Apathy Sketchpad

Name something you associate with the Trojans. Go on. Word association: what’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word “Trojan”? I’m guessing you said “horse”.

The classic Trojan Horse maneuver is as follows: a large, woody object believed to be safe is allowed to penetrate, but then it bursts open and lots of smaller entities come out and cause havoc. Agreed?

So who the hell thought “Trojan” would be a good name for a brand of condom?

Here is a list of “mathematical formulae” and “scientific equations” which detail every aspect of our day-to-day lives, all “calculated” or “devised” by “scientists”, “academics”, “economists” and “mathematicians” from various embarrassed universities. These are all taken from the Telegraph. Don’t imagine other newspapers are better…

• The Perfect Sitcom: quality = (rd+v)f÷a+s
  Dr Helen Pilcher, a neuroscientist (according to the Telegraph) whored her name to this ‘research’ which was commissioned by UKTV Gold to promote their endless repeating of that clip of Del Boy falling through the bar: f in the equation means “the amount someone falls over”. This is about the level of humour the Telegraph seems to like, because…
• The Perfect Joke: x = (fl + n^o)/p
  In this case, n represents “the amount someone falls over”, and is raised to the power of “the “Ouch” factor”. It won’t surprise you to learn that this is the work of the same Helen Pilcher, although this time helped by comedian Timandra Harkness. It should be some measure of Harkness’ fame that I wouldn’t like to guess what gender the name Timandra indicates. To their very limited credit, the telegraph article does include rants from Jimmy Carr, Bernard Manning and Ruby Wax explaining that the formula was stupid (in their own obnoxious ways). Also Nicholas Parsons, but he’s not obnoxious. Why was this in the news? “The Comedy Research Project, a live stage show featuring Helen Pilcher and Timandra Harkness, will be performed at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre on June 15 and 22 [2006].” I bet that was a fucking blast.
• The Perfect Day: quality = O + NS + Cpm÷T + He
  This was pulled out of the arse of Cliff Arnall (not Lou Reed), a psychologist and former tutor at Cardiff University, because Wall’s Ice Cream asked nicely. The Telegraph notes it “does not take into account the gloomy forecasts for the British economy, fears caused by falling house prices, rising inflation and stagnating pay rises, England not playing in the Euro 2008 and a damper than normal start to the summer”. All the factors in the formula are utterly subjective and the whole thing is worse than most. The comments on the Telegraph pages are fun. This is especially perverse because in 2006 the perfect day was three full days later. (The Telegraph really do obligingly report this, from either end, every time they’re asked.)
• The Perfect Bra: formula not supplied
  This one is actually real (albeit slightly over the top) research! It could genuinely improve your life (moreso if you are a woman). I know; I was as surprised as you are.
• The Perfect Rugby Kick: KP = CSP - s + w + r + yⁿ + cr + sc + mt + xⁿ + ctw
  This is just a shopping list of things that affect a rugby kick. And “y to the power of n represents other factors”. My word. This drivel comes to us no thanks to “Andrew Cushing and Prof Paul Robinson at University College Worcester for the research company QinetiQ”.
• The Price Of Cleaning: price = time × £6.16/hour
  This is a note that the average wage has increased, listed in terms of how much people lose out on by not being paid to brush their teeth (30p, although it doesn’t say how much they save by not having to get private dental treatment if they don’t brush). Barclaycard convinced Prof Ian Walker, an economist at Warwick University to endorse it.
• The Perfect Marriage: formula not supplied
  “Prof James Murray of the University of Washington” says this formula has a 94% success rate in predicting if a couple will divorce, although really I’d want to know sensitivity and specificity, otherwise you could conduct a survey of evangelical Christians and the terminally ill, say they’ll all stay together, and declare yourself the winner. They later ran a second article about how it was nonsense.
• The Perfect Chip: formula not ready at time of press
  That’s right, because Dr Gama Khan won’t just sign off on whatever nonsense Tesco ask — that, or Tesco asked for a big long experimental phase they can publicise for months. Khan says “The competition is intense because everyone wants to go down in history and finally crack the secret of the perfect frozen oven chip. I am looking at a lot of chips. Some days I’m testing them continuously from 9.30am to 4pm. It actually can get quite sickening, particularly when I always smell of chip fat.” And it’s true. Everyone wants a slice of the elusive Nobel Prize in Fast Food.
• The Perfect Football Penalty: odds of scoring = (X + Y + S)×(T + I + 2B)÷8 + V÷2 - 1 [simplified]
  This was commissioned by Ladbrokes, and is credited to “by scientists at John Moores University in Liverpool”, which quickly becomes “Dr David Lewis, a mathematician”. I think this quote tells you all you need to know about the mathematical ability of everyone involved in this report (emphasis mine):

Dr Lewis and his team found the six variables that influence a successful penalty kick are: V = velocity of ball once struck, T = time between placing ball on spot and striking the ball, S = number of steps in run-up to strike, I = time that the ball is struck after goalkeeper initiates his dive, Y = vertical placement of ball from ground, X = horizontal placement of ball from centre and B = striking position of boot.

