I have long bemoaned the dumbing down of America. There seems to be a growing number of humans who sincerely believe that their opinion carries as much weight as actual facts. They are 100% wrong but that fact doesn’t even enter their equations. If I may insult the word equations. It’s one thing to believe in something. Regular readers know that I believe in God. Mostly because I refuse to believe that I’m the most evolved being in the universe. Believing in God does not, by any stretch, require me to believe all of the hateful things that a god is supposed to enjoy. My beliefs are simple. Since I do not want to marry someone of the same sex I have not done so. See how easy that is? Just because I’m not comfortable loving a man as I would love a woman should have no impact on those who are wired differently. The same applies to most things. And yet there are those, a growing contingent it seems, who feel contrariwise. They firmly believe that all truth flows through them. That if they don’t understand it then it’s not true. And that’s not only stupid, it’s dangerous. Diseases long conquered are making a comeback thanks to these idiots. Science long settled is being bludgeoned into meaningless sound bites. Facts are now treated as politically skewed opinions. There are people who firmly believe that hex signs and such have as much validity as science. And thanks to these people children are dying and people are rediscovering that human rights are not a given.

As I said, this is not just stupid, it’s dangerous.

Thansk to my pal Jon Schnepp, I found out that Jonathon Gatehouse, at MacLeans, says things are even worse than I thought.

South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.

Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

In a country bedevilled by mass shootings—Aurora, Colo.; Fort Hood, Texas; Virginia Tech—efforts at gun control have given way to ever-laxer standards. Georgia recently passed a law allowing people to pack weapons in state and local buildings, airports, churches and bars. Florida is debating legislation that will waive all firearm restrictions during state emergencies like riots or hurricanes. (One opponent has moved to rename it “an Act Relating to the Zombie Apocalypse.”) And since the December 2012 massacre of 20 children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn., 12 states have passed laws allowing guns to be carried in schools, and 20 more are considering such measures.

The cost of a simple appendectomy in the United States averages $33,000 and it’s not uncommon for such bills to top six figures. More than 15 per cent of the population has no health insurance whatsoever. Yet efforts to fill that gaping hole via the Affordable Health Care Act—a.k.a. Obamacare—remain distinctly unpopular. Nonsensical myths about the government’s “real” intentions have found so much traction that 30 per cent still believe that there will be official “death panels” to make decisions on end-of-life care.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has been engaged in an ever-widening program of spying on its own—and foreign—citizens, tapping phones, intercepting emails and texts, and monitoring social media to track the movements, activities and connections of millions. Still, many Americans seem less concerned with the massive violations of their privacy in the name of the War on Terror, than imposing Taliban-like standards on the lives of others. Last month, the school board in Meridian, Idaho voted to remove The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie from its Grade 10 supplemental reading list following parental complaints about its uncouth language and depictions of sex and drug use. When 17-year-old student Brady Kissel teamed up with staff from a local store to give away copies at a park as a protest, a concerned citizen called police. It was the evening of April 23, which was also World Book Night, an event dedicated to “spreading the love of reading.”

If ignorance is contagious, it’s high time to put the United States in quarantine.

Americans have long worried that their education system is leaving their children behind. With good reason: national exams consistently reveal how little the kids actually know. In the last set, administered in 2010 (more are scheduled for this spring), most fourth graders were unable to explain why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure, and only half were able to order North America, the U.S., California and Los Angeles by size. Results in civics were similarly dismal. While math and reading scores have improved over the years, economics remains the “best” subject, with 42 per cent of high school seniors deemed “proficient.”

They don’t appear to be getting much smarter as they age. A 2013 survey of 166,000 adults across 20 countries that tested math, reading and technological problem-solving found Americans to be below the international average in every category. (Japan, Finland, Canada, South Korea and Slovakia were among the 11 nations that scored significantly higher.)

