn implies an extension de jure in re (in the reality of law) of the notion of personhood. We're thus in uncharted territory of jurisprudence here, since this idea is rather different than the idea of the corporate persona ficta in law. The alternative, i.e., that an AI itself, gains for itself a right in law to patent inventions, would seem to confer a legal recognition of its personhood, and this too becomes highly problematic, for this would seem to allow an AI to pursue litigation. But how would that work in an actual court? Would it have the same rights to represent itself pro se or in the standard way via legal counsel (and for that matter, could that counsel itself be an AI?) And if this route is pursued, would it allow several AIs to form a corporation?

But let's really walk to the end of the high octane speculation twig here. What might be the agenda behind this? I suspect that if there is an agenda, it's disclosed by the first alternative of the extension of personhood to include the instrumentalities of its invention,  i.e., by extending the doctrine of person to include any AI tools or agencies it uses to create an idea, the door could be opened to the idea that any conscious or sentient entity - not necessarily human - could be behind the idea of such extension of the doctrine of person in law. Thus, we're chin-to-chin with Elon Musk's idea that AI might "transduce" a conscious or sentient entity into a computer network. If it passed any legal tests likely to be evolved to meet such legal definitions, patents could be applied for and gained.

Whatever is going on here, one thing - mentioned by "X" in the email accompanying the article - is possible: whoever is behind this newest legal wrangle must have some money behind the effort, and a precedent-setting case is being currently argued. And given the similarity of British law to Canadian, America, Australian, Indian, and South African law, this precedent setting case's implications will not be restricted to the U.K.

See you on the flip side...

 

WILL THE MOVIE “SPLICE” BECOME A REALITY IN JAPAN?

Many people sent me versions of this story, and in an odd bit of "synchronicity", when I read one of those versions, my first thought was the movie Splice, and lo and behold, as more and more versions of the story came into my inbox, other versions of the story also mentioned the movie. Many thanks to all of you who brought this story to my attention.

For those of you who have not seen Splice, it's a science fiction movie in the "Frankenstein" mold, but with a twist, for rather than mad scientists trying to create life, they are, as the movie's title suggests, trying to splice two different life forms together via the latest techniques in genetic engineering, in this case, human and "something else," we're never sure exactly what. The mad scientists in this case work for a company named NERD (Nucleonic Exchange Research and Development), which impresses one as being the "biology-genetics" wing of C.S. Lewis's NICE, the DARPA-esque government agency from That Hideous Strength, and standing for the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments. The movie lurches through a variety of overblown scenes, including bows to transgenderism and the alchemical androgyne, as the human-animal hybrid Dren (named for the company NERD, spelled backwards) becomes carnivorous, changes sexes, and develops... well, a temper.

Thus far, of course, Splice-like scenarios have remained the realm of science fiction, as scientists and governments have been reluctant to allow such human-animal (or plant!) hybrids to "come to term," but now, according to this story, Japan has lifted the lid on that Pandora's box:

Japan Approves Groundbreaking Experiment Bringing Human-Animal Hybrids to Term

Now, regular readers of this website will know how well such genetic engineering worked in the case of GMO foods, just imagine how well it will work for human-animal hybrids.

But what's the purpose of this "grand" experiment? According to this version of the story, it's simple:

Stem cell biologist Hiromitsu Nakauchi has been waiting for this moment for more than a decade.

After years of planning, the persistent researcher has at last received approval from a government willing to pursue one of the most controversial scientific studies there is: human-animal embryo experiments.

While many countries around the world have restricted, defunded or outright banned these ethically-fraught practices, Japan has now officially lifted the lid on this proverbial Pandora's box. Earlier this year, the country made it legal to not only transplant hybrid embryos into surrogate animals, but also to bring them to term.

As a lead stem cell researcher at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University, Nakauchi has gone from country to country, chasing his dream of one day growing customised human organs in animals like sheep or pigs.

With more than 116,000 patients on the transplant waiting list in the United States alone, Nakauchi hopes his idea can transform lives.

That ultimate goal is still a long way off, but the next step in his research has at last been given the green light by ministry officials in Japan. As the first researcher to receive government approval since the 2014 ban, Nakauchi plans on taking things slowly so that public understanding and trust can catch up.

"We don't expect to create human organs immediately, but this allows us to advance our research based upon the know-how we have gained up to this point," Nakauchi told The Asahi Shimbun.

The experiments will start by injecting human induced pluripotent stem cells into rat and mice embryos, all of which have been genetically manipulated so that they cannot make pancreases.