• The Perfect Sandcastle: 0.125S = OW
  This simply states the ideal ratio of sand to water. Personally, I would just use the pre-prepared wet sand b the beach, which must surely be about right because it does seem to work. “Prof Matthew Bennett, the head of environmental and geographic sciences, Dr Brian Astin, the head of the School of Conservation Sciences, and Rob Haslam, laboratory and technical services manager, then spent two days testing the samples for their suitability for sandcastle building. … Teletext Holidays, which commissioned the research, will be holding a sandcastle-building championship on July 24 [2004] in Great Yarmouth.” This work was replicated the following year by “an MIT team, led by Sarah Nowak and Arshad Kudrolli” who reached exactly the same conclusion (although they phrased it in a simpler way). This might be nearly useful to some engineers somewhere.
• How To Open Champagne: P = T÷4.5 + 1
  P and T are pressure and temperature. I think this is not made up, although not really that useful in real terms: essentially it says that if you cool the champagne it is less likely to explode on you. This comes from “Dr Steve Smith, a lecturer in wine studies at Coventry University”, who “was commissioned to develop the formula after a Marks & Spencer survey found that 50 per cent of women are too frightened to open a bottle of bubbly because they fear that the cork will fly out prematurely, hitting them or a precious ornament”.
• The Perfect Place To Shop: D=f(m,b,c)
  The function f is undefined. “Retail and consumer trends expert Tim Dennison has come up with a formula to help Yellow Pages calculate how diverse and lively high streets are.” It says little town streets are more diverse than city centre ones. Nobody is surprised.
• The Perfect Newspaper: no formula
  It’s the Telegraph. Shocking. I suspect this is bad self-congratulatory reporting of some tiny little statement the academics made, but then I work for Manchester University so I am biased (although I’m not certain which way).
• How To Pour Gravy: amount of gravy = (W - D÷S) ÷ D × 100
  According to “Dr Len Fisher, an independent food scientist at Bristol University… who was funded by the manufacturer Bisto”, this is important because “more than 150,000 gallons of gravy is left every week.” Hard to see what Bisto have to gain by this, except of course that they’re in a newspaper.
• The Perfect Book: formula not done at time of press
  …although it’s going to be Agatha Christie, says Dr Roland Kapferer.
• The Perfect Biscuit: formula deemed to complicated for Telegraph readers
  This was led by Professor Bronek Wedzicha of Leeds University and “half funded by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and half by United Biscuits.” The researchers insist that this is real research rather than a publicity stunt, and I see no reason not to believe that, especially since they spent £91,000 on it.
• The Perfect News Story: “never trust your own instincts” but rely on “tried and tested formulas, bland ingredients and using up old scraps and leftovers from the day before, particularly the choicest cuts from the Daily Mail - no matter how stale.”

Some time I might do this for other newspapers, although I’m not sure I could read the ones in the Daily Mail faster than their hacks can produce them, so perhaps I won’t.

It is Homeopathy Awareness Week. Has been since Saturday. That’s right, the week starts on a Saturday if you’re a homeopath. I am, as ever, happy to do my bit for this kind of cause, so here are a couple of articles I saw this week with misconceptions about homeopathy I’d like to clear up. The first is from the Telegraph, which contains this fantastic but only tangentially relevant passage:

A Government report yesterday called for “urgent” controls on herbalists, acupuncturists and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, amid fears over patient safety. Its recommendations, to be considered by ministers, include a proposal that new practitioners would have to study for a degree in their field before they could practise.

Yes, that will help a lot. Can’t have people doing acupuncture wrong, can we? (Answer to rhetorical question: yes.)

These are the homeopathy mistakes:

A £40 million industry in the UK, homoeopathic remedies claim to be able to prevent yellow fever, typhoid, polio and even leukaemia, as well as cure symptoms ranging from toothache to hearing loss. But there are growing concerns over whether the homoeopathic remedies have any effect.

No, there aren’t. There is a total consensus that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than placebo. (Obviously I’m aware that there are people who dispute this consensus, but those people are cranks, or ignorant, and in any case too few in number to count — remember, there are those who dispute the holocaust.)

Homoeopathists differ from herbalists, who use a variety of plants to combat diseases, because their treatments are heavily diluted. There can often be as little as one millionth of the original ingredient in a homoeopathic remedy.

Setting aside that this last sentence doesn’t actually mean anything, the fact is that most homeopathic remedies do not contain even one molecule of the original ingredient. None at all. That’s not the same as “heavily diluted” or “one millionth”. That’s the same as a nice glass of water.

Then the Telegraph invite readers to “Have Your Say: Do you believe in homeopathy?” Because what we need to settle this one isn’t evidence, my word no. It’s the ill-informed rants of internet cranks such as Mike Abrahams, who says (all links and emphasis in these are mine; I’m sure you’d have worked that out soon enough):

At the moment, “properly applied/prescribed” medical intervention “accidentally” kills over 250,000 people a year in the USA alone (Journal of American Medical Association)…

I didn’t know it was possible to commit libel using only punctuation marks.

…So let’s get a perspective on this. Just how many people are killed by homoeopathy - last year? - in the last 50 years? …

(Answer to rhetorical question: lots, and here are 8 that even Dave Hitt can’t argue with.)

…Even if Homoeopathy used just the placebo effect it is much safer than orthodox drug treatment.

…because it doesn’t do anything. Or Graham, who says:

i think that you can apply the one rule for all principle here, that is when doctors have their medicines and procedures, in all combinations tested with randomised control trials and they are proven to be safe, then perhaps other CAM therapies would do the same. … i thought the idea was to heal people, this homeopathy does with out a doubt, or it would have died out years ago. i gave my son a remedy for a croup attack when he was about 14 months old. within 30seconds he was calm and breathing normally, from being blue and gasping for breath. i don’t really give a flying fig how it worked, i just know that it did, its called imperical evidence its what doctors use when they give new mixes of medicines that have not been tested together. the difference is i saved a life doctors are often just trying to clear up their own drug induced side effects…

Or “Cured!”, who says:

Perhaps the medical profession is sceptical of hoemopathic remedies because they are not patented, can’t be licensed and can’t be used to derive monopoly profits.