The trends are not encouraging. In 1978, 42 per cent of Americans reported that they had read 11 or more books in the past year. In 2014, just 28 per cent can say the same, while 23 per cent proudly admit to not having read even one, up from eight per cent in 1978. Newspaper and magazine circulation continues to decline sharply, as does viewership for cable news. The three big network supper-hour shows drew a combined average audience of 22.6 million in 2013, down from 52 million in 1980. While 82 per cent of Americans now say they seek out news digitally, the quality of the information they’re getting is suspect. Among current affairs websites, Buzzfeedlogs almost as many monthly hits as the Washington Post.

The advance of ignorance and irrationalism in the U.S. has hardly gone unnoticed. The late Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter won the Pulitzer prize back in 1964 for his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which cast the nation’s tendency to embrace stupidity as a periodic by-product of its founding urge to democratize everything. By 2008, journalist Susan Jacoby was warning that the denseness—“a virulent mixture of anti-rationalism and low expectations”—was more of a permanent state. In her book, The Age of American Unreason, she posited that it trickled down from the top, fuelled by faux-populist politicians striving to make themselves sound approachable rather than smart. Their creeping tendency to refer to everyone—voters, experts, government officials—as “folks” is “symptomatic of a debasement of public speech inseparable from a more general erosion of American cultural standards,” she wrote. “Casual, colloquial language also conveys an implicit denial of the seriousness of whatever issue is being debated: talking about folks going off to war is the equivalent of describing rape victims as girls.”

That inarticulate legacy didn’t end with George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. Barack Obama, the most cerebral and eloquent American leader in a generation, regularly plays the same card, droppin’ his Gs and dialling down his vocabulary to Hee Hawstandards. His ability to convincingly play a hayseed was instrumental in his 2012 campaign against the patrician Mitt Romney; in one of their televised debates the President referenced “folks” 17 times.

An aversion to complexity—at least when communicating with the public—can also be seen in the types of answers politicians now provide the media. The average length of a sound bite by a presidential candidate in 1968 was 42.3 seconds. Two decades later, it was 9.8 seconds. Today, it’s just a touch over seven seconds and well on its way to being supplanted by 140-character Twitter bursts.

Little wonder then that distrust—of leaders, institutions, experts, and those who report on them—is rampant. A YouGov poll conducted last December found that three-quarters of Americans agreed that science is a force for good in the world. Yet when asked if they truly believe what scientists tell them, only 36 per cent of respondents said yes. Just 12 per cent expressed strong confidence in the press to accurately report scientific findings. (Although according to a 2012 paper by Gordon Gauchat, a University of North Carolina sociologist, the erosion of trust in science over the past 40 years has been almost exclusively confined to two groups: conservatives and regular churchgoers. Counterintuitively, it is the most highly educated among them—with post-secondary education—who harbour the strongest doubts.)

The term “elitist” has become one of the most used, and feared, insults in American life. Even in the country’s halls of higher learning, there is now an ingrained bias that favours the accessible over the exacting.

“There’s a pervasive suspicion of rights, privileges, knowledge and specialization,” says Catherine Liu, the author of American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critiqueand a film and media studies professor at University of California at Irvine. Both ends of the political spectrum have come to reject the conspicuously clever, she says, if for very different reasons; the left because of worries about inclusiveness, the right because they equate objections with obstruction. As a result, the very mission of universities has changed, argues Liu. “We don’t educate people anymore. We train them to get jobs.” (Boomers, she says, deserve most of the blame. “They were so triumphalist in promoting pop culture and demoting the canon.”)

The digital revolution, which has brought boundless access to information and entertainment choices, has somehow only enhanced the lowest common denominators—LOL cat videos and the Kardashians. Instead of educating themselves via the Internet, most people simply use it to validate what they already suspect, wish or believe to be true. It creates an online environment where Jenny McCarthy, a former Playboy model with a high school education, can become a worldwide leader of the anti-vaccination movement, naysaying the advice of medical professionals.

