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?

• 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

From: zongo usman <zongo_usman_18@hotmail.fr>
Reply to: zongo_44us@excite.com
Date: Oct 29, 2007 6:44 PM
Subject: GOLD DUST FOR SALE

Attention please,
I am Mr.ZONGO USMAN ,a minner working with the federal ministry of natural resources of my country.Life in the mines is quite a dangerious one as some of us sometimes die in the mines while the government and its cohorts enjoy the proceeds at the expense of our lives.
To this effect therefore,some of us who have the mind have decided to steal 250 kilos of 22 karat gold(both gold bars and alluvial gold dust are available) Sell it and run to foreign countries with our families.The price of the gold is $5000 per kilo.

Considering the secracy involved in this kind of deal,we are scared to contact anyhow person.But,we have contacted you with the hope that you will keep the secrecy at the sametime assist us to either sell the gold or
buy it from us. This is our last opportunity and we are not ready to lose it. If you are serious and ready to buy from us or assist us in getting capable buyers. kindly show your interest by replying this mail to this mail id or its alternative as shown below. For security reasons we will at this time communicate via e-mail considering the security reasons involved until we know actually that you are with us then we will give you a contact telephone number.

We have to inform you that some top officials of the mines are involved and will assist to produce all necessary documents which will back up the gold as one that has legally and directly bought from the ministry of gold and natural resources. This therefore makes this a 100% risk free deal.

Get back to us as quickly as possible so that we will move the gold out in alluvial dust or bars depending of the one that you will need.
Waiting to hearing from you soon.
Mr.ZONGO USMAN
Burkina Faso West Africa

Yes, on balance I would like some gold dust. Especially if it’s 100% risk free.

From: Andrew Taylor <taylor.andrew@gmail.com>
To: zongo_44us@excite.com
Date: Oct 29, 2007 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: GOLD DUST FOR SALE

I am very interested in buying alluvial gold dust. I hear it’s very hard to come by. It’s almost like gold dust.

Andrew

Unfortunately the phrase “100% risk free” changed slightly in the next mail…

From: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
To: taylor.andrew@gmail.com
Date: Oct 30, 2007 7:08 PM
Subject:MORE INFORMATION ON THE GOLD DUST

HELLO MY DEAR TAYLOR

THANKS FOR YOUR MAIL AND YOUR INTEREST OVER THE ALLUVIAL GOLD DUST I AM GREATFUL.

BASE ON YOUR MAIL . THE BUSINESS IS 100% FREE RISK . I AM AN HONEST MAN AND I DONT DO ILLEGAL BUSINESS . YOU NEED NOT TO WORRY . I AM A LEGAL MAN .
SECONDLY WE HAVE ONLY TWO OPTION/ WAY OF TRANSFRING THE GOLD DUST TO YOU .

1 AN INTERESTED BUYER WILL VISIT MY COUNTRY JUST TO INSPECT THE GOLD DUST AND TO SEE WHAT HE/SHE WANT TO BUY . IF AFTER INSPECTING THE BUYER FINE THE GOLD DUST GOOD BASE ON THE BUYERS INTEREST . THEN HE CAN TEST IT AND BUY .

2. IN THE CASE WHERE THE BUYER WILL NOT BE EBLE THE COME TO MY COUNTRY FOR INSPECTION OF THE GOLD DUST . THEN WE CAN MOVE THE GOLD DUST TO HIM IN HIS COUNTRY WHERE HE CAN TEST THE GOLD DUST AND BUYER BASE ON HOW MANY KILOS OF THE GOLD DUST THE BUYER NEED.