No, but these would be the same homeopathic remedies that are made out of pure water and sell as a “£40 million industry in the UK” according to the article Cured! just commented on, yes? Yes. Yes, they would.

Lucy Puglia says:

MY DOG HAD SKIN CANCER ON HER PAW,IT WAS MALIGNANT,AFTER IT WAS REMOVED ,WE CHOSE TO GIVE HER VITAMINS AND HOMOEOPHATIC REMEDIES,SHE LIVED A FULL LIFE ,RUNNING AND HAPPY, … .HAD WE CHOSEN ANOTHER TREATMENT ,SHE WOULD HAVE SUFFERED SIDE EFFECTS.WE HAVE SEEN A HOMOEOPHATIC DOCTOR FOR OVER 20 YEARS,AND IT WORKS FOR MY FAMILY,INDIVIDUALS SHOULD HAVE A CHOICE,ON THE TREATMENT THEY WISH TO HAVE ,AFTER ALL DOCTORS ARE NOT ”GODS”,PEOPLE ARE DYING IN HOSPITAL FROM ALLERGIC REACTION TO DRUGS EVERYDAY,I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW MANY ARE DYING FROM ”HOMOEOPHATIC REMEDIES SIDE EFFECTS”.I AM ALLERGIC TO GRASS POLLEN,THERE IS NO MEDICATION THAT HELPS,IN 32 YEARS OF SUFFERING ,THE ONLY MEDICATION THAT HELP ME ,IS HOMEOPATIC,THE NOSESPRAY,EYEDROPS,DROPS TO KEEP MY NOSE CLEAR,PILLULE .I TOOK ANTIHISTAMIN TABLETS FOR YEARS,AND HAD 2 CAR ACCIDENTS ,BECOUSE OF THE SIDE EFFECTS,AND NEARLY FELL OFF THE BUS,MISSED THE STEP.WE SHOULD HAVE MORE HOMEOPHATIC HOSPITALS ,AND CHOICE,INSTEAD ,THE HOSPITALS ARE BEING CLOSED BY THE TRUSTS,LIVING PATIENTS WITH NO CHOICE…AFTER ALL THIS IS A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY…LUCY,ISLINGTON..

How great is she!? Peter Walton says:

Homeopathy does work, which is exactly what the major pharmaceutical companies are fearful about. They put their money into supporting those who outwardly conduct research supposedly disproving the efficacy of homeopathy. Most of this research is based upon double blind tests which may have some value, were it not for the fact that homeopathic treatment, unlike allopathic, uses individualised remedies. …

(Double-blind trials can account for this. Many do. Homeopathy still doesn’t work.)

…The �researchers� carrying out double blind testing on homeopathic remedies of course must know this, and therefore one may conclude that they have alternative agendas.

One other point; arguments are put forward that there is no scientific evidence for homeopathy. May I suggest that science will one day be able to provide that evidence, it is for ever amending its theories to explain the observed, unlike homeopathy which has essentially remained unchanged for 200 years. There is no need to change that which is correct!

Let’s not mention the inconvenient advent of Avogadro and germ theory during those 200 years, though, eh? Or the countless other wrong ideas science has failed to eventually prove. Or…

G Payne says:

Just because, like all remedies, it is not and does not clainm to be a panacea, is not a reason for the attacks upon it by allopathic doctors and chemists - except for their inbuilt self interest. The point is, that the proof lies in the fact that, in so many instances - called “anecdotal” homoeopathy does work.

Steve Scrutton (which is a name I recognise from other homeopathy rants) says this:

It is remarkable that spokesmen for conventional medicinem, and ConMed drugs, like Ernst, can still believe that seeing a doctor, and taking ConMed drugs, is safer than seeing a homeopath. What they consistently deny is that ConMed is killing more people year on year, and that the more drugs we take, year on year, the greater the rise of disease epidemics (Alzheimer’s, Autism, et el) -

Can you have an epidemic of a non-infectious disease? I suspect you can’t.

- many of them diseases that were unknown prior to drug taking becoming ‘free’ on the NHS…

The prevalence of a disease which predominately affects the elderly rose sharply when medical care became free? Clearly medical care causes Alzheimer’s. There’s no other explanation!

…He also ignores another undeniable fact - that tens of thousands of people have been treated successfully by homeopath, many after failing to get better with ConMed. When they hear Ernst, and others telling them that homeopathy is ineffective, they yawn, wonder why he should consistently come out with such nonsence, ponder who is speaking for, and tell their friends.

The drug companies are under pressure as more of their drugs are being withdrawn, and they face an increasing number of law suits in the USA.

Keep your campaign going, Professor Ernst - perhaps one day you will actually be able to convince us that ConMed is safe too!

Jayney says:

I think these attacks on homeopathy are just providing a smoke screen to take the emphasis off the 40,000+ deaths that occur each year due to totally avoidable medical blunders (quoted in the BMJ.) Close to 1 million people are injured by conventional medicine too - every year. Agsin this is a matter of public record . There is only one record of a homeopath being linked to a person dying - this was a doctor who told her patient that she should stop takng her heart medication. This doctor is now being investigated by the GMC.