Most perplexing, however, is where the stupid is flowing from. As conservative pundit David Frum recently noted, where it was once the least informed who were most vulnerable to inaccuracies, it now seems to be the exact opposite. “More sophisticated news consumers turn out to use this sophistication to do a better job of filtering out what they don’t want to hear,” he blogged.

But are things actually getting worse? There’s a long and not-so-proud history of American electors lashing out irrationally, or voting against their own interests. Political scientists have been tracking, since the early 1950s, just how poorly those who cast ballots seem to comprehend the policies of the parties and people they are endorsing. A wealth of research now suggests that at the most optimistic, only 70 per cent actually select the party that accurately represents their views—and there are only two choices.

Larry Bartels, the co-director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University, says he doubts that the spreading ignorance is a uniquely American phenomenon. Facing complex choices, uncertain about the consequences of the alternatives, and tasked with balancing the demands of jobs, family and the things that truly interest them with boring policy debates, people either cast their ballots reflexively, or not at all. The larger question might be whether engagement really matters. “If your vision of democracy is one in which elections provide solemn opportunities for voters to set the course of public policy and hold leaders accountable, yes,” Bartels wrote in an email to Maclean’s. “If you take the less ambitious view that elections provide a convenient, non-violent way for a society to agree on who is in charge at any given time, perhaps not.”

A study by two Princeton University researchers, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, released last month, tracked 1,800 U.S. policy changes between 1981 and 2002, and compared the outcome with the expressed preferences of median-income Americans, the affluent, business interests and powerful lobbies. They concluded that average citizens “have little or no independent influence” on policy in the U.S., while the rich and their hired mouthpieces routinely get their way. “The majority does not rule,” they wrote.

Smart money versus dumb voters is hardly a fair fight. But it does offer compelling evidence that the survival of the fittest remains an unshakable truth even in American life. A sad sort of proof of evolution.

That last part is a solid reminder how much your vote counts. If you sit on the sidelines and allow idiots to get into office then you get the government you deserve.

So how do we fix this? Education. We stop legislators from gutting curricula and force kids to learn actual facts. The earth is more than 6,000 years old. Jesus never rode a velociratpor. Vaccines cure diseases, they don’t cause them. Drinking bleach does not cure AIDS. 2+2=4. The universe is infinite. Life can, and most likely does, exist on other worlds. There is no such thing as Bigfoot. There is no such thing as UFOs. Contrails are not chemtrails. 9/11 was caused by a small band of terrorists, not by the world’s largest religion. Fluoride does not allow the government to track your movements via satellites. Seeing a man kiss another man will not make you gay any more than drinking milk will make you a cow.

We need to teach them these facts and more if we ever hope of having a better world.

It can be done, but we need to get off our complacent asses to make it happen.

Stupid Girls by P!nk from Mie Madsen on Vimeo.

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Sometimes when people hear scientific jargon they tune it out. After all, it’s usually in Latin or Greek, related to obscure concepts and presented with the enthusiasm level of lint. Scientists are, in the main, solitary figures. Social interaction is not their forte. That’s why when someone like Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson comes along they get treated like rock stars. It’s even more fitting that the latter is honoring the life’s work of the former by re-launching his legendary TV show, Cosmos. What’s interesting about the new version of the show is that it’s taking apart the arguments of creationists one at a time. From why an eyeball is easily predictable and not too complex to evolve to why selective breeding of animals (think from wolf to dog) is just a manual version of evolution. Others have been jumping on board the science bandwagon as well. From loudly debunking the anti-vac crowd, a group whom I loathe, to proving that the Earth not only revolves around the sun but that it also revolves on its own axis. Thus do we end up with seasons and time zones, respectively.

It’s not magic folks.

But this next bit might seem like it. Sarah C. P. Williams, from Science Magazine, reports that scientists may have come up with a real cure for cancer and it’s not something you order out of the back of some bullshit magazine or buy from Kevin Trudeau.

And it involves neither crystals or Vitamin C.

Survivor. When mice with human tumors received doses of anti-CD47, which sets the immune system against tumor cells, the cancers shrank and disappeared.