SO YOU ARE ADVICE TO CHOSE ANY ONE OF THESE OPTIONS SO THAT WE CAN MOVE TO THE NEXT STEP OF THE ONE YOU CHOSE .
FURTHERMORE PLEASE TELL US HOW MANY KILOS OF THE GOLD DUST YOU NEED . WHERE IS WHAT WE HAVE AND THE PRICE
THEY GOLD DUST WE HAVE IS 22CARAT AND WE HAVE 250KILOS
THE PRICE IS $5000 DOLLARS PER KILO .
PLEASE TELL ME HOW MANY KILOS YOU NEED

PLEASE GIVE THIS INFORMATION BELOW . SO THAT WE CAN GET THE DOCUMENT COVERING THE TRANSACTION FOR YOU .

1 YOUR FULL NAME ……………….
2 YOUR COUNTRY NAME…………………..
3 YOUR FULL HOME/OFFICE ADDRESS………………….
4 YOUR FAX/TELEPHONE NUMBER ……………………….

MEANWHILE ARE YOU THE BUYER OR YOUR REFERRING US TO A BUYER PLEASE LET US KNOW ?

I AM WAITTING TO HEAR FORM YOU URGENT SO THAT I WILL KNOW THE NEXT STEP TO FELLOW

THANKS
MR ZONGO USMAN

His grasp of English had deteriorated markedly. Possibly he has some kind of progressive brain disease (and/or oesophageal cancer).

From: Andrew Taylor <taylor.andrew@gmail.com>
To: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
Date: Oct 30, 2007 7:24 PM
Subject: Re: MORE INFORMATION ON THE GOLD DUST

Mr Zongo

I am glad that you are a legal man. Once I found myself doing business with a man who had been banned in 48 states, and the police arrived and cautioned me for being in possession of him. It was most confusing.

I would like more information on the source of your gold dust. I read in a magazine that 90% of gold dust is actually tiny flakes of skin from gold people, such as Dale Winton.

Andrew

He sought to dispel my irrational and made-up fears:

From: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
To: taylor.andrew@gmail.com
Date: Oct 30, 2007 8:42 PM
Subject: URGENT REPLY NEEDED

ELLO MR TAYLOR

THANKS FOR YOUR MAIL . I AM GLAD THAT YOU HAVE UNDERSTANDING IN LIFE .

BASE ON YOUR MAIL THERE IS LIKE WHAT YOU SEE FACE TO FACE . THE GOLD DUST AS I SAID EAILER HAVE NOT TO DO WITH WHAT YOU SAID .
THEY GOLD DUST IS A RAW GOLD DUST . SO IF YOU WANT TO BUY . LET ME KNOW HOW MANY KILOS OF THEY GOLD DUST YOU NEED TO BUY . SO WHEN YOU SEE THEY GOLD DUST FACE TO FACE . THEN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I AM A MAN OF MY WORD .

SECONDLY AS I SAID IN MY MAIL . THEY WAY TO GET THE GOLD DUST IS ONLY TWO OPTIONS .

IS ETHER YOU COUNTRY TO MY COUNTRY TO INSPECT THEY GOLD DUST YOUR WANT TO BUY OR IN THE CASE THAT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO COME TO MY COUNTRY . THEN YOU CAN LET ME KNOW HOW MANY KILOS OF THE GOLD DUS YOU NEED SO THAT I CAN MOVE TO YOUR COUNTRY FOR YOU TO TEST IT AND BUY . IF POSSBLE . YOU CAN CALL ME FOR MORE INFORMATION ON TELEPHONE . +226 76 29 24 92 I WILL BE WAITTING FOR YOUR CALL

THANKS

I WILL BE WAITTING FOR YOUR MAIL

MR ZONGO USMAN

I still wasn’t sure. But his language skills had dropped another notch, so I kept going.

From: Andrew Taylor <taylor.andrew@gmail.com>
To: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
Date: Oct 30, 2007 10:09 PM
Subject: Re: URGENT REPLY NEEDED

Dear Zongo,

Thankyou for your reassurances.

Before I make an order I need to organise transportation for the gold dust. To do so I need to know how much a kilogram of gold dust weighs. Could you send me this information? After that I shall be able to calculate an order.