Shathejas says:

in my shortlife i saw various patients who got remedy by homoeo,while modern medicine said goodbye in such cases. many many examples can be given. but iam not a homoeopathistic.

No. No, you are not. And lastly, a homeopath speaks. Francis Treuherz says:

How do I prove that my work as a homeopath is successful? I suggest just as hard with my wrong remedy as my right one in almost 25 years of practice my patients know when they receive the right remedy…

Well, yes, because you define “the right remedy” as “whichever one you’re doling out when the patient happens to get better on their own”.

…The way we decide what makes a remedy is known as a proving. We test potential medicines on healthy humans and the symptoms and signs which appear are then used to inform treatment. I suggest that Professor Ernst, or any one else who does not think that homeopathy works, undertakes a proving of Aesculus hippocastanum and observes the effects. This is a remedy used in painful haemorrhoids.

This is a common brain-failure experienced by homeopaths: they refer to something as “a proving” and assume that therefore it proves something.

This was rather longer than I expected, because I hadn’t planned to do the comments, so I shall post the second article I want to criticise some other time. If I remember. Hopefully, I’ll get it out within the Awareness Week.

Also, look out for another bit of Homeopathy Awareness Week fun that I’ll show you when it’s finished.

Have a look at this: Asus and MSI both wanted a photo of a kid using their laptop. So what did they do? They fired up Getty Images and looked up “laptop in class” or something. Not only did they both use the same picture, but they both inexpertly replaced his laptop with their own. MSI’s was smaller, so they also had to spray-paint a random head onto the person behind it. Asus just made the kid look gayer.

If you thought that was amusingly lazy of them, then you definitely should read this. The Everywhere Girl is a girl who posed for some photos years ago, which have been used so often since then that people have started to notice.

The strange thing is that if she was a typeface I’d be really annoyed at seeing her in all those places. But for some reason, when it’s a person, it’s brilliant. Of course it doesn’t hurt that it’s such a thoroughly likeable person. I expect if I started seeing photos of CJ from Eggheads everywhere I’d start smashing things.

I heard through Pharyngula about Kieffe and Sons, a tiny little Ford dealership in California, have been running an advert saying “Since we all know that 86 out of every 100 of us are Christians, who believe in God, we at Kieffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don’t tell the other 14% to sit down and shut up.” Ford don’t seem to care, so there’s a little boycott on by atheists.

Which probably isn’t a major problem, but the AFA, which I think stands for the American Fundamentalist Assholes, are boycotting them too for “promoting a homosexual agenda”. So Ford are now basically selling to Muslims, Hindus and gay Christians.

The AFA say

Last fall, in a meeting with AFA, Ford agreed to stop funding the homosexual agenda. However, after a group of angry homosexual leaders met with Ford, the company reneged on its agreement and announced that they would continue their commitment to support the effort to legalize homosexual marriage.

Ford even gave the homosexual groups a letter stating Ford’s strong commitment to their cause.

On a recent episode of CBS’s Without A Trace, Ford proved to the homosexual leaders the company’s commitment to their agenda. The Ford-sponsored program included a scene of two lesbians passionately kissing each other.

To see what Ford sponsored, click here. (Warning! This scene is very offensive!)

You know, because we all know companies screen every episode of every show they sponsor and condone every scene therein — and because Without A Trace usually depicts nothing but good Christian behaviour like kidnapping people and killings and so forth. Personally, I clicked their link, and I was indeed shocked:

This is an enquiry e-mail via http://faq.afa.net from:
Andrew Taylor <taylor.andrew@gmail.com>

I was recently directed to your page about the Ford boycott:

http://www.afa.net/ford0323.asp

There was a link which promised me a video of “two lesbians passionately kissing”. However, when I clicked this link, there was a server error, so I must ask:

How can I see some hot girl-on-girl action?

I didn’t expect a reply, but I got one. And here it is, in its pointless entirety:

Watch as the world turns

The Times recently reported that Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, presumably angry at narrowly missing out on this month’s Religious Crackpot award and determined to win the next one, has decided to launch an attack on the MPs who voted against the baseless and unhelpful reduction in the abortion limit from 24 weeks to 22. He’s also been given a lengthy column in the Telegraph, which is full of vague generalities and gently anti-science twaddle.

The Times quotes him as saying

Many people on all sides of this debate agree that 200,000 abortions a year is too many

which is fair, since he did say that. My initial reaction to that quote was to think that it’s a mildly stupid thing to say, because without a change in the law, the number of abortions could fall dramatically if more people worked together to foster a new understanding and approach to relationships, responsibility and mutual support. It’s safe to assume, though, that the Times took this quote from the Telegraph’s column, where he says

There are many people of all sides of the abortion debate who yet agree that 200,000 abortions a year is far too many. Even without a change in the law, the number of abortions could fall dramatically if more people worked together to foster a new understanding and approach to relationships, responsibility and mutual support.

He’s acknowledging that we don’t need to change the law to improve abortion rates, but he wants to do it anyway, presumably for some other, less well informed reason, such as he thinks God wants him to. He goes on to say

What we are dealing with are profound ethical judgments which are informed, but not determined, by the insights of science. Our views will be shaped not only by scientific facts but also by our basic understanding of what a human life is, and also our philosophy of life (which may or may not be informed by a religious belief). Science cannot replace ethics.