A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a “do not eat” signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells.

A decade ago, biologist Irving Weissman of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, discovered that leukemia cells produce higher levels of a protein called CD47 than do healthy cells. CD47, he and other scientists found, is also displayed on healthy blood cells; it’s a marker that blocks the immune system from destroying them as they circulate. Cancers take advantage of this flag to trick the immune system into ignoring them. In the past few years, Weissman’s lab showed that blocking CD47 with an antibody cured some cases of lymphomas and leukemias in mice by stimulating the immune system to recognize the cancer cells as invaders. Now, he and colleagues have shown that the CD47-blocking antibody may have a far wider impact than just blood cancers.

“What we’ve shown is that CD47 isn’t just important on leukemias and lymphomas,” says Weissman. “It’s on every single human primary tumor that we tested.” Moreover, Weissman’s lab found that cancer cells always had higher levels of CD47 than did healthy cells. How much CD47 a tumor made could predict the survival odds of a patient.

To determine whether blocking CD47 was beneficial, the scientists exposed tumor cells to macrophages, a type of immune cell, and anti-CD47 molecules in petri dishes. Without the drug, the macrophages ignored the cancerous cells. But when the anti-CD47 was present, the macrophages engulfed and destroyed cancer cells from all tumor types.

Next, the team transplanted human tumors into the feet of mice, where tumors can be easily monitored. When they treated the rodents with anti-CD47, the tumors shrank and did not spread to the rest of the body. In mice given human bladder cancer tumors, for example, 10 of 10 untreated mice had cancer that spread to their lymph nodes. Only one of 10 mice treated with anti-CD47 had a lymph node with signs of cancer. Moreover, the implanted tumor often got smaller after treatment—colon cancers transplanted into the mice shrank to less than one-third of their original size, on average. And in five mice with breast cancer tumors, anti-CD47 eliminated all signs of the cancer cells, and the animals remained cancer-free 4 months after the treatment stopped.

“We showed that even after the tumor has taken hold, the antibody can either cure the tumor or slow its growth and prevent metastasis,” says Weissman.

Although macrophages also attacked blood cells expressing CD47 when mice were given the antibody, the researchers found that the decrease in blood cells was short-lived; the animals turned up production of new blood cells to replace those they lost from the treatment, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cancer researcher Tyler Jacks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge says that although the new study is promising, more research is needed to see whether the results hold true in humans. “The microenvironment of a real tumor is quite a bit more complicated than the microenvironment of a transplanted tumor,” he notes, “and it’s possible that a real tumor has additional immune suppressing effects.”

Another important question, Jacks says, is how CD47 antibodies would complement existing treatments. “In what ways might they work together and in what ways might they be antagonistic?” Using anti-CD47 in addition to chemotherapy, for example, could be counterproductive if the stress from chemotherapy causes normal cells to produce more CD47 than usual.

Weissman’s team has received a $20 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to move the findings from mouse studies to human safety tests. “We have enough data already,” says Weissman, “that I can say I’m confident that this will move to phase I human trials.”

Here’s the thing. There are several scientists who believe, but can not yet prove, that this treatment could be stand-alone. That would mean that cancer victims could show up ate their local doctor, get a shot or series of shots and be cured.

That doesn’t mean it will work but it most certainly can. And even if this isn’t a 100% cure I would bet good money that this information could be used in conjunction with other treatments.

In other words, we just got one step closer to a real cure.

Worst case scenario, according to a couple of scientists I spoke to is that cancer could be just as manageable as diabetes.

No longer a death sentence it would just be one more thing to watch out for.

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip: Get Better from Domestic Science on Vimeo.

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First off I have to admit that I am friends with two, professional clowns. Specifically the legendary cow punk Pioneer, Pete Berwick, who moonlights as a clown for children’s parties. I am also friends with Happy The Drunken Clown who will come to your event and insult the living hell out of everyone. As you might surmise, he and Pete have slightly different target audiences. Still, they’re both clowns in the formal sense. In the 80’s I drove a forklift for Sears and was friends with the late Bobbo the Clown, who worked there as well. I was also an acquaintance of Hollie Stevens, the undisputed queen of clown porn until she passed away in 2012 from cancer. So, as you can tell, I do not suffer from Coulrophobia.

