Wired has a great list of 10 Snake-Oil Gadgets. What is deeply depressing, however, is the long list of commenters who swear blind that dowsing actually works.
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Performance-related Pay
I see that the Vatican is to bring in performance-related pay for the 2,600 lay members of its staff. I also note that the priests, bishops, monks and nuns who form the Papal administration are exempt from this. I’m sitting on my hands, trying not to make a cheap shot about this…2 responses to “Performance-related Pay”
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Fire away, dear boy, fire away. What mystifies me is just how do you define the Key Performance Indicators for clergy. How packed were the pews? How many converts this week? How many altar boys went home unmolested per Mass? This strikes me as very Germanic of Pope Ratz-arse.
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I’m sorry, but the phrase "shooting fish in a barrel" just about sums it up. It’s just too depressingly easy. Mind you, things are scarcely more uplifting in the Anglican camp. Here, you get idiots such as Theo Hobson calling Desmond Tutu a "hypocrite" because Tutu dares to observe that the Anglican Church is needlessly splitting itself asunder over homophobia. A plague on both their houses, I say.
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The March of Technology
It wasn’t so very long ago that portable computers weighed in at 22 lbs (10 kgs). Here’s John Cleese extolling the virtues of the Compaq Portable II.(hat tip to Charles Arthur over at the Guardian)Leave a comment
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Taking the Biscuit
Denis MacEoin accuses Ben Goldacre of ignorance. I came away from this piece with a feeling of embarrassment, a conviction that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The comments on the piece do a pretty good job of demolishing what little argument he has.Update: The comments section on MacEoin’s piece is still firmly in the "Homeopathy is Bunkum" corner, but I see that a few homeopaths are fighting their corner, amongst them is Dana Ullman. Unfortunately, his submission to prove the efficacy of homeopathy is completely destroyed by this laser-like piece of analysis from "Scotty"Leave a comment
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Meditating on History
Flea has another brilliant post. This time she is musing on how best to teach history to her young son. Worth reading.Leave a comment
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All Things Must Pass…
…but many people refuse to acknowledge the fact. A perfect example is the fuss currently underway over the chestnut tree in a garden at the back of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Let it go, and plant another one so that our descendants can see the symbol anew.Leave a comment
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Peter Cameron
Doug Ireland has a long and interesting interview with Peter Cameron, a writer whom I have not come across before. That will have to change I think. And they also discuss another writer, Denton Welch, who sounds intriguing.Leave a comment
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Lost in Transit
A quite staggeringly stupid thing to do – lose two CDs containing the bank details and national insurance numbers of 10 million individuals. Diamond Geezer imagines the likely outcome.Leave a comment
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Jim and Pascal’s Wager
National treasure Stephen Fry shows, once again, why he is a national treasure.He weaves together denialism of global warming, the difference between British and American culture, and Pascal’s Wager. Simply brilliant. Jim is a twat, by the way, but of course the fact that I immediately fall on that position whilst Mr. Fry is altogether more subtle merely shows why he deserves the title of National Treasure. He does, and I am merely capable of venting my spleen on ad hominem attacks.Leave a comment
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Moeliker Triumphant
I’m pleased to report that Kees Moeliker has succeeded in his quest… Five old crabs and a fresh one…Leave a comment
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The Electronic Book
While books have been available in electronic form for some time, their Achilles heel, it seems to me, has always been the devices used to read them. The limitations of display technology, battery life, form factor or cost have meant that they’ve never been a viable alternative to a traditional book for me.It’s possible, though, that we may now be seeing the start of a change; driven primarily by a change in the display technology. With the advent of a new technology, electrophoretic displays, we’re starting to see the first devices using it appear on the market. There’s the Sony Reader and now Amazon’s Kindle. Newsweek has a terrific article on the Kindle, which is well worth reading. What makes the Kindle interesting is that it is not merely the endpoint in an Amazon service, but it is an endpoint that potentially can be two-way (annotations can be fed back to be incoprorated into alternate versions of the books). This may be the impetus to change the market. This is unlikely to happen significantly fast, but as Microsoft’s Bill Hill (he who coined the phrase that Homo sapien’s operating system is still at release 1.0) points out:…the energy-wasting, resource-draining process of how we make books now. We chop down trees, transport them to plants, mash them into pulp, move the pulp to another factory to press into sheets, ship the sheets to a plant to put dirty marks on them, then cut the sheets and bind them and ship the thing around the world. Do you really believe that we’ll be doing that in 50 years?Leave a comment
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Doctor Meets Doctor
The Beeb commissioned a special short episode of Doctor Who for last Friday’s Children in Need fundraising in the UK. The fifth and the tenth Doctor meet. Clearly, a great time was had by all. The two actors are perfect, and Steven Moffat’s script is razor-sharp, with jokes for all ages and orientations. Sample:10th Doctor: …Oh, and the Master, he just showed up again…5th Doctor: Really, does he stll have that rubbish beard?10th Doctor: No… no beard this time; well, a wife…One response to “Doctor Meets Doctor”
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Oh my god, it’s like going six months without a fag and then someone puts one in your lips and lights it. That was brill, can’t wait for Chrimbles!