This is all true, however his argument here is that his views, which are “informed” by his rampant delusions about the nature of reality, should be the law for everyone. He’s cunningly glossing over this by saying things like

The Church puts forward its teaching, but does not seek to impose its views nor indeed to tell any individual how to vote.

but we already know that that’s a lie. The very same newspaper he wrote in reported that

Peter Jennings, spokesman for the Archbishop of Birmingham Vincent Nichols, said: “I would encourage all Catholics, Christians and members of all faiths who support the value of human life to think very carefully before they put their ‘x’ beside a name at the next general election.

“I would have thought no member of Parliament who voted against human life deserves re-election.”

Okay, so he didn’t explicitly instruct anyone, but that kind of semantic loopholing is so pathetic as to just make him look worse. Amusingly, a few days before that it also reported, quite specifically and explicitly, that Murphy-O’Connor is a raging hypocrite. And he is. We know this because his Telegraph article says

The gift which the Christian faith brings to all these discussions is a vision of humanity in which every human life has infinite value and dignity because it is made in the image and likeness of God. Whether or not we share this vision of faith, cherishing life and protecting the vulnerable, especially those who are unseen or unheard, is a central value of every society that wants to flourish.

Oh, we should “protect the vulnerable”, should we? Is that what we should be doing, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor? Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor who, in 1985, as Bishop of Arundel, allowed a known paedophile to work as a priest? (He did re-offend at his new parish.) We should “protect the vulnerable”, should we? Should we protect them even if they want to tell reporters where the man touched them?

Archbishop Murphy-O’Connor has now agreed that boys abused by the priest should receive compensation, but as part of the settlement they were required not to speak publicly about what happened.

Murphy-O’Connor is duplicitous and untrustworthy. He shouldn’t be allowed to hold a high-profile position in any organisation, much less one which considers itself a guardian of morality (however incorrectly). He certainly shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near politicians.

This hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for Christianity in Britain. We learned that the Church of England is suffering because young people aren’t interested and the people who are are dying of old age, and we learned that Cliff Richard has decided to pitch in to help, presumably because he is almost uniquely placed to sympathise with that plight. His contribution is to publish a book of his favourite Bible stories, including the story of how God killed everyone in the world except for one family and then regretted it, the story of how God murdered all the innocent first-born sons in Egypt despite having “hardened the Pharaoh’s heart” to ensure he wouldn’t release the slaves, the story of how God masterminds and helps with the genocide in Jericho, the story of Solomon, who was granted wisdom and then went off to worship someone else, and the story of how God had his own son tortured to death to “pay for” sins committed by other people according to rules God devised in the first place. I can see how that will help.

Also trying to help is the Church Army, who want to hook youngsters into the faith by analogising it to Doctor Who. They point out the many similarities between the Doctor and Jesus, and the storylines in the show and in the Bible. And there are many similarities, although frankly almost every single one of them is pathetic. They say

The Tardis was considered to represent a Church by being an ordinary object that points to something higher while the Doctor was likened to Christ in his willingness to sacrifice himself for others.

What? You could liken The Brittas Empire to the Bible if you’re willing to go that far.

My favourite Christian reference is the kenotic storyline in the episode called “The Chameleon Arch”, which is a machine that takes away all the Doctor’s powers and renders him human. It is a clear nod towards Philippians 2.6-11, where the incarnation is described as God “emptying himself”.

Not all that clear, I’m afraid. I thought that was a sub-par and rather silly bit of technobabble which had to be tolerated to tell what was, in the event, a damn good story. A story which, incidentally, really didn’t bear more than a passing resemblance to Jesus’.

We saw the Doctor persuaded to save a family of Pompeians in one of the most recent episodes, surely a reference to Genesis and Abraham’s bargaining with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.

I’m not at all sure it is a reference to that. It’s just a good dramatic theme. Nobody should read anything into the fact that it’s come up more than once. You might equally well argue that the fact that Biblical themes can be independently rewritten by a gay atheist suggests that they’re made up. Besides which, there’s shitloads of Bible and rather a lot of Doctor Who. Certainly there are parallels — but that just makes it more pathetic that these people are using such crap examples.

I don’t really know if Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor (as if that’s a real name) was tryong to help when he made a terribly dull speech entitled “Faith In Britain: A Personal Perspective”, which is buried somewhere on this webpage that’s sufficiently poorly designed that I can’t link directly to it. This is from the same lecture series as the previous winner’s speech. He says, for example, in this speech that

Only a modern person would think that religion is a private matter, something the individual does in his or her solitude

which presumably makes Jesus a “modern person”, since Matthew 6:6 says

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

I don’t mind that, of course. Ignorance of what the Bible says is what keeps Christianity going. What annoyed me was this bit:

I would want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe.

He must be very well hidden.

Why can’t he “encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem” because we’re smart enough to reject nonsense even when it surrounds us? Because we’ve managed to develop morality without been spoon-fed it by a book of made up rules? Because we’ve got enough confidence in our convictions to go against the flow and stand up for what we don’t believe in? If a Christian were to tell me that they regard me with deep esteem because of something God did, I would find that patronising and offensive, and I’d say so.

He also says this:

What did we do to generate unbelief? We spoke too easily about God, we spoke perhaps in the wrong way and we treated God as an idea rather than a living mystery to be approached in silence and prayer rather than in the arguments of the mind. If Christianity gave European thought the impression that God can be conceptually determined and pinned down and proved as a hypothesis, then it is hardly surprising that there has been resistance, as science and culture have developed, to worshipping this idea of God. We as Christians need to examine what we might have done to give people a misleading view of God. Faith in Britain might be improved by a deeper grasp of the mystery of God on the part of believers.