That’s why, last Monday, when the NY Daily News reported that there was a clown shortage in America, I noticed. So did a bunch of clowns.

Very angry clowns.

Andy Campbell has the story.

Did you hear the one about America’s imminent “clown shortage?” It’s not very funny.

A New York Daily News article claimed Monday that “a national clown shortage is on the horizon.”

But that’s a big, Bozo-sized comedy of errors, according to the greasepaint yucksters the tabloid quotes in its report.

The article draws a correlation between declining membership in two national clowning associations and the downfall of clownhood altogether:

“What’s happening is attrition,” said Clowns of America International President Glen Kohlberger, who added that membership at the [Minnesota]-based organization has plummeted since 2006. “The older clowns are passing away.”

The story goes on to point out that the other nationwide clown network — the World Clown Association — has seen its membership drop from about 3,500 to 2,500 since 2004.

Kohlberger and other circus types aren’t denying that their groups face dwindling membership. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still plenty of clowns to send in — wherever a balloon needs to be folded or cream pie needs to be thrown.

“To say there’s a clown shortage, it’s just false,” he said. “Clowns of America International is a volunteer association. We don’t get paid, we educate and we help others … Like any association, people forget to renew [their membership], or they work in the field but don’t sign up. Unfortunately there are a lot of unprofessional clowns out there.

“But clowns are everywhere,” he added.

It would appear that proof of clowndom’s burgeoning success lies in the Daily News’ own article. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to Brooklyn on Thursday. There were 531 applicants for just 11 clown jobs last year, the tabloid reported.

A Daily News editor declined to comment for this article.

And yet, inaccurate or not, the article went viral and the story made an appearance on The Tonight Show.

As the old saying goes, any press is good press. Although Kohlberger was “very upset” about the article, it did “create excitement all over the world.” So who’s laughing now?

I’ll admit that fewer and fewer clowns are joining professional trade associations. That’s because they really don’t need them any more. Thanks to the internet and party planners the kind of social networking those associations provide is not really salient to getting work. It’s nice to hang with other clowns, if you’re into that sort of thing, but your membership fee isn’t going to get you any more work than you can get on your own.

Still, today’s story is happier than the time I had to share the bon mot of the ninja granny facing off against crazed clown attacker.

Yeah, that went about as well you might imagine.

By the way, this just in, Patrick Stewart is still a heterosexual. This despite the fact that some clown at the Guardian claimed he was gay because he knew gay people.

Stewart’s response is also what you’d expect.

Patrick Stewart ✔ @SirPatStew
@Poynter But @guardian I have, like, five or even SEVEN hetero friends and we totally drink beer and eat lots of chicken wings!

“fetish clown” from LuxFilm Factory on Vimeo.

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I don’t want to hate people and this is the internet so, before I begin, I ask that you click THIS LINK to restore your faith in humanity. It is the story of a litter of kittens who escaped the deadly cold by breaking into a maximum security prison. A place where the inmates have adopted them. Did I mention that it was maximum security? You know, serial killers and people like that? I just thought you should know.

Okay, anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge fan of James Randi’s. He offered a million of his own dollars to anyone who could prove they were psychic or had paranormal powers. Thousands have tried, a couple have been interesting but none have come close to collecting. So, if you can really talk to the dearly departed I know where you can make a quick mil. Just make sure to grease the palm that guided you.

As I’ve noted before, my problem with psychics has nothing to do with teenage girls playing games. No, my problem is the adults who use their “gifts” to prey on the weak and desperate. People go to psychics when they are vulnerable. They’ve lost a loved one. Someone they love isn’t loving them back, and so on. In other words, people who are most susceptible to being conned. And make no mistake, psychics are nothing but cons.