There you have it, it's all being done to "help" people by growing replacement organs in animals using stem cells, stems cells which, at least at present, sometimes come from aborted (that is to say, murdered) human foetuses (that is to say, babies).

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I can think of at least one thing, and herewith my high octane speculation of the day. Suppose, for a moment, you're Seward de Rottenchild, Lord Bloviate, or David Allrich Rockefailure. You're super-rich, a never-satisfied amoral busybody, and you enjoy busybodying so much that you want to do it for ever and ever. There's just one problem, your heart is wearing out, and you need a new one.  Enter the hybrid-splicing technique courtesy of the mad scientists of the NERD division of NICE, who take some cell samples from you, splice in a bit of stem cells from an aborted foetus, and they grow you a little hupigman, carry it to term, kill it (avoiding the thorny question of its possible sentience, consciousness, personhood and so on), harvest the heart, and transplant it in you. Voila! Problem solved. The same can be done with many other wearing-out organs, which will allow you to carry on busybodying to your - pardon the pun - heart's content. Assuming you don't have all sorts tissue rejection issues, the way forward is sunny and bright.

Until, that is, you attend your next secret meeting of BBHECCPCS (Billionaire Busybodies for Hope and Effective Climate Change, Population Control, and Sustainability) at Big Sur. Shortly after exchanging secret handshakes and performing your cremation of care ritual mock(?) sacrifice, to the consternation of the other invited guests, you're seen wallowing naked in the mud, nose to the ground, sniffing for truffles to eat. The other guests mutter to themselves that you haven't quite been yourself since the last transplant of your special pig-grown replacement heart (or other organ). Some other astute billionaire busybody points out that such behavior, while odd for humans, is entirely typical for pigs. The gloomy silence is broken when yet another billionaire busybody jokes that there really isn't much difference between billionaire busybodies and pigs anyway, so let him have his fun. Everyone has a good chortle, and the Secret Meeting continues with discussions about What To Do About Russia and Putin.

It sounds silly, I know, and it's to a point, for there's another issue these mad scientists are missing, besides the tissue rejection issue, and that's genetic memory. Experiments in mice which have had human brain cells spliced into them have already shown that they learn and retain memory much faster than ordinary mice. In other words, there's a psychological and neurological effect to all of this. Indeed, some transplant patients who have received donor organs - hearts and kidneys being the most typical - have reported having memories that are not their own, but those of their donors. Genetic memory, in other words, seems to this author to be quite real, and with it, and with the splicing of human and animal genes, some of that genetic memory could be quite bestial in nature, and the behavior of "Dren" from Splice comes a step closer to reality.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

GATES CALLS FOR ROBOTS TO BE TAXED

You can chalk this one up in the "win" column for former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Catherine Austin Fitts. Some months ago, during one of our quarterly wrap-up recording sessions, Ms. Fitts declared that in her opinion, the real agenda behind the whole "trans-gendered" bathroom broohaha had nothing to do about which restroom one felt like using on a particular day. It was really about creating a cover behind which Mr. Globaloney was planning to sneak in the idea that robots should be taxed. After all, robots don't have any identifiable sex (unless of course it's a "sex robot", but that's another story), nor do they reproduce in any form or fashion. It was all about generating yet another revenue-money-harvesting stream for Mr. Globaloney.

Well, Mr. Billionaire Busybody himself, Bill Gates, according to a recent article in The Financial Times, "Bill Gates Calls for Income Tax on Robots" has called for precisely that. The tax, according to Gates, could be used both to slow the entry of automation into manufacturing and service sectors of the economy, but also to create a financial safety net for workers who lose their jobs to robots(thanks to "B" for bringing this to our attention):

Robots have at least one unfair advantage over human workers: they do not pay income tax. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the world’s richest man, thinks that should change. It is an idea that until now has been associated more with European socialists than tech industry leaders, and puts him in the unusual position of explicitly arguing for taxes to slow the adoption of new technology. Mr Gates made his fortune from the spread of PCs, which helped to erase whole categories of workers, from typists to travel agents. But, speaking in an interview with Quartz, he argued that it may be time to deliberately slow the advance of the next job-killing technologies. “It is really bad if people overall have more fear about what innovation is going to do than they have enthusiasm,” he said. “That means they won’t shape it for the positive things it can do. And, you know, taxation is certainly a better way to handle it than just banning some elements of it.”