Now, I may have got the wrong end of the stick here, but to me that reads “whatever you think God is like, you’re wrong. He’s not like that, nor is he like anything else in particular, because he’s fundamentally mysterious and can’t be pinned down or rigorously defined. Of course, that doesn’t stop him existing and it doesn’t stop us knowing how he feels about gay people and stem cells.” If that is what he means, then he’s a moron.

It’s for largely this reason that I’m not sure Religious Crackpot of the Month is really viable any more. I think clearly all these people require recognition, but they can’t have it because it was this month that I read

The primary cause of unhappiness in Britain is not lack of material wealth but a loss of faith in God and religion, a group of MPs says today.

Apparently, there’s a report out by a group of all of five MPs who

argue that if values related to relationships, responsibility, trust, self-esteem and potential – all with their roots in the Judeo-Christian beliefs that once underpinned Western legislative philosophy – were to have greater emphasis in society, everyone’s wellbeing would improve.

So I did what I always do: I found the report. It turns out that the document, called “Faith In The Future” (the same pun, you’ll note, as the government used for their document), is available from a group called Theos, and it is to Theos that I award this month’s Religious Crackpot trophy.

Theos seem to be quite large and well established. They have a website that looks very professional (although it is in fact crap — it doesn’t even have an RSS feed), and describe themselves as

a public theology think tank which exists to undertake research and provide commentary on social and political arrangements. It aims to impact public opinion about the role of Christianity in society.

They go on to say

It was launched in November 2006 with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.

You probably know what I think of those endorsements.

Its first report “Doing God”: A Future for Faith in the Public Square examined the reasons why faith will play an increasingly significant role in public life.

They call themselves a “think tank”, although that’s a bit rich unless you count quoting the Bible as ‘thinking’. Really, they’re just a load of antidisestablishmentarianists hell-bent on reversing the work done since the Enlightenment in secularising society:

what Theos stands for

Society is embarking on a process of de-secularisation. Interest in spirituality is increasing across Western culture. Faith is on the agenda of both government and the media. In the arts, humanities and social sciences there are important intellectual developments currently taking place around questions of values and identity. Theos speaks into this new context. Our perspective is that faith is not just important for human flourishing and the renewal of society, but that society can only truly flourish if faith is given the space to do so. We reject notions of a sacred-secular divide.

And they’ve released quite a lot of frankly rather impenetrable literature about how secularism is bad, but they don’t really understand what it is. They can’t really tell it from atheism:

We can, though, at least make some assumptions. In a seriously secular country, the vast majority of people wouldn’t believe in God, however vaguely. Few would claim to belong to a religious group. And nobody would pray. What would be the point?

No. It’s entirely possible to be religious and secularist at the same time. Take this speech by Barack Obama (which I’ve copied from Dwindling in Unbelief):

We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.

Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God’s test of devotion.

But it’s fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason.

Theos can publish all the inane sophistry they like, but the bottom line is that God doesn’t exist and even people who think he does can’t agree (in the case of Murphy-O’Connor, even with themselves) what he’s like or what he wants, and even those who feel they have a clear idea of both of these things can’t offer even the slightest shred of evidence or indeed any good reason to listen to them. So until Theos can prove that God exists, they will remain a sectarian group of crackpots trying to further Christianity’s already excessive influence on British politics.

And that’s just not on.

According to Blog Her, Barbara Couley is Not Real. But she is real. I know she’s real because she sent me this email:

from: Barbara Couley <barbaracouley@gmail.com>
to: taylor.andrew@gmail.com,
date: Jan 8, 2008 8:07 AM
subject: Follow Up Email For Paid Text Link Advertisement!
Hi,

I sent you an email few days back, I am interested in purchasing text link advertising on your website http://www.apathysketchpad.com/. Let me know if interested and we can discuss further details as well. I can make a good offer to make it worth your time.

Let me know!
Thanks
Barbara

I told her I was interested, which was bad of me, but I’d do it again. She sent me more details. The formatting’s gone a bit since I pasted it, but it was fairly bad to begin with.

Hello!

Thank you for your reply and interest. I am interested in purchasing permanent placement of text-links on specific pages of your website. 

• I would be paying one time fee and paragraph will stay lifetime.
• Per page there will be a placement of  5-7 text-links.
• The text link advertisement itself won’t be more than 125 words
• Contents will be customized and well matched with the theme of your site.
• The content will be unique and won’t be spammy.
• You will have the right to get anything edited through us which you disapprove of.
• The links will be between the post and the comments section.
• It should not get archived in any way or move off the page.

Here is an example to better understand what I am looking to place on your web site.

Red colored links below the Google adds.

http://www.shwetz-online.in/blog/2005/11/29/nav-2006-review/

Blue colored links below the iPhone toolkit add

http://www.dotalex.com/?p=10

 specific pages with price are given below:

 $20 each page

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-daria/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/09/col-sbsp/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-happy16/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/28/col-contradictionary/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/21/col-adamscar/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/22/col-daveanddick/

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/28/col-deadlines2/  

 

Looking forward to your reply.

Kind Regards,

Barbara

Gosh, that would be $140 altogether, just for advertising on pages nobody ever looks at, which given the current exchange rates is approximately one pittance. I asked her for “a sample of the content that would appear on [my] site”.

I shall have  the content for your web pages written, once you agree to make the deal. otherwise, it will waste the payment i shall make to my writer.

If you want to be sure about how these paragraphs will look like with the text links in them , you can review that in the examples i sent to you in my last mail.

regards,

Barbara

Well I wasn’t about to agree to anything without seeing what it is. That would be silly of me.

