Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2007

  • The GP’s Brain Is Missing

    David Colquhoun has recently drawn attention to the shameful practice of some Universities offering BSc courses in homeopathy. Now, a doctor, Ann Robinson, responds in an article saying that there is no harm in it:  
    The big question here is not whether homeopathy works but whether it has enough of a scientific basis for it to be taught as a BSc degree course. I can’t really see the problem. We teach BA degree courses in media studies alongside traditional English literature. So why not homeopathy alongside medicine? 
    She clearly doesn’t understand the difference between a BA and a BSc – between the arts and science. Words fail me. However, allow me to quote one of the comments left by a reader of Ann Robinson’s article. "Medgirl" writes:
    "Says Ann Robinson: ‘Even the fiercest critics of homeopathy will agree that it does no harm – which is more than you can say about conventional pharmaceutical drugs.’
     
    I completely disagree with this statement. I studied medicine in India, where homeopathy is a very popular form of alternative medicine and has university-affiliated colleges offering degree courses. Students who cannot get into medical school often take up studies in homeopathic medicine.
     
    As an intern, I saw too many times the tragedies that homeopathic treatment led to. I can never forget a woman who was brought in on a stretcher to our surgical outpatient clinic. She was moments away from death and the most foul smell entered the room with her. When her relative lifted her sari, we could see one of her breasts had melted into a rotting mass, infested with maggots. The consultant, recognising yet another case of breast cancer left too long, said what had they been doing all this while, because this didn’t happen overnight. ‘She had a lump in her breast, and the homeopath treated it. He said it would get bigger, and then melt away, but with the melting she has become very ill.’ The surgeon told the family to take the woman back to the homeopath, that there was nothing we could do for her now.
     
    Maybe these cases were extreme examples, but I think conventional medicine has more of an ability to recognise its limitations."  

  • A Nice Analogy

    Skeptico has a post: How do you prove photography to a blind man? It is a particularly nice analogy to make to those who make claims that psychic phenomena actually exist.
     
    (hat tip to The Bad Astronomer for the link)

  • Sunshine

    Mark Kermode (the good doctor) writes an intriguing teaser about the forthcoming film Sunshine. It definitely goes on the list of films that I want to see.

  • A Debate

    I see that a video of the recent debate between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins is now available here. The topic of the debate is: Darwin and Humanity: should we rid the mind of God?
     
    The sound quality is somewhat suspect for Peter Atkins, but stick with it. Clearly God is on McGrath’s side – or at least the sound engineer is. 
     
    I have to say that I was very unimpressed by McGrath – he sounded just like a trendy vicar giving a sermon, with the amount of his handwaving counterbalanced by the shallowness of his arguments. And I marvelled when he said:
    "When I was young I used to be an amateur astronomer, I used to look at the night sky and I knew just enough astronomy to know that the light from some of those stars wouldn’t hit earth for hundreds of years and to me, that simply said to me, you will be dead by then and so the night sky was a symbol of melancholy, a reminder of the brevity of life."
    It sounded to me as though he needs God so that he has meaning to his life. I don’t. When I look at the night sky, I too realise the same fact about stellar distances, but that to me is amazing, not melancholic, and, I might add, that knowledge has come through scientific advance and not through theology.

  • Rijksgadget

    Here’s a terrific little gadget for your Windows Vista Sidebar: Rijksgadget. It displays a new painting each day from the collection in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. If you flip the picture over, you find out information about the painting.

  • Rights For Filth

    I would like to think that this gentleman is being ironical, but I fear that he is being absolutely serious… Clearly, care in the community is going too far…
     
     
    However, good to know where he stands. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry after listening to this codswallop. However, I know that he just can’t help it. Oh, and he’s an ex-policeman apparently. Makes you feel proud, doesn’t it?

  • Bookshop Blues

    I’ve just found out that the Gays The Word bookshop in London’s Bloomsbury is struggling to survive in the face of rising rents and falling sales.
    When I lived in London I would often visit it. It was a great place – and felt at times like a tiny community centre.
     
    I see that Jeanette Winterson thinks that perhaps its work is done, but when I read that the bookshop’s owner says that they still get “a brick through the window once a year and twice a week people spit on the windows”, then I have to wonder…
     
    If you live in London, or are visiting, please pop in. You can also sponsor a bookshelf – visit the web site for more information. 