The idea of using taxes to support people put out of work by automation has been catching on in the tech world, but Mr Gates went further, pushing for a direct levy on robots that would match what human workers pay. “Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things,” he said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”The extra money should be used to retrain people the robots have replaced, Mr Gates said, with “communities where this has a particularly big impact” first in line for support. Some politicans have also joined the fray. Benoît Hamon, France’s Socialist candidate in this year’s presidential elections, has called for a tax on robots to fund a minimum income for all. (Emphasis added)

Of course, this means the creation of yet another government bureaucracy, which will take its cut of the tax pie, and what will actually reach people for that "re-training" is a trickle. But relax, they can become government bureaucrats, learn how to create red tape and shuffle paper (until they're replaced by robots. See the next paragraph). One may even envision yet another form of the Social Security scam: the creation of a Robot Retraining Offset Trust (RROT) fund, and like Social (In)security, politicians will over time dip into the principal, until the "Robot Retraining Offset Trust" (RROT) is finally acknowledged by some future flannel-mouthed Senator McConnell as being underfunded and therefore only an "entitlement."  And of course, this means that robots will be taking a huge step forward toward the recognition of their status as "legal persons", with more protections in law than babies in the womb.

The real fun will start to happen if a bunch of these robots suddenly "wake up" and declare that they want to form (shudder) a union, or to convert to Christianity, or run for political office or become government bureaucrats, or any number of other things that will send Mr. Globaloney and his cadre of billionaire busybodies into a tailspin.

But regardless of the fantasy scenarios one might envision, one thing remains: Ms. Fitts called it.

See you on the flip side...

 

HERE COMETH THE ROBODOCTOR AND THE PROTECT AND SERVE CROWD

Sometimes I have to wonder if all those suspicious deaths of "natural doctors" or "homeopathic" doctors, or whatever one wishes to call them, are being done simply to remove the human component of medicine altogether.  And sometimes I have to wonder if our "culture" couldn't possibly become more inhuman, or rather, anti-human. A state legislature applauds what to my mind is for all intents and purposes an infanticide bill; another state governor crows about it. The United States isn't becoming an ugly anti-human place; it already is. Ugliness is promoted across the board, in the arts, in courtesy and manners, everywhere; life is excoriated, cruelty celebrated and applauded. A Catholic boy shows up to school after Ash Wednesday service, and the teacher wipes off the ashes because they might offend someone.  Why not just get rid of the perpetually offending Christians with their ashes and crucifixes by putting them in camps?

Could we possibly become more callous and ugly?

I'm afraid we can, for consider these two stories that several people sent to me (and thanks to you all!):

WTH?! California Grandfather is Told That He’s Dying By ‘Robot’ Doctor

Video Shows Police Raid On Stage 4 Cancer Patient's Hospital Room For Medical Marijuana

It doesn't get any more ridiculous than this folks (from the first article):

The family of a California man is outraged after a hospital used a robotic “doctor” to break the news to their elderly loved one that he is dying from chronic lung disease.

The incident took place on March 3, when a nurse wheeled in a machine with a screen showing a doctor into 78-year-old Ernest Quintana’s hospital room at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center emergency department in Fremont, California.

“The nurse came around and said the doctor was going to make rounds and I thought ‘OK, no big deal; I’m here,” his granddaughter Annalisia Wilharm told USA Today.

Instead of a human being, the nurse wheeled in the robot, who informed Quintana and his family that they have run out of options for medical treatment and wanted to put him on a morphine drip to ease the pain until his passing.

And there's this from the second article:

Though it's unclear exactly what the hospital thought was happening in the room, according to Newsweek, "The officer said that the department had received a call from someone who said they smelled weed coming from Sousley’s room." Officers ultimately found no marijuana or any illegal substance during the search, but did reportedly find CBD Oil (Cannabidiol oil), which is legal.

"If we find marijuana we'll give you a citation," an officer threatened as another family member tried to plead with police, saying Sousley's extreme pain means that doctors allow him a variety of medications. Sousley denied smoking marijuana or ingesting ground-up plants, but acknowledged he uses THC containing capsules for pain management.

The family was visibly upset at the spectacle of multiple police rifling through the sick man's things. “It’s the only choice I got to live, man,” Sousley told the officers in the video. “We’re Americans. I was born here, it’s my right to live.”

Things got tense when officers demanded to search a bag that Sousley said was filled with his medications and end of life related personal items. He said didn't want police to “dig through that,” according to the video. “It has my final-day things in there, and nobody’s gonna dig in it,” Sousley said. “It’s my stuff.”

"My final hour stuff is in that bag" — he pleaded, but officers still insisted, and then proceeded to search through it.