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Missing the Cluetrain
It seems as though many of my (British) countrymen and women are in high dudgeon over this Eurostar advert. Frankly, it reflects badly on their own insularism and ignorance. The advert is placed in Brussels, and anyone with a smidgeon of nous would understand that it’s a riff on the Manneken Pis.Sorry, can I just apologise for my fellow countrypersons who clearly have no sense of humour or knowledge of their fellow Europeans whatsoever.2 responses to “Missing the Cluetrain”
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Well, I thought it was quite funny, knowing the manneken pis, but I believe its the fact he’s a sort of skinhead neo-nazi that is bothering people – not the image they want, (sadly true though it may be). Personally I’d have been happier with a normal hot sorta brit guy pissing away, much more attractive !
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Ah fink it’s lahvlee; it shows that even with a thuggish exterior, we are still masters of grace, precision and elegance. Though I’m with Gelert, not my type. Maybe a city type with a brolly and a rolled up Daily Torygraph would have answered everyone’s cliches.
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Another Kind of Magic
Funny how some folk don’t recognise a mirror when they see it…Leave a comment
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A Kind Of Magic
Ben Goldacre has an excellent piece over at Bad Science that flenses homeopathy in a magisterial manner. Do go and read it. If there is any evidence to show that homeopathy is distinguishable from the placebo effect, then it appears to be doing a damn good job to hide itself.Leave a comment
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Identifiable Human Suffering
Over at BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh makes a telling point about campaigns aimed at raising awareness about climate change in Climate Change Escapism. And that is that pictures showing drowned resorts or dry rivers don’t necessarily have the intended impact. There is no identifiable human suffering in them. That’s the thing that generally hits people in the solar plexus.Leave a comment
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Serbian Biscuits
Nicey, over at a NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown, discovers some biscuits from Serbia with a rather unfortunate name… I wonder if Kees Moeliker would like them?4 responses to “Serbian Biscuits”
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I showed the link to my Serbian colleague who smiled briefly and moved on…
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But, Robert, what sort of smile was it? Wistful, knowing, evil, sardonic? Inquiring minds want to know…
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Enigmatic – he’s Serbian after all!
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Yes, I want to know, before I order any.
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Rational Thought
Sigh, I’m not listed, but then that’s not really important. The kernel is that these sites hold the torch of rational thought aloft. Check them out.3 responses to “Rational Thought”
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Well, I think you should be. Only one thing though – how come so many of them have athiest in the title? We have this ongoing dialogue about why some people seem to think you must be an atheist to be thinking or worth listening to. I of course, don’t agree, but maybe I’m just lucky in the people I know. I’ve met as many closed minded athiests as believers, and have not found intellectual worth packaged in only one or the other.
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It’s nothing to do with being "worth listening to" in the sense that I think you mean it. It’s to do with being rational. If "faith" means accepting something without evidence, then I’m sorry, but I think it’s a poor alternative. "Closed minded" is orthogonal to "Atheism", the two have nothing to do with each other as far as I’m concerned.
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Hmmm. Yes, I see what you are saying, but of course, disagree on the ‘no evidence’. I consider myself very rational, have approached the many ‘strange’ things that have happened to me in my life with cold rationalism, and remain open minded about some,if not all. I think the ‘evidence of faith’ and even the word ‘faith’ is greatly misunderstood. What I mean by ‘closed minded’ about many atheists I’ve spoken with, is their lack of willingness of even approach the possibility that because they cannot put it on a plate, it is by definition, void.
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The Mugwump Youth
It’s a difficult case. Some, Like Inayat Bungawala, make her out to be almost a wronged innocent. I can’t say that I fully agree. I’m closer to agreeing with Rachel. She was a foolish young woman, but nevertheless was very close to being the unwitting foot-soldier.When it all comes down to the line; when I was 23 years old, I did not dream of killing people to the extent that this misguided young woman appeared to do. Her mind has been poisoned. Hopefully, the poison can be drawn without destroying her.One response to “The Mugwump Youth”
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The other thing I found worrying, and which I’m not sure anyone has gone into, is her comment that she ‘didn’t mean it’, she was just doing it to ‘impress boys’. Why does even one muslim girl think that to impress the opposite sex she needed to express such desires and sentiments? Why is that saying?
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Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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