Thankyou again,

Andrew

One would think that this was a very easy request that Zongo would be hard pressed to get wrong. But one would be underestimating both Zongo’s grasp of logic and his ever-diminishing verbal skills.

From: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
To: taylor.andrew@gmail.com
Date: Oct 31, 2007 7:11 PM
Subject: PLEASE I AM WAITTING

HELLO ANDREW

THANKS FOR YOUR MAIL MEANWHILE HOW ARE YOU TODAY AND YOUR BUSINESS TOO.

BASE ON YOUR MAIL THEY WEIGTH OF 1 KILO OF GOLD DUST HERE AS I KNOW IS 5.7 IN WEIGH
PRICE PER KILO IS $5000 DOLLARS .
THEY GOLD DUST 22 CARAT

HOWEVER THEY TRANSPORTTAION OF THEY GOLD DUST OF MY COUNTRY IS NOT YOUR DUTY . IF REALLY WANT TO BUY THEY GOLD DUST . PLEASE LET KNOW HOW MANY KILOS OF THEY GOLD DUST YOU WANT TO BUY . TRANSPORTATION IS MY DUTY OK

I AM WAITTING TO HEAR FROM YOU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

THANKS

MR ZONGO USMAN

I know of no unit which is equal to ten fifty-sevenths of a kilogram. If anyone has any idea what units this refers to then do please let me know. And if he wants to know how me and my business are, then I suppose I will tell him.

From: Andrew Taylor <taylor.andrew@gmail.com>
To: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
Date: Oct 31, 2007 7:41 PM
Subject: Re: PLEASE I AM WAITTING

Mr Zongo

Thankyou for replying. I am well, however my business has fallen into the sea due to coastal erosion. Oh well, these things happen I suppose.

I should warn you that I use Linux. Is the gold dust compatible with my computer or will I need to boot into Windows to use it?

Andrew

I was running out of inane gold-dust questions.

From: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
To: taylor.andrew@gmail.com
Date: Nov 1, 2007 7:51 PM
Subject: PLEASE I AM SORRY

TAYLOR

THANKS FOR YOUR MAIL . I RECEIVE THEY MAIL YOU SEND TO ME I AM GEARTFULL .

BASE ON YOUR MAIL I AM SORRY ON WHAT HAPPY TO YOUR BUSINESS . MEANWHILE I DONT UNDERSTAND OTHER PART OF YOUR MAIL . PLEASE CAN YOUR EXPLAN MORE ON WHAT YOU MEAN ON YOUR MAIL . OVER COMPUTER YOU TALK ABOUT .

IF YOUR NO LONGER GOING TO DO THEY BUSINESS WITH ME . THAT IS NOT A PROBLEM. PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR MIND . SO THAT I WILL NOT GO FURTHER IN AGREEMENT ON YOUR SIDE .

I AM WAITTING
THANKS
MR ZONGO USMAN

Never mind. I had a third question. A sensible question. A question that will tax his new language skills to their very limits and stretch the sinews of his knowledge to bursting point.

From: Andrew Taylor <taylor.andrew@gmail.com>
To: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
Date: Nov 1, 2007 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: PLEASE I AM SORRY

Zongo,

Never mind about my last question. Really all that matters is what isotope of gold we are discussing. Which isotope is this dust? I want Gold-197. The others are radioactive. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_gold

Andrew

I don’t think he wants to play any more…

From: zongo usman <zongo_44us@yahoo.com>
To: taylor.andrew@gmail.com
Date: Nov 3, 2007 3:55 PM
Subject: GOOD BYE

MY DEAR  TAYLOR

THANKS FOR YOUR MAIL .I  UNDERSTAND  YOU DONT  HAVE  INTEREST OVER  THEY BUSINESS  AGAIN .