Paul McMahom from the South Florida Sun Sentinel says one of the most egregious cons is now behind bars and a couple of million lighter in he wallet.

A South Florida “psychic” who told clients that she could influence everything from terminal cancer to the fate of frozen sperm, was sentenced to federal prison Monday and ordered to repay more than $2.2 million to her victims.

Nancy Demetro Marks, 44, of Fort Lauderdale, must begin serving her prison term of three years and nine months by Feb. 14. She pleaded guilty last year to her considerable role in a massive psychic fraud conspiracy led by her mother-in-law, Rose Marks.

Nancy Marks sobbed and apologized during her sentencing in federal court in West Palm Beach.

“I am very ashamed,” Marks told U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra. “Even though I was raised [to be a psychic] I should have known better and I do know better now.”

Marks was one of nine family members arrested in August 2011 on allegations they operated a conspiracy that fleeced clients who came into their psychic stores in Fort Lauderdale and beside the famed Plaza Hotel near Manhattan’s Central Park.

Marks, who often used the name Joyce Michael or Michaels, admitted she told clients she contacted spirit guides and channeled God-given advice, promising to return victims’ cash when her “work” was done — then refusing to give it back.

Prosecutors said Marks was more culpable than most other members of the conspiracy, which included her daughter Vivian, 24, who is to be released from prison Sunday after serving four months.

But Nancy Marks was less responsible than her 62-year-old mother-in-law Rose, also of Fort Lauderdale, who faces a much harsher punishment when she is sentenced in March.

Rose Marks was the only member of the family who went to trial. Last fall, a jury found her guilty of being the ringleader of what prosecutors say was a more than $20 million fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors say Rose Marks targeted and groomed the victim who lost the most money: best-selling romance novelist Jude Deveraux.

Federal prosecutors Roger Stefin and Larry Bardfeld said Marks preyed on clients at the most vulnerable times of their lives: during illness, bereavement and when their romantic relationships were breaking up. She passed along some clients to Rose Marks, claiming their cases needed her greater expertise.

Some of Nancy Marks’ former clients testified at Rose Marks’ trial, including British solicitor Andrea Walker, who told jurors she asked Nancy Marks to help win back her husband’s love and to prolong his life when he was diagnosed with a lethal cancer.

Marks told Walker she could help but never foresaw the bombshell: Walker’s husband, Brian, had secretly frozen his sperm and signed a contract with a former employee who wanted to bear his child, using in vitro fertilization, after his death.

Prosecutors said the Marks women exploited Walker’s desperation, milking about $900,000 from her between 2009 and 2011. Walker’s husband died and no baby was borne but the money was never returned either, prosecutors said.

Susan Abraham, an Englishwoman who lives in Spain, testified that she gave about $300,000 to Nancy Marks, starting in 2010. Marks convinced her that she and her husband, had been “competing warriors” during “prior lives” in the 1600s and that she was in danger because he had “murdered” her in that lifetime.

Rose Marks, who has been locked up since the September jury verdict, and her other daughter-in-law, Cynthia Miller, who pleaded guilty, are to be sentenced in March.

Nancy Marks’ defense attorney Michael Gottlieb asked the judge for a lighter sentence, noting that Marks, like most Roma, was the victim of prejudice, received little formal education and had few other job prospects.

Since her arrest, Gottlieb said, the mother of three has held down two “legitimate” jobs and is getting an education. He said she deserved credit for helping to persuade other family members to reach plea agreements with prosecutors, avoiding the taxpayer expense of trials.

“My client didn’t prey on any individual,” Gottlieb said. “People came to her.”

That last line is exactly what I was talking about. People came to her because she advertised that she could cure their ills. They went to her for help and she screwed them over worse than any hack job date you’d meet in a bar. she planned on how to screw people. Her whole reason for waking up in the morning was to fuck people over.

I’m not a fan.

Nor will I ever be.

Electric Six – Psychic Visions from j lowe on Vimeo.

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