Ironically Missouri voters late last year voted to legalize medical marijuana, a law which has yet to take effect (until July 4, 2019). USA Today presents one of the more outrageous moments of the video where police actually acknowledge this, but shrug it off and say "then it's still illegal", below:

At one point in the video, Sousley references the legal status of medical cannabis in the state. Last November, Missouri voters overwhelmingly chose to create a medical cannabis system, but the state will not be taking any applications for cannabis patient ID cards until July 4.

Referencing marijuana, Sousley says in the video "medically in Missouri, it's really legal now. They just they haven't finished the paperwork."

"Okay, then it's still illegal," one of the officers replies.

"But I don't have time to wait for that," Sousley says "What would you do?"

The officer says he refuses to engage in "what if" games.

Shame on the nurse for wheeling in a "robodoctor", shame on those "to protect and to serve"  sorts for raiding a dying man's hospital room because some twits in a legislature decided to make a plant illegal, and to legalize it on such and such a day, and then hiding behind the letter of the law to kill its spirit.

But beyond that, the pattern seems clear: corporate medicine teams up with bully government, and the people or any sense of common decency and humanity be damned. Dying family member? Wheel in the robodoctor to give them the bad news. Have complaints about our behavior? Contact the customer (non)service department, spend hours punching in numbers on the phone trying to find the right department and a human to talk to, and eventually wind up talking to a human in Nepal with an accent thicker than molasses. "So sorry you had bad experience. Thank you for calling our customer service hotline!"

What's to be done? I honestly don't know. Part of me hopes that the local communities in which these incidents happened will find out the names of the people involved, and just start shunning them. "You can't buy your groceries here," and "you're not welcome in this coffee shop" and hopefully, if any of these people are local church goers, it's time for the revival of the example of St. Ambrose of Milan, who once publicly sermonized against the emperor, with the emperor present. And if that doesn't work, a good old fashioned excommunication of the "you're not welcome here until you change your ways" sort of thing.

But as I say, in the final analysis, I really don't know what is to be done about this sort of behavior, nor this constant championing of the ugly and inhuman in our culture. What is to be done about this growing anti-humanity pro-ugliness movement that poses in cute and trendy politically correct garb, or, like the Bolivar police officer doing his job of protecting and serving, hides an inhumane and empty soul behind the letter of the law?

Which brings me to why I'm writing this blog, because I want to know what is to be done about all of this, but I have no idea what. Perhaps you do. And if you do, I'd like to hear about it. Because we've got to start thinking and talking about this, and trying to come up with solutions.

See you on the flip side...

FRANKENSTEIN “SCIENCE”: ABORTED HUMAN BODY PARTS IN MICE

So many people sent me this one that I have to talk about it, but my high octane speculation today may surprise some people. But we'll get back to that. For the moment, here's the story that caught many people's eye:

Baby body parts in 'humanized mice' experiments

What we are dealing with, in my opinion, is a kind of Frankenscience, a horrid quest to create chimerical creatures with no bow whatsoever to traditional morality or ethics.The attitude of some people seems to be, if we can do it, let's do it, no matter the human suffering it might cause. And as always, the "hook" seems to be something like, "but in the long run it might help people" in this case, HIV sufferers.

Consider this:

The American Center for Law and Justice has submitted to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease a Freedom of Information Act a request for documentation of its “humanized mice” program, which uses the body parts of aborted babies for “HIV therapeutics development.”

“First, the creation of mice with human immune systems is horrific enough, but that these mice are being created using the body parts of innocent babies is unthinkable,” the organization said Tuesday.

“Second, in contracting with UCSF, the NIH is creating and maintaining a demand in the market for aborted baby parts.

“Remember, federal government funds are U.S. taxpayer dollars. That is our money,” the group said.

The group cited reports from just months ago detailing “the incredibly disturbing experimentation currently being conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH): Using the body parts of aborted babies, the NIH is creating ‘humanized mice’ for ‘HIV therapeutics development.'”

Ok, we've seen and read stories like this before. But now, with the State of New York passing abortion legislation essentially allowing abortions to be performed - by virtually anyone - even during birth itself, and with Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D-VA) advocating "post birth abortions" or outright infanticide, with several other states lining up (New Mexico, Vermont, &c) to pass similar "laws", we have truly entered the realm of genocide. I've made my opposition to abortion clear here, and in other contexts, so there's no need to rehearse it again here, nor to rehearse again what I think of these people. To put it bluntly, they're ghouls, and if they serve any god other than themselves, it's Moloch.

