We are on our way to a Burns supper in Morningside this evening, though I feel unsure about the whole proceedings.
Last year we went straight from a Sunday night roda to the Burns supper and generally felt great. Through some freak event I was the only fellow to wear a kilt and so was “volunteered” to give the toast to the lassies.
This year I feel much worse. I am not sure if this is medical problems, the effects of being back on a full dose of medication, work stress, the weather and travel, Helen’s studies or a grand mixtur of them all, but I will not be wearing a kilt this evening.
Out of the three capoeira classes since the beginning of the year I have missed two from injury. I need to feel more alive.
Tomorrow (that is, 30 January 2010) there are going to be a number of demonstrations/protests outside branches of Boots, under the general name of the 10:23 campaign. At 10:23, a bunch of not-very-brave people will be “overdosing” on homeopathic pills. I think the plan is that each person takes a bottle full. This will, of course, have no downsides whatsoever because there is nothing in it.
The point in this case is not to point out the stupidity of homeopathy to the people in the street, though it will no doubt do that. It’s to make the point that Boots sell these things — have whole aisles devoted to these little white pills — even though they admit there is no evidence for their effectiveness. There are even Boots-branded homeopathic pills on the shelves! And at the same time they sell you something useless, they want you to know that their pharmacists are trustworthy enough to dispense medicines with active ingredients, and give advice about these medicines.
I leave you with James “the Amazing!” Randi, to explain the absurd details of homeopathy in his wonderful way:
I accidentally came across this video yesterday about bread, and the “Real Bread Campaign”. (The video is from the Do Lectures which seems to be something to do with Howies, the clothing company. I haven’t watched any others yet.)
If you can’t be bothered watching it yourself (and honestly, I don’t particularly recommend it) he:
talks about industrial milling and bread-making
makes threatening and evidence-free comments about “enzymes” in your food
suggests you start baking your own bread
I originally thought to mention the enzyme thing more, but it’s just tediously overdone on this blog I think. Just stop using vague science words in the hope you can make things sound dangerous. All it does is diminish any potential credibility you might have had.
I much preferred the last few minutes of his talk, when the subject settled on bread-making, community, and all that rousing stuff. I do like the idea of a Real Bread Campaign as a parallel to CAMRA, the real ale campaign. They are dealing with something fundamentally different though, so I don’t know what lessons can be learned from the real ale movement.
I recently came across this rather nice post about bread making from someone who obviously likes their bread and the process of making it, and explains it all in a cheerful fashion. And finally a short video on how they made bread back in the 1980s:
Clearly the chiropracters need to take a good long look at their PR strategy. Two separate incidents from opposite sides of the world within a few months of each other — and both incredibly stupid.
The Journal has a responsibility to deal with all issues and not to
steer clear of those issues that are difficult or contentious or
carry legal threats. Let the debate continue in the evidence-based
tone set by Colquhoun and others. … I encourage, as we have done
previously, the chiropractors and others to join in, let’s hear
your evidence not your legal muscle.
Now it should be very obvious that the New Zealand chiropracters would rather resort to a legally enforced muzzle than demonstrate the efficacy of their treatments. One can only hope that this kind of embarrassing repercussion will be enough to make them think twice about legal threats in future.
Something very similar has been going on much closer to home, and it’s the chiropracters involved again. Simon Singh wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian way back in April, for Chiropractic Awareness Week. True to form, the British Chiropractic Association is suing for libel. The original article has been pulled from the Guardian website, but has been quickly replicated elsewhere.
It should be pretty obvious now that these two associations have little interest in medical science or patient wellbeing. If they did then stifling criticism would not be their first reaction.
Well, I was going to write about last night’s trip to the cinema, but this caught my eye and I couldn’t resist pointing it out. You might have heard of Poe’s Law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor,
it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that
someone won’t mistake for the real thing.
It strictly applies to fundamentalism but is more generally considered to mean “you can’t come up with a parody so absurd that someone won’t believe it, or that someone already doesn’t”. It’s the more general sense that seems relevant here.
Despite endless evidence that it is both ineffective and dangerous, abstinence seems to be the predominant topic of sex education in the US. But how does one actually teach that? Uh, well, like this:
Men sexually are like microwaves and women sexually are like crockpots… a woman is stimulated more by touch and romantic words. She is far more attracted by a man’s personality while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.
Microwaves are turned on by sight? Crockpots are attracted to your personality?! I call Poe’s Law! This can’t possibly be real!
On Wednesday night we saw 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile — ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days’ — the story of a woman helping her friend get an illegal abortion in communist Romania in 1987.
I’m not sure what to say. I can’t really describe the great laughs you’ll have while watching. It’s a very numbing film. Don’t watch it for a first date?
Meanwhile, this is the 35th anniversary of the legalisation of abortion in the US, a law that the current crop of Republican candidates will be sure to repeal as part of their headlong rush to take the US back to the Middle Ages. Not that things are all rosy here — due to a strange quirk of jurisdiction our own abortion laws don’t apply to Northern Ireland. It’s still illegal to obtain an abortion there in most circumstances.
But if you want to see some gritty it’s-grim-oop-north drama about trying to get an abortion against the laws and norms of the society you live in, check out ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days’.
I finished this at least a week ago, but I’ve been having a hard time putting in to words what I want to say. The book is The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. It’s a collection of case notes about people he saw over the years in his work as a neurologist. Straightforward enough.
You must read this book.
That’s really all I need to say, though you probably feel a bit more explanation is required. Essentially, the book is a testament to the fragility of our minds. Most of the stuff we understand about the mind (hell, about biology) comes from what we can learn when it breaks. This book is about all the ways it can break.
There are people who lose all sense of “ideal” entities. The man could hold a glove but only recognise that was soft cloth, that it was a container, that it had five little pouches.
There are people who lose all sense of their body. The woman did not know what her limbs were doing when she wasn’t looking directly at them.
There are people who lose all sense of inhibition. The woman would involuntarily mimic every person she saw as she walked down the street.
There are people who lose huge chunks of their past, or who continually lose the immediate past.
If ever there was a book that showed the mundane, tangible nature of the brain, it is this. Everything that you can think of, every ability you have, is centred somewhere in that bundle of neurons in your skull. And if some of them should fail you could lose your ability to recognise faces, to recognise your own leg or to even understand the concept of “left”, the opposite of “right”. Can you imagine that?
I don’t know what happened last night, but I went to bed feeling dried out, bunged-up and generally not very happy, and woke up feeling generally human. Hurrah for the immune system.
Helen and I are staying in Dunbar an extra day because we have a lot of large items to transport back to the flat, which would be beyond impractical on the train. Shiny presents! Yay!
