Gimme Shelter - Gaza's just a shot away

Israeli's like to bang on about how small and fragile Israel is - one factoid oft mentioned is that it is a rifle shot across (from the occupied west bank to the meditterranean).

Well, how do they think people in Gaza feel? its narrower still, and blockaded and bombed.

The continuing hypocrisy of Israel's use of the history of the holocaust as a blanket excuse for perpetrating current war crimes (300 people so far in response to 1) is really astounding.

I don't like petitions, but this one
http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/?cl=161516404&v=2605>from Avaaz seemed as worth signing as others.

Why are western "leaders" so muted in their condemnation?

science versus faith

there is more meaning in entropy than religion
and
there is more entropy in religion than meaning.

go figure

Campaign for Real Money.

I expect everyone is getting thoroughly sick of yet more financial service downturn news
whether its Madeoff-with-it, sub-prime, short-selling, etc etc

While I don't have a concrete theory to offer to underpin the idea, I would claim that economists are intellectually now as bankrupt as their concrete bemodiements of their ideas and the time has come to get rid of all this stuff they have produced - we (as medics, scientists, engineers) have MADE stuff that works (better longer lives, more cheaper travel, safer food and water, more sources of entertainment, even self-generated entertainment, communications, safer cheaper nicer buildings you name it) - a century of stock markets are NOT why this all worked - we exponentially improved medicine and technology - the market returns go up and down, up and down, and lurch into criminally in competent (or just plain criminal) collapse at the drop of a hat - Ben Goldcre's wrath at nutritionists and liberal arts journalists and so on could easily be redirected (by me:) at economists - they have been proven WRONG - their models dont work - why do governments seek to bail out the market ?

SHUT IT DOWN. NOW. FOREVER. do something new based on new thinking. Hey, we have the compute power - maybe a combination of Sharia Law Venture Capital, and central planning and barter would work

Vote for a new system - down with the old....out with a 100 years of rubbish!!!!!

MMR-- => measles++ and autism??

So one thing occurred to me reading the chapter in Bad Science on the MMR fiasco.

We can thank Wakefield for causing the UK to do one experiment no
ethics committee would have let us do - which is to massively decrease
the level of vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella, and see
how long it takes for the diseases to pick up abgain in the
population. This must be a source of invaluble data for
epidemiologists.

But (I didn't see this in the book, maybe its there and I was
laughing at the funny bits too much to spot it) we also ought to be
able to detect any other changes - crucially for example, if the
MMR-gang were a tiny tiny tiny bit right, then the drop in MMR levels
(proved by the current measles outbreak) would lead to a drop (or
slowdown in increase) in Autistic spectrum kids....has anyone done
this study? [I know I know it shouldn't be necessary) - hey though, what if autism went up even more and it appeard MMR protected people slightly from autism or else the people that worry about things like MMR are more likely to have autistic kids and some element of the way the kids are treated or the spectrum is diagnosed or whatever other effect) could be fascinating to find nothing or something!

how to stop people wearing hoodies

start a rumour that they are all people on the sex offenders lists (i.e.
"All Hoodies are Paedos" maybe write a letter to the Sun and Mail about it
that ought to see if go out of fashion faster than Guy Ritchie britgangsta movies... :-)

today's random 3 thoughts before jetlagged breakfast

1. there should be celebrity celebrity charts

2. we need to have counterfeit economists

3. sex is basically a programme for recursive replicating meat machines

4. Heroes is Lost (I mean that televisually, literally , and metaphorically)

black holes and recessions

There's a black heart
at the center of the Galaxy and
at the center of the Economy

surely some connection?

The Bicameral Nativity

with apologies to xkcd and Julian Jaynes

Mary had a real friend (Joseph) and an imaginary friend (the Holy Spirit)
and she oscillated between them until one day, she underwent a singular transformation
on the plane of Gallilee
and finally wound up in a stable relationship.

No-one, not even the shepherd, could figure out the problem of the three wise bodies.

I got the "no blues" blues...

in wisconsin
all gods children
cannot play the blues

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yfjTrrBE_eI

intelligent design proved

the bbc reports that religious people are shunning nanotechnology. Aside from the idea of shunning technology being rather surreal ("LCD TV, I refuse to talk to you - I am sending you to Coventry with the iPhone"), stranger still is the idea that people who need all the help they can get would avoid any evidence that intelligent design is actually feasible...

I suppose the same thing might be true of GM too...

i think the indicator lights on mercedes are fake

i think people thqt buy mercs and beamers have spent so much of their hard won dosh that they can't afford fitting s like indicator lights

otherwise why else is it that these cars never signal on turning?

i mean we can excuse poor cyclists as they can't even afford 4 wheels...