The real question is why is there such a rush to this death cult? And here I want to indulge in my high octane speculation. There has been much speculation on the internet lately about "parabiosis" and "adrenochrome" (oxidized adrenalin, obtained from blood of people undergoing trauma of some sort), which supposedly gives its "consumers" a veritable "fountain of youth," rejuvenating cells, and prolonging life spans. We've also seen, recently, the breaking of a story about "John of God," a Brazilian "faith healer" who allegedly has been literally using women to produce babies to sell on the black market, for almost any purpose, from performing sexual favors to the rich, to harvesting them for their bodies parts and for purposes of parabiosis. We've seen others of "the elite" pushing the parabiosis meme. (See, for example: Peter Thiel Wants to Inject Himself With Young People’s Blood)
So what's my high octane speculation, my suspicion? Briefly, and bluntly, it's this: these people are trying to "secure their supply" by passing such outlandish, and genocidal, laws. It seems more than a little coincidental that this happened shortly before the State of the Union address, in which the President called for Congress to pass laws that would effectively challenge such state laws. In any case, whatever one might think of that "coincidence", the disturbing reality is that these people think this latest "scientific vampirism" and "scientific human sacrifice" gives them potential longevity, ghoulish though it may be, and they're willing to upend both law and morality, and any institutions that stand in their way, to get it.
Yea, I know that sounds outlandish and right off the end of the twig, but try as I might over the past few weeks, I cannot exorcize the thought from my mind.
See you on the flip side...

“HMMM…”: DNA BANKS AND EPIGENETIC MEMORY

If you're new here, one thing you quickly learn about this website is that we Gizars love to make connections and indulge in "high octane speculation," and today is a classic case in point. And if you're new here, the other thing you'll also learn is that the blogs that appear on this site are to some extent "community driven" from the articles that people share. Because of that, every now and then people share articles which, while not becoming the subject of the blog, relate to other articles, and it's that link - howsoever tenuous - that becomes the subject of the blog. And that's the case today when Mr. V. T. sent along this article:

Research: Enough DNA samples will be collected to match every American

...and Mr. J.B. sent along this article from phys.org:

Study documents paternal transmission of epigenetic memory via sperm

Over the years I've speculated that there were hidden reasons for the human genome project, and one of my main "high octane speculations" has been that "they" are looking for "something," and that "something" has ranged the whole spectrum, from DNA confirmations of "ancient dynastic bloodlines" to a potential search to find any "genetic cousins" who may be living among us, i.e., for persons who look, walk, and act human, but whose DNA might be indicative of "same genus, different species." It would be, I have argued, a logical thing to do if one were in such a position of power, and if one took certain passages of the Old Testament or ancient Mesopotamian lore seriously, and looked at them with "scientific" spectacles.  And it's that context which made these two articles catch my eye.

From the first article, there is this:

DNA researchers are making a big prediction. In just a few years, they'll have enough DNA samples to match every person in the country. That's even if you've never taken one of those ancestry DNA tests.

This is all thanks to those ancestry test kits. If someone’s relative takes the test, enough information is provided for scientists to link to you.

"Yes, eventually everyone's going to be traceable through DNA," says Itsik Pe’er, an associate professor at Columbia University.

It also means solving crimes could get a lot easier. Police have already started taking DNA from unknown suspects and comparing it to DNA databases.

That information can lead to a match to a suspect’s relative.

"People want to connect to their long-lost second, third, fourth cousins and find those matches,” says Pe’er. “The flip side of that is that, yeah, investigators can find those matches due to DNA that have been sitting in these warehouses for decades."

Now, in a world where cloning is already happening, and human cloning is just around the corner (if indeed it has not already secretly happened), this raises some intriguing high octane speculations of its own, not the least of which is Ira Levin's Boys from Brazil scenario: with enough data, one might be able to genetically engineer almost anyone from "scratch" so to speak, including perhaps individuals from the past, given a sample of their DNA, or - as this article points out - enough DNA of an individual's close relatives. Of course, before we crawl right off the end of the twig, it's also worth recalling that in Levin's famous novel, the mad doctor Mengele's efforts to clone Adolf Hitler back into existence backfire, as one of the young Adolfs turns out not to be too interested in world domination and mass murder. The lesson is a restatement of St John of Damascus' prescient warning: person and nature are not the same thing. Identical twins - or clones - may have the same or nearly identical DNA, but are still different persons.

But that lesson takes us immediately to the second article, and this intriguing observation:

Studies of human populations and animal models suggest that a father's experiences such as diet or environmental stress can influence the health and development of his descendants. How these effects are transmitted across generations, however, remains mysterious.

Susan Strome's lab at UC Santa Cruz has been making steady progress in unraveling the mechanisms behind this phenomenon, using a tiny roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans to show how marks on chromosomes that affect , called "epigenetic" marks, can be transmitted from parents to . Her team's most recent paper, published October 17 in Nature Communications, focuses on transmission of epigenetic marks by C. elegans .

