What Doctors Don't Tell You Because It's Outrageous Tripe

In the little coffee shop/newsagent at the technology park where I work I noticed today the new magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell You" (ghastly website here). I only had to read the cover to become speechless with indignation. Among its lead articles we find "I Avoided A Hysterectomy Through Diet" and "Sunbathe Your Diabetes Away". I mean, really, it would actually be quite funny if they weren't shamelessly exploiting people's health fears and natural distrust of "Big Pharma" to sell vitamin pills and other diet supplements.

If I may be permitted to mix my metaphors for a moment, there is so much outrageous bollocks in this steaming pile of offal that it's hard to know where to begin - but fortunately, the cavalry is coming. Check out the Sceptical Letter Writer's comprehensive guide to all the unsubstantiated and overblown nonsense within the first issue. I was going to write to the Advertising Standards Authority, but apparently there's already a major multiple complaint in progress.

If you know anyone who might be at risk of being sucked in by this...this...let me just make it clear once more...total frickin' money-grubbing cynical scaremongering lunacy, then please, direct them to Ron's wholly excellent piece or the Quackometer post about it in the hope that they may be saved.

She Stopped Blinding Me With Science Due To Funding Cuts

Once again, the politicians are trying to kill us with their myopic worldview. I know we need to make funding cuts, but leave science alone!

The UK currently contributes about 10% of the world's scientific output, with only about 1% of the world's population. We're good at it. We have a long history of innovation and engineering excellence. But this is under serious threat from swingeing cuts.

Science is vital because we have evolved culturally beyond our ability to live without it. Turn off electric power, and our society will fail, as banking, medical services and communication all become impossible. Half of us can’t even see straight without wearing a device to correct our vision. We can’t find our own food, or clothe ourselves, or defend ourselves. We have forgotten how. Our increasing sophistication makes us more and more dependent on a precarious platform of technology, supported by a relatively tiny number of knowledgeable people.

Please don’t bring our civilisation even closer to collapse by cutting bits off our only functioning crutch!

Lack of community spirit

I am one of that select band of individuals whose precious lunch hour today was briefly interrupted by a pirate. Rather a weedy-looking, myopic pirate if I'm honest, but he did have the full gear, including a plastic cutlass. However, rather than slit my gizzard he chose merely to deliver a leaflet inviting me to give up my scarce free time in order to clean up some crummy beach I've never been to.

I confess, my timbers were far from shivered. I don't like these "hey, we're a caring company, so why not come out of hours and do some back-breaking community work with people you've never met at a place you don't care about" events. And call me a surly old son of a sea dog, but the prospect of doing it dressed as a pirate does not have the desired effect of making the whole tedious enterprise seem like fun.

After all, community service is for young offenders - and Boy George.

Then we should know the mind of Hawking

I wonder how many of the theists who are currently lining up to lob insults and derisory comments at Stephen Hawking actually have any idea what his soundbite quote* from The Grand Design means, or the years of study and research that preceded the statement, or have even read the book in which it is contained (which as I write has yet to be released). Do any of them, ANY of them, have even a rudimentary grasp of M-theory? Did any of them correctly predict that black holes emit thermal radiation?

It reminds me of Pierre-Simon Laplace's somewhat terse response to Napoleon, when the emperor complained that Laplace hadn't referred to the Creator in his seminal work, Celestial Mechanics: "I have had no need of that hypothesis."

Hawking's view is that philosophy is dead, and that science now researches the ultimate questions of Life, the Universe and Everything. And as he says himself, "Unlike the answer given in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ours won’t be simply '42'."

*"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going." - Stephen W. Hawking

Document Holders

Yes, document holders. Those rectangles of plastic suspended over one's desk on a bendy arm that are supposed to assist you as you type by, well, holding documents. But it seems they are cunningly designed to frustrate, annoy and even injure, without at any time providing any sort of physical support for paper items. I did think their sole purpose was to periodically tip your work onto the floor, but the reality is much more sinister. You only have to attempt to move them slightly, and they will bomb your foot with a block of lead heavy enough to secure an aircraft carrier (but strangely unable to stop a weightless piece of plastic from tipping over on your desk). As if to reinforce the maleficence, you notice a tiny legend embossed on the base as you pick it up, taunting you with the words "Warning! Base is heavy".

I make no further comment. Alles ist schlecht.