But this morning, that all changed. Apparently Mark Frauenfelder is a BoingBoing editor who is a complete idiot. He put up a post supporting homepathic “medicine”. It is well known that homeopathy is complete bullshit. Just do a search at the JREF and you will learn all you need to know about the farce that is Zicam. I mean seriously, if it was actually a cure for the common cold don’t you think doctors all over would be going nuts and such?

The worst part is that there are reports Zicam is causing loss of smell to people. I don’t have evidence to say wheter it does or does not. But let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if cramming completely useless jellies up your nose screwed up your olfactory nerve.

What it all comes down to is that I’ve lost a little respect for BoingBoing and consider this Mark Frauenfelder to be a complete idiot. Posts made by him in the future will be examined thoroughly. Hopefully the other skeptical and intelligent BoingBoing editors will put him in his place. Join me in tagging this on del.icio.us as flimflam.

In the case of the mass media or an editor-controlled source of news like a newspaper or Slashdot this problem isn’t so bad. I’m not saying that the stories don’t show up in those places, that couldn’t be further from the truth. But at least there is a single person who can be forced to take responsibility for publishing dangerous and misleading information and presenting it as truth. In the case of more democratic websites like digg and del.icio.us popular this is a more difficult problem.

If a deceiving website appears on Digg or del.icio.us it is because it has already deceived enough people to make it to the top of the ranks. The trouble begins when these things make it near the top of the charts, they get increased exposure and cause more harm. I’m sure the people who run these websites do not want to promote this false information. But at the same time they do not want to ruin the pure democracy of their sites. I understand their feelings and I actually agree with them.

Since these are websites where the content is completely democratically controlled by the users we need to take a stand and vote against any bad items we see. The trouble is that the software running these sites does not allow negative votes. You can’t “undigg” something and you can’t subtract a link on something for del.icio.us popular. So what are we to do? I have a possible solution for del.icio.us that can work if it gains enough support. I’m still thinking about digg.

The next time you see something on del.icio.us popular that is complete bullshit make a link to it and add the tag “flimflam”. Yes, I know, this will cause the link to become even more popular. But if you don’t add any other tags besides flimflam it will only rise up the popular and flimflam pages. If awareness of the tag spreads then people will take notice of things on the popular list with the flimflam tag. Also, people might just monitor the flimflam tag on its own to find out things which are fake. There is a chance for abuse if people mark things as flimflam which are not. However, the democracy of the system should make sure that only real flim flam is heavily tagged as such.

For Digg, I don’t know what to do. The only thing I can come up with is to post a story contradicting the original and then digging it up as high as possible. That is no easy task. If anyone comes up with anything better, I’d love to hear it.

So next time you see something promoting alternative medicine, scientology, pseudoscience, etc. on del.icio.us tag it as flimflam. Then be sure to keep a close eye on the flimflam tag to be sure that you aren’t deceived by anything fake. Let’s use the democratic power of these sites to keep them free of the crap that infests the rest of the net.

In the Times Square end of the line there are people there every day with a table setup giving away free stress tests. I never paid them much heed other than being smart enough not to think twice about their bait. But I just noticed something recently that set me alight. What they were basically doing is hooking people up to a non-scientific hokey instrument to break the ice and try to sell them something. That’s not out of the ordinary nowadays. What really got me was what they were selling. Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. They were Scientologists! Scientologists are the largest, most evil and most hated cult on earth. Especially by me. I have decided that in the future, on some lousy day when I have nothing better to do, I will spend all my time in the subway harassing them. It will be so much fun.

Ideas to make this more fun include:

• Getting them to sell us books and record them doing it. It’s against the MTA rules and they will be ousted.
• Flash mobbing them and freaking them the fuck out. A large enough mob could make a human wall that would simultaneously intimidate and prevent people from taking the tests.
• Handing out informative leaflets explaining the truth about scientology so people know what the fuck is going on. Standard signs and informative soap boxing are also the standard.
• Taking stress tests over and over again. They’re free right? If we are the only ones taking the tests nobody else will be able to.
• Video, video, video. You never know what might happen if you end up in court for something crazy. Those cultists love lawyers, but even they can’t argue a video.
• I don’t know the rules about fire in the subway, but if they are giving away free books we can take them and destroy them all. it costs them money!

Those are the only great ideas I can come up with right now. Help me out if you come up with anything else. It will also be necessary to be aware of all the rules and regulations of what you can and cannot do in the subway station. If police or MTA police show up we want them on our side. In fact, if they showed up and were on our side, we win.

I’m dead serious about this. If you are a scientologist you might want to warn your buddies, not like it will do you any good. If you aren’t a scientologist, don’t become one. Other sites on the Internet will explain the whole thing to you. They basically take all your money and brainwash you. I mean, their “religion” was made up on a bet by a science fiction author. And if you hate scientologists as much as I do, come help me out!