THANKS/GOODBYE

MR ZONGO  USMAN

The Great Enemies Of Science: Nurofen

This is a quick excerpt of an interesting post I found the other day:

They are as follows: Aromatherapy Acupuncture Alexander Technique Chiropractic Herbal medicines Homeopathy Osteopathy Physiotherapy Reflexology Yoga Hypnosis Now personally, if […]

Read it all here

A quick glance at the front page makes it clear what they’re up to: they’ve got a Technorati search set up for the word “massage”, and they’re sucking in every blog post they can find. (Well, it won’t be Technorati, because they refuse to acknowledge any posts on this blog, for reasons unknown.) Then they put them up on the blog (automatically) with a little comment about how interesting it is that’s pulled from a pool of five or six at random. This generates pingback links all over the web to their imaginary blog, which is plastered with adverts. They get visitors mostly who are interested in massage information, and their Google ads tend to be on that subject. It’s a very cunning system, and honestly I can’t decide if it’s spam or a public service.

What do you think?

The first is that their website has a page devoted to homeopathy. I mean, it has many pages under its “Holistic Approach” umbrella page. They are as follows:

• Aromatherapy
• Acupuncture
• Alexander Technique
• Chiropractic
• Herbal medicines
• Homeopathy
• Osteopathy
• Physiotherapy
• Reflexology
• Yoga
• Hypnosis

Now personally, if I was a physiotherapist I would be mightily pissed at being lumped in with those quacks. Luckily I’m not — apparently, I’m an osteopath, and a long dead one to boot. Now I would have thought that a drugs manufacturer would have been broadly against the idea that a glass of water can basically do the same thing without any side-effects but apparently I would be wrong. Presumably Nurofen want to please the crazy crowd so they think “hey, this lot aren’t so bad, they’re probably not like the other Big Pharma”. But of course Nurofen is a drug. It’s a Big Nasty Chemical. It’s C₁₃H₁₈O₂. But they’re determined to pander to the woo crowd so pander they do. Unfortunately, drugs are made by scientists, so they aren’t very good at pretending this stuff works. Most pages refer to a grand total of one study and report its results alone, regardless of the fact that there are generally hundreds of contradictory ones. Here are a couple of examples:

Many people claim that aromatherapy does help to ease their pain. And there is some research to back up their claims. In 1992, for instance, the International Journal of Aromatherapy published a study on aromatherapy and pain relief: the study showed that massage with lavender oil actually helped to cut pain levels in patients by half.

Although there’s very little research to support reflexology, some studies have shown it can have an effect. For instance, in a reflexology and pre-menstrual syndrome research study (conducted in 1992), reflexology was found to help relieve premenstrual syndrome. And in [1993] a report by the Society of Orthopaedic Nursing and the Royal College of Nursing, showed that reflexology helped relieve pain in post-operative patients.

But does homeopathy work? Well, research shows that a homeopathic effect does exist. Many adults, children, animals and even plants have been successfully treated with homeopathy. And studies at Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital have shown homeopathy to be effective in the treatment of hay fever.

They’re not even fooling themselves, are they? I love the bit where it says “plants have been successfully treated with homeopathy”. Wilting, were they? My God… They make no such claims about physiotherapy, so we’re left unsure as to whether that works.

That’s the first problem I have with them: that they’re happy to promote any old nonsense as science if they think it will make money. But I’m not willing to write off a company just for that, so let’s see what else they do.

Now, you won’t know this, because clearly it’s too generic when divorced from the advert, but Nurofen’s slogan is “targeted relief from pain”. They say things like “Nurofen goes straight to the source of pain”, which is false. It’s ibuprofen, which indeed works at the “source of pain” rather than blocking receptors in the brain, but it doesn’t know where it’s going. It’s only a pill. It doesn’t actually seek out the source of the pain.

Except of course that it does, according to an Australian Nurofen advert:

Nurofen, on the other hand, works with your bodys natural pain signals to seek out and target pain at its source. Once the source of pain has been identified, Nurofen can go to work fast.

