The Czar hopes he is right about this. But this weird story about 14 girls and 1 boy in LeRoy, New York, who have developed nervous tics and so-called verbal outbursts. The kids&146;s parents have engaged Erin Brockovich to investigate whether contaminated ground water would suddenly strike a small subset of children forty years after the fact.

Like some of the doctors being interviewed for this, the Czar suspects mass psychogenic illness. A psychogenic illness is not strictly psychological: hence, they will pass physical medical inspections (at least one child has been tagged with a conversion disorder, which is a poite way of saying what was in your head is now in your body).

Here is what the media are not asking or telling, which is quite revealing. Have children in other years exhibited these symptoms? Are these children more or less confined to one small area of the school? Are these kids in physical or frequent social contact? Why does it take 40 years for a contaminant to affect children? How can symptoms associated with a neurological disorder manifest themselves in different ways in such short order?

See where we are going? Stories like this are actually quite common, if anyone in the media would care to do their job and research: a maintenance crew uses a new cleaner, the smell wafts up the stairwell, and suddenly kids are vomiting, dizzy, and passing out. The new cleaner? A perfectly safe off-the-shelf brand that the kids have in their own homes. But due to psychogenic hysteria, one kids acts weird and they all act weird, eventually developing measurable physical symptoms.

The Czar does not expect you to sit through all the video, but some interesting pieces emerge. One student seems to be at the heart of this, in terms of spreading the news, contacting Ms. Brockavich, and taking an entire month off school because of her twitching right arm. She has suffered bruises on her face from fainting and hitting herself, allegedly, with her own cell phone. The bruise is massive and about the size of her own fist. The Czar is most skeptical that this latter bruise is on her left cheek: most right handed people are not going to whap themselves on the left cheek with a phone, especially if the right arm is as uncontrollable as demonstrated in the video.

Is she faking? Well, not really. She certainly has trouble controlling her one arm, and her symptoms are measurably neurological—but the Czar suspects they would be this way if she were a student in Mentor, Ohio, or Fort Collins, Colorado, or Jupiter, Florida. The media has not interviewed any of the other kids, which tells you quite a bit as well.

No, the kids really do think they have something; but the media could establish whether there was a real threat within an hour of basic journalism science. They just don’t want to.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.