I knew I had a buggy upbringing

That the direction of travel as a baby affects affection should be obvious really...

cell phone as ID card...

I quite like the idea of my cell phone being an ID card for 2 reasons

1. if I lose it, the government can help me find it - i think we should demand mandatory tracking of id cards for this reason.

2. there's a really strong incentive for people not to nick it as it is a way worse crime than just nicking a phone.

all sorts of benefits accrue from this, including really accurate driver (rather than car) based congestion charges, and all sorts of useful tricks in emergencies (instead of broadcasts on trains saying "is there a doctor on board" one would just ask the doctor to go the the right carriage).

why on earth would any honest people object to these advantages just because of some sentimental attachment to some fictional notion of privacy?


:-)

living in a newspaperbound world

so i've noticed commuters, even on heavily overcrowded trains, will open up a broadsheet newspaper as a means of establishing their space, and as a barrier to intrusion on their patch - this supports what I suppose we all know that people that read those papers (times, guardian, telegraph, FT, indy) are smarter than people that read tabloids:)

its a sad day when they ban happy hours...but there's light...

so i pubs are not allowed to have happy hours by this puritanical scots led government, can I propose a solution:

haev 23 sad hours, and one not so sad hour.

game over.

democracy and advertising

the US democrat mantra reminded me of a brilliant advert/logo
for the Metal Box Company - it just says "we can"

meanwhile, change sure gonna come - but maybe small change, and maybe it'll get rained on with its on 38 if their aint some fast moves in the middle east and on the economy

igpay atinlay and council bans on use of

English is the Lingua Franca of the World

which is Latin for french language, but is meant to mean
"the language used everywhere between people that otherwise might
speak other, different languages"

on the other hand, English is a union of pretty much every language,
hence when someone invades or immigrates into England, rather than make them learn
English, we just glom their language onto the base, and everyone else has to learn to grok it.

If it was "vice versa", then the amount of work,
"pro rata", would be the same, but would be
"via" the immigrants, rather than the indigenous peoples.

Although it is an "ad hoc" arrangement, and leads to
"ad lib" creativity, the "quid pro quo" is that English
is a richer language than any other in the world, although
it is fair to say that in some sense or other, it isn't a
"bona fide" language, more a meta-language.
with many e.g.s of weird juxtapositions
such that geeky literati anoraks
will frequently incur schadenfreude amongst
naive readers of their utterances.

hence councils should not ban the use of any weird bits
viz bbc article on same
is silly:-)

"QED"

Gruelty, thy name is Woe, Man

Too Gruel to be kind, he was washed up
on the shore of the Gruel Sea, where
he pitched up at the Salvation Navy
only to be served a thin soup
by a Gruel Sister.

"We Grew L-shaped bannanas back in
the Generous Isles" he moaned.
"Grr. You'll just have to put up
with this thin soup" she retorted,
measuring it out with a retort.

"grate", he described

the customer is always wrong

as a frequent railway traveller, i am bombarded with signs by networkrail
about how "we take very seriously assaults on our staff"

why? i mean why the "on our staff" bit? I dont see why the employment role of the victim affects the seriousness of the assault - it is always serious, and don't the railway companies and operators have an equal duty towards their customers, who are paying after all, to give them a safe and pleasant journey in all regards?

I have frequently been dealt with by abusive staff, and I dont see why the companies, by implication, think I am in a "second class" role in the relationship. This is a dodgy culture - see how it influences staff behaviour in airlines, where the customer is basically treated worse than cattle, under constant threat, stress and even danger.

no, the customer is always right was always a good motto; but when someone assaults someone else, whatever the relationship, that is wrong. the two situations are orthogonal.

i want 5% of my license fee back

at least 2 shows I wanted to see have been pulled due to the BBC "suspension" of My J.Ross. Given they are not going to pay him 1M pounds, that means they've saved money - however, tonight they are showing Speed (an old movie I've seen many times) and this is an unacceptable replacement for the J Ross show (which was to have had David Attenborough and Frank Skinner). Last night they showed an episode of Buzzcocks without Russell Brand, who had been billed as going to appear - it was the most boring episode of that usually very funny programme I have every seen.

This is not good enough, and I want my money back

y'know some people that should know better have written about this - today(saturday nov 1) guardian said that what went wrong is that ross/brand picked on the weak, "breaking the first rule of comedy" - well, doh, y'know I could have sworn that the first rule of comedy was "be funny".