I had a look at the text on the example webpages you linked me to, and you’re right, it does fit fairly nicely with the sites, but I’m puzzled as to why you need a writer to come up with it for you. It’s not as if it’s going to get into the Richard and Judy Book club, is it?

If you don’t want to employ a writer, send me the links you want and I’ll have a go at writing something — then it will fit perfectly with my site.

Andrew

I am nothing if not generous. Except perhaps cynical, mean, bored, fairly tall, tired…

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for getting in touch.

If you would like to write the paragraphs on your own( for no additional fee) , I am fine with that. I shall send you the keywords to be embedded in the paras as anchor text.

Also, if my writer writes the paras, even then you will have the right to edit the content (except the anchor text) as per your prefernce.

Please let me know what you think of this.

Thnaks,

Barbara

No additional fee? What a bitch — I just saved her “a payment to [her] writer”! Nevertheless, I agreed, and she asked for my Pay Pal ID. Fortunately, I have kept it up to date by responding to every single email that said “you mush enter your password at lycos.nl/freeuserpages/notaconmanhostly/scams/paypal/fairlyconvincing.htm to prevent account closure!”. I told her I’d rather get all the details sorted before we started exchanging money, so she sent me this:

Hi Andrew,

I attached an excel file with

• the URLs I want the paragraph on (column A),

• keywords (column C),

• URLS respective to keywords(column B) and 

• written  paragraphs(coumn D).

Now, you are free to either place the paragraphs(coumn D) or to write the paragraphs yourself (by using the URLS in column B and keywords in column C)

Please let me know when you finish with this so that I can review them and make the payment to your PayPal account for this permanent deal.

 

Thank you very much,

 

Barbara

The file attached was this. Have a look. It’s good writing, that! But I thought I could match it…

Here’s what I thought of for some of the pages. I think this would be in-keeping with the theme of my site:

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/28/col-deadlines2/

Many people in this century use numbers for counting with. Counting things that you have less than none of is stupid, but mathematicians have invented Negative Numbers for it. You can get such numbers by subtracting large positive (or “proper”) numbers from smaller numbers. For example, 70-290 = -350, 70-298 = -358, 70-620 = -690, 70-536 = -606, 74-134 = -208. You cannot just make shit up, though. For example, MB2-423 is not a sum.

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/09/col-sbsp/

Monopoly is a game where you buy hotels. Depending on which version of the game you own, these may be new york hotels or london hotels . It is usually considered cheating to negotiate discounts on hotels with the banker. No version of the game includes cruise port hotels.

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2002/11/22/col-daveanddick/

If american airline was a sport, it would almost certainly be played in some kind of american airlines arena. Getting in would require american airline tickets, but if you couldn’t afford that you might have to make do with a cheap airline ticket. A favourite snack at these events might be aeroplanes with ham and pineapple on top, which would be called hawaiian airlines .

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-daria/

Tom cruises chosen religion is one of those silly cult ones. his younger brother, nile cruise, is no better. The carnival cruise reviews in his latest book is rubbish, but Cruise gives it high praise, probably because he met a nice girl there, by using some of his best cruise lines. Playing poker with him is a nightmare because he pauses for ages and then at the last minute cruise deals .

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2003/06/02/col-happy16/

Most buildings have flights of stairs in them. Offices have commercial ones; homes have domestic flights. New technology is producing larger and larger staircases, and scientists predict that soon we will be able to build flights to boston. If you want cheap flights students are good people to talk to because they work for less than fully qualified stairsmiths. At the top of one flight airline tickets can be found. You need these to watch the sport.

Would these be okay? I shall do the others later. Can I ask why you’re buying links to http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phys/, by the way? It would seem sensible to wait until the technology is more viable.

Andrew

I think I got the gist across.

Hi Andrew,

Yes , everything looks fine so far as you chose.

I am an independent webmaster and choose the pages/sites/links after my heart .You are right, but I just happen to pick and choose as I come across anything that interests me :)

Looking forward to establishing a happy business relationship with you,

 

Best Regards,

Barbara

I was by this stage more than a little confused. I can only assume Couley (which is clearly not her real name) is trying to get PayPal IDs, though I don’t know what she can do with them.

Gosh, that’s very altruistic of you, isn’t it? Paying strangers to promote random websites just because you like them.

But have you ever considered registering at http://del.icio.us ? It would be far cheaper in the long run.

Andrew

That was over a week ago. I think I lost her. Probably she registered a del.icio.us account after all.

I wonder if she’ll want to advertise on this page…

From: Andrew Taylor (taylor.andrew@gmail.com)
To: communications@britishgas.co.uk,
Date: Jan 5, 2008 2:25 PM
Subject: Electricity meter reading

While I was away over Christmas, you put a bit of card under my door saying you couldn’t read my meter (which in fact you could as it is not inside my flat). It said I was to provide a reading within three days, which I didn’t because I didn’t get back to read the card for about a week. I tried to text you the details, as instructed, and your reply said my ID number had to be 13 digits, which it was, not least because I’d copied it from the card as you instructed. I tried your automated phone service, but this too failed to recognise my number, leading me to suspect that you wrote it down wrong (and that there is a bug in your text service that causes it to reply “number wrong length” when it means “number not recognised”). I also tried your non-automated phone service, but nobody answered and I got bored of listening to your mindless propaganda — I’m already your customer; you don’t need to advertise to me — so I hung up in case you were charging me for listening to commercials.