How do I know what Australian adverts say, you might reasonably ask? Simple: I did a Google search for their slogan and got this page from the TGACC, Australia’s healthcare equivalent of the ASA, where Nurofen are told off for their advert (though not specifically for this).

The point is that Nurofen has been saying for years that their pill somehow knows where it’s going, and travels straight there. They have a little target icon that goes to where the graphic is hurting and stays there, clearly implying that the drug doesn’t just wash about the bloodstream blocking pain emitters wherever it sees them. They say “targeted” relief, as if I should think that if I ask it to stop my headache it will know not to stop my toothache as well. All of their “targeting” stuff is just supposed to mean that it blocks pain and nothing else, which is patently not what it looks like when you see the advert and which GlaxoSmithKline insist isn’t true.

And my third problem? Well, much like their list of “holistic” treatments, their list of “types of pain” is woefully inaccurate. Here’s the list as it appears on their website:

• Headaches
• Tension Headaches
• Migraine Headaches
• Muscular Pain
• Back Pain
• Period Pain
• Dental Pain
• Feverishness
• Cold and Flu
• Neuralgia
• Upper Back Pain
• Lower Back Pain
• Aches and Sprains
• Children

Honestly — they list “children” as a type of pain. Which I’m sure nobody’s going to argue with, but it’s hardly a popular choice for corporate image, is it, the anti-children platform?

My problem with this list is that these are the only medically accepted types of pain:

• Pain
• Pain Plus

Now you would think Nurofen would know that, wouldn’t you?

Personally, I think people should get off their backs. I’ve heard nothing but bad things about innocent lately and that seems a bit harsh for a company who sell healthy drinks made of nothing but ethically-sourced fruit, present a friendly image, try to be green without pretending to be “carbon neutral” (as if anyone can honestly claim to have no environmental impact at all), and run a charity which receives 10% of their profits. Once, they mailed me a book of smoothie recipes, so I didn’t have to buy their expensive drinks any more. They made a rather dubious claim in their advert, but it’s a claim that many, many people have made of late, usually for far worse foods than bottled fruit. People have, I assume, latched onto this because they love a good “oh look they said they were so innocent and it turns out they’re big fat liars” story. The fact that innocent use ethical traders, keep their emissions low, give to charity, present a friendly image and make a healthy product somehow makes them worse. Well, no. It makes them better. They’ve done one thing wrong and about a hundred things right. So go and pick on someone who deserves it.

It starts with an email forward, which alerts us all to the “crisis in health freedom”, whatever “health freedom” might mean, which is supposedly being caused by someone called “the FDA”. This is wrong for a start; the US government’s body which regulated medicines consistently refers to itself simply as “FDA”. This is a pedantic point, but if you don’t even know the name of the body you’re protesting against, how can I expect you to understand thier policy?

So anyway, “the” FDA have this new draft guidance document. In a nutshell, it seeks to clarify what is and is not subject to FDA regulation, specifically relating to CAM, or “complimentary and alternative medicine”.

But no. According to the email forward, ‘by using the term “Medicine” rather than “Modality” for CAM practices, the FDA sets the stage so that anyone who is not a licensed physician is breaking the law by using these modalities since they are therefore “practicing medicine without a license.”’ What the hell is an “alternive modality”? Either this stuff is medicine, in which case is should be (and is — this document is a clarification of existing rules, not a change in legislation or policy) subject to the same rules and regulation as conventional medicine, or it isn’t, in which case, what the hell is it for?

“Conventional medicine” is my preferred term for the usual kind of treatments and drugs you’ll get from pharmacies and doctors. Some people favour the term “allopathic” medicine, which literally means the opposite of “homeopathic medicine” — in homeopathic ‘medicine’ you use a tiny amount (often, none) of a substance that would cause the symptoms being experiences, and in allopathic medicine you use a substance which would cause the opposite effect. I don’t like using the word “allopathic” to describe conventional medicine, though, because things like immunisations are, from a strictly etymological point of view, homeopathic. The term used in the email forward is “traditional medicine”. I think this is symptomatic of a wider problem — people, particularly in the US, are increasingly thinking of science as a tradition.