  • Beyond Parody

    There are some things that are clearly beyond parody. Such as the news that Dr. Ian Paisley has comissioned a bio-pic of his life. The end result will be clearly something that will have to be experienced in a cinema equipped with full Dolby sound in order to appreciate the decibel levels of his stentorian oratory at full blast.
     
    My favourite (I think apochryphal – but you never know) story about the old rogue and bigot is when he is addressing a rally of the faithful…
     
    "When the day of Judgment comes, there will be a weeping, a wailing and a gnashing of teeth!"
     
    A little old man mumbles with his gums and interjects at the front: "Dr Paisley, what will happen to us who have no teeth?" "Teeth," says the great man, "will be provided." Or, as he would say: "Tayth wull be provayded!!"

  • The Royal Society Videos

    I’ve just learned that The Royal Society has put some of its lectures on the web as video and audio streams. Here’s one: Professor Steve Jones talking about Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right. Terrific stuff.

  • Epicurus Or Heidegger?

    How do you live your life? By not worrying about death? Or by letting the realisation that life is finite, and death inevitable, shape what you do in the time allotted?
     
    Epicurus argued that the fear of death was irrational. "Where death is, I am no longer," he said, "and where I am, death is not." Epicurus’ point is that there is nothing to fear in death itself, what people really fear is the process of dying and the pain that all too often accompanies the final illness.
     
    Heidegger, on the other hand, argued that death is a constant presence in life, and renamed human existence "being towards death". Heidegger therefore rejected the Epicurean idea that death is irrelevant to our lives. To understand life fully, Heidegger argued, one must understand oneself as finite.
     
    These two points of view are explored by the philospher Havi Carel in a compelling piece in The Independent. The question is thrown into sharp focus for her by the fact that she has, at most, 10 years left to live. Ten years that will increasingly be marked by illness and pain. 
     
    Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t feel the two viewpoints are an "either/or" situation; to me it feels like a "both/and". I don’t fear death, and I know that it’s inevitable. Perhaps that’s because, as Carel argues, I am in good health. Perhaps if I were in her situation I might feel differently. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently because one of our neighbours has recently been told he has only a few months, perhaps just a few weeks, left to live. He seems to have accepted this with equanimity – he’s more concerned about how his wife will cope – and is busy putting his affairs in order in readiness. His forthrightness is admirable, and is an example that I hope to follow when my time comes.
     
    (hat tip to Julian Baggini over at Talking Philosophy for the link to the Carel article)

  • Poland’s Dark Age

    Further to my comment the other day that Poland seems intent on marching forward into a new Dark Age, Doug Ireland has an excellent in-depth piece covering the background to the new anti-gay bill.

  • Interview With Adam Curtis

    Via Not Saussure, here’s a pointer to an interview with Adam Curtis about his latest work, The Trap. Worth reading.

  • A Birthday Wish

    Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, turns 60 this weekend. While that’s a sobering thought in itself, he uses the occasion to bring our attention to something far more sobering – the continuing abuses of the human rights of gay people around the world. Go and read the article – it’s a good one – and then read some of the comments left on it. It is clear from them, as Elton says, that homophobia is far from dead.

  • They Hate Women Too

    Another reason why I feel that Poland appears to have a lot of growing up to do.

  • Baghdad Life

    I’m a bit late in noticing it, but yesterday the Baghdad Blogger – Salam Pax – had an article published in The Guardian. Go and read it.

  • Monks Have Their Uses

    Although, probably not those that you might expect. How about helping to save people trapped under earthquake rubble? It’s all to do with acetone, apparently…

  • Another 4th Birthday

    This one, though, is altogether unhappier.

  • What’s Wrong With Gay Sex?

    An excellent question, to which Stephen Law, over at his eponymous blog, provides some excellent answers. The pay-off merely confirms one of my long-standing assumptions about God – that deep down, he always was an exceedingly nasty piece of work.

  • Happy Birthday, Kai!

    Our brown labrador, Kai, is four years old today…

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  • The Me Generation

    The concept of the Me Generation is not particularly new – it’s been around since the 1970s, but I wonder whether the intensity dial isn’t being turned up a notch or two higher by our technology.
     
    Danah Boyd, over at Apophenia, has been wondering something similar, and as usual explores the issues in a thoughful way. She comes to the conclusion that technology isn’t the culprit, rather it’s ourselves.