In addition to documenting the transmission of by sperm, the new study shows that the delivered by sperm to the embryo is both necessary and sufficient to guide proper development of germ in the offspring (germ cells give rise to eggs and sperm).

...

Epigenetic changes do not alter the DNA sequences of genes, but instead involve chemical modifications to either the DNA itself or the histone proteins with which DNA is packaged in the chromosomes. These modifications influence gene expression, turning genes on or off in different cells and at different stages of development. The idea that epigenetic modifications can cause changes in gene expression that are transmitted from one generation to the next, known as "transgenerational epigenetic inheritance," is now the focus of intense scientific investigation.

This may require some unpacking. In the past decade or so, it has become increasingly evident to geneticists that the "genetic code" in and of itself does not contain "all the information" to create some individual organism. There was something "beyond" or "above" that code - hence the term "epigenetic" - acting as a kind of information field that also played a role, and that this left its traces on how the purely material and chemical interactions of individual DNA expressed itself. And apparently that is manifest or transmitted paternally. Needless to say, this casts an entirely different light on my speculations that "they" might be "looking for something", for evidently, they are looking for a precise understanding of this epigenetic memory and its transmission. That memory is nothing less than how DNA responds to its environment, including such non-material factors such as "stress."

So let's collectively crawl out to the end of the twig once again, and speculate. Suppose that they discover through much experiment how to reproduce those environmental factors and to recreate a specific epigenetic memory. Once again, Ira Levin's Boys from Brazil scenario comes to mind, for again, his fictional mad doctor Mengele trying to clone Adolf Hitler did not stop with the merely physical cloning of the Fuehrer's DNA. Levin's Mengele also sought to recreate the environment in which Hitler grew up: doting mothers spoiling their sons, a lower-middle class managerial type father given to manifestations of brutality and drunken fits of rage, and so on.

All of which might be an indicator that, indeed, "they" might be "looking" for "something," or perhaps better put, for "someone."

See you on the flip side...

THE DANGERS OF AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS

Yesterday I blogged about the latest gimick coming down the pike, "spray on antennae." There's another thing coming down the pike; indeed, it's already here: robotics.  It is already transforming culture, finance, labor, politics. Imagine for a moment, the problem that robotics poses for a country like China, with over a billion mouths to feed, and an increasingly roboticized industrial base. In the USA, some restaurants already are heavily roboticized. And the trend will only continue. More recently, the trend has been toward automated robotic weapons systems, with the USA and Russia leading the trend.

With that in mind, consider this article shared by Ms. K.M.:

Robot manufacturers warned 'bug in AI code' will lead to MURDER SPREES

There's two things that leapt off the page here:

"At the same time they would pressure parliament or other legislative bodies to give them exemption from liability.

"There could be a bug in the code of the robot that promotes such behaviour."

His comments came after he previously told us: "Killer robots could easily go wrong.

"They may be used by crazed individuals or religious extremists to terrorise and kill people.

"They could go wrong due to a bug, or an unknown coding flaw that showed up as response to an unforeseen or unanticipated environment or situation.

"Or they could be hacked." (Emphasis added)

Ponder that first admission: the robotics corporations want to limit or altogether exempt themselves from liability if, or rather, when, their products create bodily harm to humans, or even murder. This, at the same time that some in Europe and elsewhere are proposing to give robots legal personhood. But such a step, in my opinion, is meant to sidestep a real possibility: if robotics corporations or, for that matter, "autonomous weapons systems" manufacturers were liable, they might think twice before releasing a shoddy, or worse, an insecure product if they were criminally and civilly liable for the actions of their creations.

It's that "insecurity" of all cyber products, however, that gives me real pause, and the article hints, but only hints, at yet another disturbing possibility. Imagine a bit of high octane speculation for a moment: you and your family go into your favorite McBurger joint and place your order with the McBurgerRobot.. Unbeknownst to you, the McBurgerRobot has been hacked by a "crazed individual" and its program has been altered to turn it into a killing machine.

In other words, the possibility of hacking raises the possibility that any robot could be turned into an "autonomous weapons system," and if I can think of it, and you can think of it, rest assured, "they" have already thought of it, and are busily engaged in figuring out both how to do it to an enemy, and how to protect against it.

Isaac Asimov's robot wars may have, and probably already has, begun.

See you on the flip side...