“Traditional” medicine really should be used to describe things like Chinese traditional ‘cures’ — which are really alternative “medicine”. Conventional medicine, on the other hand, is arrived at by a strict, objective scientific process (in theory; there are problems with this process’ implementation certainly, but they’re not massive problems in general, especially not when compared to the unregulated gibberish touted as medicines by these “alternative” quacks).

The email forward then goes on to explain that “THIS IS A HUGE ISSUE FOR PEOPLE WHOSE ATYPICAL BIOCHEMICAL NEEDS ARE NOT ADDRESSED OR EVEN ACKNOWLEDGED BY TRADITIONAL MEDICINE.” Now, call me a cynic if you like (I won’t mind; I am a cynic), but it seems to me that conventional medicine (whoever that is supposed to refer to — certainly there’s no central body of scientific consensus who arbitrate on these things; possibly it refers to FDA) would acknowledge anything that can be shown to exist in a clinical trial? And anything that can’t — surely doesn’t exist?

The problem, really, is that there’s a growing and alarming trend for “complimentary and alternative medicine” to be viewed as perfectly valid and effective even when it can’t be proven to work scientifically. The theory is that these things (homeopathy, acupuncture, crystal healing and what have you) are necessarily outside science, and science is the wrong tool to measure their effectiveness. This is bunk for a number of reasons, and hence needs debunking.

The first reason is that science is, as I’ve mentioned, not a tradition or a convention. It is simply any objective studies designed to test a hypothesis. Any and all hypotheses will do, as long as they make some measurable claim. A claim like “people who use this medicine will recover more than people who don’t” is clearly measureable, and yet whenever scientists try to measure it, they find the claim is false. There are two different conclusions that can be drawn from this. The people whose making a lot of money depends on people believing in these claims tend to draw the conclusion that science is therefore somehow inadequate to prove the claim. The second conclusion is that the claim is false. Occam’s Razor seems to suggest one of these options over the other. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which.

CAM advocates tend to argue in favour of the first on the grounds that conventional medicine is good for normal people, and CAM is good for certain people; people with “atypical biochemical needs” or people who have been failed by conventional medicine. This is really exactly the same ploy as teh anti-wifi crowd are using: trials don’t show an effect because only a tiny subset of people are affected. But this can be tested too, and routinely it isn’t. When they test for and prove this claim it will be accepted. Until then, it will be ridiculed. I do not believe that these “atypical biochemical needs” exist, except those people on the X Files born without some gland or other who have to harvest the appropriate bodyparts from other people.

To my mind, though, the far bigger problem with it is that conventional medicine is, by definition, medicine which is generally agreed by scientists and doctors to work, and alternative medicine is, again by definition, anything else. That is, anything which it is not generally agreed by suitably qualified boffins to work. As such, if you say alternative “medicines” exist somehow “outside” science and don’t need scientific proof to be sold, then anything which is not proven need not be proven, and the only things that need proof by definition already have it. Clearly that’s stupid and unworkable; pharmacology companies could sidestep FDA completely simply by saying “oh, it’s alternative”.

For their part, FDA have extremely wisely decided that the simplest and best way out of the problem is to make no legal distinction between conventional and alternative medicines. That levels the playing field and surely nobody can complain about that?

Well no, they can’t, but they do. This page allows, indeed encourages, users to send the following message to FDA (who are still gathering puclic comments on their new draft guidance document):

I assert my fundamental right to control my own health and health care. I want Complementary and Alternative Modalities (”CAM”) to be freely available and I endorse the comments of the Natural Solutions Foundation which were submitted on April 6, 2006 and which follow

There’s quite a lot of comments, so I’m going to trim them somewhat and make fun of the amusing parts, such as the name of the correspondants in