New Levels Of Crazy But I Shouldn’t Be Surprised

Last night I was waiting for the cricket highlights on BBC2 and I got the stream going a little bit before 19:00. This meant that I saw the last five minutes or so of some nature programme [Animal Park] covering koala bears at some sanctuary. I didn’t pay enough attention to know where it was set. The gist of this bit of the programme seemed to be wondering whether any of the female koalas were pregnant or at least feeding a joey in the pouch, let’s go with “with child”. To help figure this out and rather than manhandling the koalas they got someone in who had an infrared camera to remotely measure the body temperature of the bears [not bears]. This person was introduced as an “animal osteopath” and I was suckered in to everything that person said.

I’m going to write this communication “live” in the sense that it will be a diary of the next hour as I have a look at whatever the fuck an animal osteopath is. Firstly, let me tell you that human osteopathy is mostly bollocks and doesn’t do anything. I have looked into this along with reading many books concerning osteopathy. I wrote a communication about it in 2014 where I explained what osteopathy does and does not do. TLDR – it does very little except remove money from people. Now I’m really curious about animal osteopathy and what that might be so it’s time to get googling and see what stuff comes up. My initial heuristic is that it’s bollocks, but if I am wrong I will say so later on.

Let’s look at what the “animal osteopath” brought to the television programme. They had a IR camera and could measure temperature of the koalas remotely. The first temperature reading was taken from a male [who couldn’t possibly be “with child”] and the temperature was noted. As far as I can tell this has little to do with female koala temperatures and while it seems quite reasonable it really isn’t. Who is to say that male and female koalas have the same body temperatures over the surface of their bodies? Who is to say what the normal range of temperatures of koalas is? Why was this introduced as though it was scientific when it absolutely was not? Oh, it makes good television I suppose but it was not good method.

Next a couple of the female koalas were temperature measured remotely and the “theory” was that if they had a joey in the pouch then maybe the temperature would be higher in that area of the body. This was not even backed in science. They didn’t announce that we “know” that temperatures are higher where joeys are feeding. This was a first and therefore any differences they find might be down to koala physiology rather than anything else. What sort of temperature difference would be enough to convince the show that a koala was pregnant? All of this reeked of “made for TV” rather than any groundings in science. I’ve just looked up how big joeys are and they are initially the size of a jelly bean and therefore any temperature difference wouldn’t be measurable through the skin and fur of the pouch.

So, the entire process covered on television to decide whether the koalas are pregnant was utter theatre. I doubt very much that this is a valid method and it quite clearly wasn’t standard as the presenters were very much explaining this was a new thing. This brings me to the “animal osteopath”. You don’t need to be an osteopath to operate a IR camera. You don’t need to be anyone specially training. You point the thing and take spot measurements. Why an animal osteopath was introduced I don’t know. They could have had Geoff who lives next door and uses his IR camera to spot couples in flagrante in the bushes near his house. This did not require an animal osteopath.

Human osteopathy is bollocks and so let’s see what animal osteopathy is like. I honestly can’t imagine it’s going to be more evidence based. I somewhere suspect that they make shit up like other osteopaths, but let’s see. A quick google search brings me results for general osteopathy but I’m going to see what courses there are to learn animal osteopathy first and then look over the website of a practitioner.

The first animal based advert within Google was for the above people who train osteopaths and are actually linked to the European School Of Osteopathy which is down the road from me. The website seems to offer courses in horse and dog osteopathy and not much else. It’s a well designed website and offers many courses for people who are interested in animal osteopathy. Their courses are accredited by the ESO so I think I’ll have a look at what they say about animals and shit.

The ESO website is mostly about human osteopathy but they mention a little about animal osteopathy and link to the Association Of Animal Osteopaths. This website design looks very much like AOI and so it’s time to investigate who governs who and whether they are independent and also, it’s time to remember that just because there’s a national association it doesn’t mean that it’s regulated or even science. There’s an international association of osteopaths and that’s bollocks for humans. The top two names in the AAO are also the top two names in AOI and so there’s an overlap there of who checks the work for who. One organisation looks as though it checks the work of the other but they are the same people.

I doubt very much that animal osteopathy has any real effect on animals. Wikipeida doesn’t even link to anything about animal osteopathy, you just get linked to the page for normal osteopathy and so the conclusion is that it does very little. We know that the “placebo” effect operates on those humans who have animals treated with alternative medicine [ie not medicine] and I don’t think there’s any real documented scientific evidence to claim that animal osteopathy is a real thing. I suspect that with people appearing on television and being given credence by that appearance this thing will continue and people will pay money to experience a thing that is not real. Oh well.

This is communication 1912 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

First presentation of continental drift theory.
Airships used in war for the first time, by Italy.
Lawrence Oates says “I am just going outside and may be some time”.
Vitamins are identified.