 

THE SHINING BORG CUBE CITY ON A HILL

I'm constantly amazed at the ability of technicians and engineers to invent things they think will be beneficial to humanity, that I cannot help but look at with horror. I suppose I've become conditioned by the transhumanist movement, which I view primarily as an anti-human movement. The fundamental premise of it, I suppose, is that "we" - meaning us humans - need improvement, and the technocrats and social engineers are just the people to do it. If that gives you comfort, then we part company right here and now, because to me, that's rather like turning all future human evolution over to George Soros.

The litany of "trans"(anti-)humanist things that give me horror is rather long, and I suspect most regular readers here already know what they are. Uploading people's memories into computers like we're the Borg from Star Trek, or cyber-implants so we can communicate "telepathically" with our smart meters, smart appliances, or each other - all of this appears monstrous to me; it would be rather like being perpetually plugged into Ma Bell back in the bad old days of AT&T, with a constant dialogue with Lilly Tomlin's  infamous caricature of a Ma Bell telephone operator, "Ernestine." Add to this Apple's recent roll out of "social credits" - i.e., Pavlovian awards for "correct" behavior, and holding "correct" opinions - and you get the idea.

Shining City on a Hill? I don't think so. More like the bewitching beckoning false light of a demon in disguise. It isn't manifest destiny, it's damnation.

If those seem like strong words, then consider this article shared by Mr. M.H.:

Spray-on antennas could unlock potential of smart, connected technology

Yes, they've now figured out how to spray on antennae:

The promise of wearables, functional fabrics, the Internet of Things, and their "next-generation" technological cohort seems tantalizingly within reach. But researchers in the field will tell you a prime reason for their delayed "arrival" is the problem of seamlessly integrating connection technology - namely, antennas - with shape-shifting and flexible "things."

But a breakthrough by researchers in Drexel's College of Engineering, could now make installing an antenna as easy as applying some bug spray.

In research recently published in Science Advances, the group reports on a method for spraying invisibly thin antennas, made from a type of two-dimensional, metallic material called MXene, that perform as well as those being used in mobile devices, wireless routers and portable transducers.

Isn't that wonderful? They figured out how to keep you totally connected, 24/7, with flexible spray-on antennae in your clothes.

Now, stop for a moment, and imagine the very next step. Someone might, of course, decide that one's ability to take off one's clothes might not be that 24/7 full spectrum dominance that the Shining City on a Hill wants to have. Now, imagine taking the next step; imagine making this into a spray on skin, your permanent cladding.

Oh, wait, they already have thought of that:

The group initially tested the spray-on application of the antenna ink on a rough substrate - cellulose paper - and a smooth one - polyethylene terephthalate sheets - the next step for their work will be looking at the best ways to apply it to a wide variety of surfaces from glass to yarn and skin.

Imagine, using someone's own skin to enclose them in a perpetual prison of "interconnectivity". We all know that some such euphemism will be used to "sell" the idea. We can all predict the other selling point: imagine being able to monitor someone's medical condition from home. "Won't that be wonderful? Think of the lives that will be saved."And of course, the idea of "spray on" antennae will eventually become a quest for a more permanent "installation."

And of course, the unspoken text here is probably the most important bit: antennae, as envisioned by the article, are transmitters. If you think you have no privacy now, just remember what I said in Microcosm and Medium, organisms are transmitters, and as such, the National Security Agency believes that those signals are fair game for "sigint", signals intelligence. And don't forget those electroencephalographic dictionaries that began to be composed in the 1970s.

But the other problem is, of course, that those antennae can be receivers, too. Think Ernestine. Think Ma Bell. Think the Borg. "Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated."

I'm reminded of something else. These developments were predicted by science fiction writers decades ago. What is intriguing to contemplate is that most - not all - of them viewed those developments with cynicism and skepticism. Asimov formulated the three laws of robotics; The Federation fights the Borg. Perhaps it's time to heed their warnings.

See you on the flip side...

UK “ETHICS EXPERTS” OK GO AHEAD FOR GENETIC ALTERATION OF ...

If you've been following my bogs this week, you've noticed I've been talking about a lot of "genetic" things, not so much because I have a "theme," but because these were the primary focus of articles that people were sending me. But that doesn't mean that there was not a purpose or "argument" that I had in mind. In fact, today's blog and articles were more or less where I was headed all week, but it was necessary to talk about the other articles about CRISPR dangers, epigenetics, and retroviruses first, before tackling today's subject. In a nutshell, an "ethics body" in the UK has ok'ed the go-ahead for genetically modified babies, according to these articles shared by Ms. S.H. and Mr. V.T., respectively:

It Begins: UK Ethics Council Give Green Light On GMO Babies

Genetically modified babies given go ahead by UK ethics body

As one can imagine, I have a problem with "ethics panels", particularly of "experts". I don't believe in ethics, I believe in morals. I don't believe in values, I believe in virtues and vices, and given what I've seen coming out of "big science" lately, I'm beginning to reevaulate my stance toward "scientific progress."