I’m more than happy to provide you with my meter reading but you aren’t making it easy.

Andrew

From: postmaster@centrica-gw.com
To: taylor.andrew@gmail.com,
Date: Jan 5, 2008 3:58 PM
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Unable to deliver message to the following recipients, because the message was forwarded more than the maximum allowed times. This could indicate a mail loop.

There’s a shortage of Nintendo Wiis at the moment, because they’re popular and it’s Christmas. This has led to crazy people suggesting that Nintendo have engineered this shortage deliberately, which is true only in the rather weak sense that Nintendo’s objective is to sell consoles rather than horde them in shops. The fact is there’s no reason Nintendo would do such a thing - the only people who profit from a Wii shortage are canny eBay users. Nintendo make more money by selling more consoles. This is very basic stuff. Nintendo know this.

Nintendo’s PR company know this too, because they’re Very Clever Scientists. They’re a company called Cake, and they’ve done two pieces of Very Clever Science lately. The first was for Nintendo, and it was a study into how much energy you burn playing Wii. And it turns out, it’s not much. Though they have to be commended for doing a proper, albeit very small, trial and publishing the result anyway.

Cake’s other recent foray into the world of Very Clever Science was for The Children’s Society, a charity whose beliefs are fairly self-evident. They have issued a press release called “Have a mathematically perfect Christmas!”, in which they say (and you’ll have to imagine the phrase “sic” in brackets liberally sprinkled on this quote like some kind of Latin Christmas snow):

The University of Plymouth has Christmas all worked out! Professor & programme director of the School of Applied Psychosocial Studies, Rudi Dallos, has calculated the scientific theory for a perfect Christmas, it is:

PX = 8F x 4P + 23£ x 8F + 3 G +3 W + 2W:3C + 5T:1NR
_____________________________________________
3D

Professor Rudi Dallos devised the formula, which guarantees a perfect Christmas for families across the UK, to compliment the new Christmas book from The Children?s Society…

The perfect Christmas formula (PX) considers the number of family members (F), cost (£) and number of Christmas presents given (P), number of walks taken (W), number of games played (G), the amount of wine and chocolate (W:C) consumed and the ratio of turkey to nut roast (T:NR)!  Divide all that by the total days (D) you spent with your family and you have the perfect Christmas!

There are many, many things wrong with this, so let’s list just as many as we can find! But first, an aside. Obviously I’m in favour of charities in general, and I don’t know much about this one but it sounds like something I’d approve of, but this kind of thing is very bad for the public perception of science and while it annoys me when companies shit all over important things to turn a quick buck, charities should know better. I tend to think they should avoid doing things that will damage society, especially since they’re doing it on the back of donations. So, on with the list…

• This is not a “scientific theory” until he has proved it. That’s what the phrase “scientific theory” means.
• If he did prove it, it would still not be a theory, because it is an equation. That would be a law. The theory would be the underlying mechanics. It is not possible to “calculate” a theory.
• If it was possible to calculate a theory, and this was a theory, it would still not be true that Rudi Dallos had calculated this one. It would be more accurate to say that he had made it up, and more accurate still to say that he’s whored his name out to it.
• There is an equals sign in the numerator of a fraction. I am willing to give Dallos the benefit of the doubt here, as Cake’s typesetting skills are not great (unless their client really does spell their name with a question mark). This is also, I assume, why the lower case letter ‘x’ is used in place of the multiplication sign, and why a row of underlines are used in place of division. And to be fair, their typesetting is just marvellous compared to The Daily Mail’s version of this formula, which not only replicates this error, but duplicates the division so that revellers have to spend nine days with their families every day in order to have the prefect Christmas.
• The symbol “W” is used for two quite separate quantities.
• The pound sign goes before the number, genius.

And then there’s the subtle stuff. Some people have suggested that this equation suggests that one can have an infinitely good Christmas by spending zero days with the family. Personally, I think that’s reading it wrong. The letters are really units rather than variables. I think this is really a definition of a new constant PX, which is in the unusual mathematical units “man (presents + pounds) + games + walks + ml/g + turkeys per portion of nuts) per hour”. (In the Daily Mail’s version, this is per hour squared, making it some kind of bizarre festive acceleration constant, like a kind of Yuletide gravity. Possibly you are expected to buy everyone four more presents every day for nine days, a bit like Hannukah or that Twelve Days Of Christmas song.) That said, it’s still open to the same kind of abuse — if you don’t drink alcohol then you can’t have any chocolate or else the ratio is upset (that, or you have to have some chocolate to prevent undefined divisions), and if you only have one family member then you have to counter this by — I swear this is what it says — spending only 9 hours with them, and in that time playing three eighths of a game, taking three eighths of a walk, eating 166% more chocolate and nut roast than you’d really like.

If you want to spend less than £23 on each of your presents, you can compensate by spending less time with your family so the ratio is the same, however to balance the rest of the proportions, you also have to give proportionally fewer presents, go on fewer walks, and play fewer games. And eat more chocolate and less turkey. It also places no upper limit on how drunk you can get provided you’re willing to balance it with chocolate.

What we have here, you see, is not maths. It’s one of those crappy adverts that says “you plus our product equals profit er I mean happiness”. “The perfect Christmas is 4 presents each for 8 family members, £23 each for 8 family members, 3 walks, 3 games, 5 times as much turkey as nut roast and 3 times as much chocolate as wine, all over 3 days.” It’s nothing more than a description of a perfectly nice Christmas phrased a bit like maths. Then written as a formula.

And it can piss off.