July 24 2019July 24 2019

Marginal Error

Aside from the fact that the news this country has a new Prime Minister who is a racist liar I was bothered by the phrasing on BBC News last night. I haven’t really watched TV news for a long time, I find it patronising and reliant on the personal story rather than the facts, I don’t enjoy watching it. I viewed a little on catch up last night just to see what they said about the tory party leadership result.

Boris Johnson won by a MARGIN of two to one.

Now, what the actual fuck does that mean? I mean, I’m not happy Johnson won but that’s the shitty system we have. I’m really asking what does the phrase “by a margin of two to one” mean?

Does it mean that Boris got around 66% of the vote and Hunt 33% [or thereabouts]? In which case the margin is 1/3 of the electorate or you could even say the majority was 100% of Hunt’s vote. What you can’t say is the MARGIN was a ratio of 2:1 without DEFINING what the other side of the ratio is. Fucking hell, people need to understand that maths and words have meanings.

My instinct is that these numbers are the relative share of the vote, but the news chap doesn’t say that. He says MARGIN. The margin is the majority? I don’t know. How is margin defined in this case. A quick inspection of Wikipedia has the definition that MARGIN is the percentage of the difference relative to total turnout.

So, I think it would be best for the BBC and other news outlets to have used the phrase:

Mr Johnson won with a margin of around 33% of the turnout.

June 15 2018

Not A Normal Distribution

So, I’m feeling grumpy today. Just am. Not sure why. And then I go and stupidly read an article in on the BBC News website about most babies being born at 4am. You can read the article here and I’ll be taking quotations from it.

Four o’clock in the morning is the time most babies are born spontaneously in England, with the majority arriving between 01:00 and 07:00, a study shows.

So, four o’clock is the “average” of 01:00 and 07:00. Is that how they worked this out? I’m not sure. I’m probably not going to read the original paper but it does seem a strange thing to say. Assuming that spontaneous births are reasonably random the actual number arriving at 04:00 would be quite small and the variation could be little.

While planned C-section births tended to happen on weekday mornings, births after induced labours were more likely to occur around midnight.

This makes sense. C-Sections in the morning to then make sure everyone is fine during the time when the medical cover is best. Inductions probably happen at that time because they are started in the morning and it takes that long for the effects to show. These are not surprising figures and make utter sense.

It’s this next bit that turned me into a rage.

Overall, more than 70% of births took place outside regular working hours.

And

The researchers said there could be implications for staffing of midwives and doctors, with only 28% of births taking place between 09:00 and 17:00 on weekdays.

So, an event that is reasonably random is spread throughout the day? About thirty percent of births happen in a time frame covering roughly 30% of the amount of time in a day. THIS IS WHAT WE WOULD EXPECT. The working day covers 1/3 of the 24 hours in a day and the number of births in that time period is about 1/3. This sentence made me swear out loud in our staff common room earlier today, much to the ammusment of my colleagues.

I’m going for a walk to calm down.

March 28 2018

Lazy Headlines

A trend I have noticed more and more in the news these days is the use of quotations in a headline. This is probably because of two reasons. The first is that it is incredibly expensive to defend “libel” accusations in the English court system. This gags publishers to a certain extent. The second reason is that it makes headline writing easy and removes controversy because the publisher can say “we were using quotes”. Here are some examples from the best UK news organisation the BBC.

In the Toby Young article the term “regret” is used in quotation marks because it’s a feeling that an organisation is having. It’s obviously a bullshit term for the fact that the Office for Students’ were WRONG, but rather than admit to being wrong they claim the organsation has “regret”. Let’s face it, they were wrong.

“Intorlerance” is written because someone said it and the BBC don’t want to put any form of objective fact into the reporting. Also, this article relys on what MPs and Peers said rather than any form of what does and will work. It’s entirely opinion and therefore possibly wrong. Hence the quotation.

“Down to privilege” used in the third article is ammusing. Being in quotes means that it’s treated as an opinion rather than a potential objective truth. This saves the BBC from having to defend their wording for the article because all they are doing is quoting a scientific study, or maybe they are putting their own spin on it. It doesn’t really matter. What the BBC have done is shy away from stating an objective truth.

The world these days doesn’t seem to like the idea that some things can be known for sure and they are truths. We can test them. Hell, you can test them if you want to study for long enough. Other things are opinion. I’m not sure opinion belongs in headlines.

Look at these headlines. The BBC aren’t claiming the welfare system is at critical point. They aren’t being objective about it. They haven’t looked at the evidence and declared it is fucked. They have been lazy and just written down what someone said. It weakens the argument being made for investment.

“Lots to do”, if we were honest and objective then we could clearly state, without the need for speech marks, that there is a ton of stuff still to do on Brexit. Once again the quotation weakens the argument being put forward. It lends a sense of opinion rather than reality.

“Cheating”, yeah. They were lying weren’t they. They spent more than they were allowed and yes they cheated. It doesn’t have to be in quotation marks. We know that’s what they did.