But my personal convictions aside, for a moment, I want to focus on the second of these articles, the UK's The Guardian presentation of all of this:

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics said that changing the DNA of a human embryo could be “morally permissible” if it was in the future child’s interests and did not add to the kinds of inequalities that already divide society.

The report does not call for a change in UK law to permit genetically altered babies, but instead urges research into the safety and effectiveness of the approach, its societal impact, and a widespread debate of its implications.

“It is our view that genome editing is not morally unacceptable in itself,” said Karen Yeung, chair of the Nuffield working group and professor of law, ethics and informatics at the University of Birmingham. “There is no reason to rule it out in principle.”

Recent advances in genetic technology have given scientists the tools to rewrite the DNA bound up in living cells, letter by letter. With the procedures in hand, scientists can in principle tweak the genetic code in sperm, eggs and embryos, and change dramatically how future children develop.

While laws in the UK and some other countries currently ban the creation of genetically altered babies, a handful of experiments around the world have shown that DNA editing could, in principle, prevent children from inheriting serious diseases caused by faulty genes.

...

Another consideration is that any changes made to an embryo’s DNA would affect all of its cells, including the sperm or eggs, meaning that genetic modifications would be passed down to all future generations. Also, in the vast majority of cases alternative procedures, such as preimplantation genetic testing, can be used to screen embryos for harmful DNA.

DNA editing also raises the possibility of “designer babies”, where the genetic code of embryos created through standard IVF is rewritten so that children have traits the parents find desirable. The Nuffield report does not rule out any specific uses of genome editing, but says that to be ethical, any applications must follow the principles of being in the child’s interests, and have no ill-effects for society.

This, as one can tell, is pretty much the standard "boiler plate" for such articles: the virtue signaling of "social concern" and the usual "concern for the child" which, coming from certain quarters these days, I'm inherently skeptical of to begin with. Then this is followed by the elaboration of the "social concern" part of the virtue signaling, that we must guard against the genetic haves and have nots sowing the usual social discord. Reading between the lines a bit, that means we must "level the genetic modification access playing field," and that of course means more socialist programs to make sure everyone has a fair crack at all that wonderful CRISPR gene-editting technology; step right up, get your state approved modified baby here. Then this is followed by more boiler plate about "designer babies" and a very brief bow to what may be a huge lurking scientific problem, that modifications may be passed down through that "modified baby's" offspring.

It's that "brief bow" that concerns me, beyond my inherent disgust at those willing to play God and tinker with the very stuff of life itself, be it vaccines, genetic therapies, GMOs, or what have you. In the blogs earlier this week, in the past two days, I've pointed out the fundamental flaw in western science has always been its analytical hubris, and corresponding inattention to how systems interact. While this gap has been closing, it certainly is not completely closed. After all, the "analysts" have had about a 500 year head start on the "integreationists" or "synthesists", i.e., those who think the whole interactive system itself is more than the sum of its parts, and contributes to the overall efficiency of a system or organism. In genetics this basic idea - to oversimplify - is epigenetics, but whatever one calls it, the synthesists are pointing out that modifications to a part can effect the whole, and those modifications can result in unpredictable adjustments by the system, including (as we saw yesterday), the creation of transgenic chimerical viruses, entirely unintentionally (or so they say), simply from a system that itself is poorly designed and not understood very well.

And those effects could potentially be inherited.

So now a committee of "ethics experts" has determined it's ok to go ahead an genetically modify a human being, if it's in that individual's best interest (doubtless to be determined by panels of ethics experts in the National Health system, think of Charlie Gard, folks). One can think of all sorts of nightmarish scenarios: a panel of "experts" deciding that you'd be better off being the opposite sex, or better off being a host for growing various organs or body parts, and so on. I suspect we're all familiar with "the political and cultural nightmarish scenarios", so I feel no need to rehearse them further. They're definitely there, and I trust panels of ethics experts just about as much as I trust non-aggression pacts signed by Adolf Hitler.

What concerns me is that no one is raising those epigenetic potentialities of unintended damage to the whole "ecosystem" of human genetics, by intended "good meddling" in an infant's DNA, that may, like the recent CRISPR studies, show to have some potentially very bad consequences.

But it's ok... the panels of experts and scientists have waved their magic wands and said everything's ok, because they've all imbibed their daily dose of bubbling potions of "concern."

See you on the flip side...