“Sexism”. This headline says that although someone accused Boris, the sexist, of being sexist, we aren’t sure and are really relying on the speech of someone else rather than declaring our foreign secretary a rascist, sexist idiot.

Just look at the US press. They accuse their president of telling “untruths” or being “misleading”. Bullshit. He’s a liar. Let’s call him that.

News agencies have a duty to report the objective truth as much as possible. The rising use of quotations means there’s less chance to offend people who can’t cope with objectivity.

January 9 2018January 9 2018

QTWTAIN

The heading of this communication means:

Questions to which the answer is no

This applies to pretty much every newspaper or news headline which is a question. Suggesting something real by using a question is a weasel way out of getting sued for libel or defamation. The news organisations can use the “just asking questions” defence. Here are some potential favourites:

Did Aliens Build This Structure?

Does MMR cause autism?

Is The PM a paedophile?

and so on. You can see how this works. Headlines like this plant an idea in people’s brains and then, as you may or may not know, bad ideas get reinforced more and more as they are explained as wrong [see religion].

Here’s one I saw from the BBC:

If you want a question then it should really be:

Are Superfoods Real?

The answer to this question is NO. There are foods that are better for you than plenty of others but there aren’t really any foods that work wonders on your body. The rule with food is to eat a balanced diet and to then exercise regularly and maintain a HEALTHY weight.

So, the article goes into statistics. They performed a study on 94 volunteers, split them into three groups and fed them either butter, olive oil and coconut oil. These were not blinded in any way so the people knew which oil they were eating. Also, it’s quite a small number of people to be involved and so any findings would need much further study.

The measurements of LDL and HDL afterwards seemed to indicate that the coconut oil did have some positive benefits. This is interesting but not conclusive. There was no correction for type of person, exercise or general diet and health factors. To make this science more rigorous a study needs to be completed with many many more participants controlled for many other factors.

This study is a good start, but it needs much more work before anything conclusive can be suggested. Really, this article is an advert for the TV show in which these results are “exposed”. As it says at the bottom of this article:

The new series of Trust Me I’m a Doctor continues on BBC2 at 20:30 GMT on Wednesday 10 January and will be available on iPlayer afterwards.

So, I fixed the headline for the BBC:

ADDENDUM [added 5 minutes after publishing]:

Radio 4 is RIGHT NOW now running a segment on this food. They have a professor in from Cambridge. They are leading with the “celebrities are eating this stuff, should we”. I would argue that celebrities are the right people to tell us what to be eating, unless they are a registered dietitian. The scientist is now saying they were surprised that the coconut oil seemed to increase HDL “three times as much”. It was 15% compared to 5% and while that is three times as much it’s actually only going from 1.05 to 1.15 and so that is an increase of 9.5% which would be more appropriate as a measure rather than 3 times which is 300%.

Conflating absolute increases with relative increases is dangerous. It’s why we have health scares. As an example let’s suppose something goes from affecting 5 people in a thousand to 10 people in a thousand. The headlines would say that the risk doubled as it went from 5 to 10. The actual answer is that the risk has increased by 2%. It went from 0.005 to 0.01. Doing the sums the wrong way gives you bigger numbers which look scarier or better depending on what effect you want to achieve.

The end of the interview has the presenter saying this is early days and so we shouldn’t really change our eating habits yet, we should follow the official guidelines. WHICH IS EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT RUNNING THIS AS A NEWS STORY ENCOURAGES.

FFS.

</anger>.

May 7 2017May 7 2017

Alt Text

This communication considers one of my favourite pieces of fiction, religion. This is a place-holding communication as I struggle to write three other communications of a more serious note. I know what I want to say in those words but words are the problem. You might have noticed I am not a natural wordsmith.

Nothing reported about the Pope criticising the death of many people or the use of weapons of mass destruction. The Massive Ordnance Air Bomb’s NAME shamed the pope. Perhaps the next bomb could be called “Get to heaven quicker”. Fuck you pope.

“I was ashamed when I heard the name,” the pontiff told an audience of students at the Vatican.

Nothing in the news about the thousands of priests accused of raping kids which the Vatican is actively covering up. Nothing about the misery and enforced poverty caused by a no-contraception rule. Nothing about the AIDS genocide caused by the no-contraception rule. Nothing about the deaths of babies at convents in Ireland. This man is meant to represent god on Earth. He represents an organisation of men who act just like men do when they are in charge – cunts.

God needs the police to investigate this because he gets really upset when people are mean about him. Oh, poor little god. He hates it when people express true things. I watched this speech a few years ago and I think what shocked people the most is how angry someone can be at a god who allows all the shit mentioned earlier to carry on. Why are people still going to catholic church? Why do they still give money when they can see the harm it does? Selfish wankers, that’s why.

January 9 2017January 8 2017

Beat Them Up

I need to vent some anger and rage. I’ve been so annoyed recently at what politics and society has become that it has to come out. Normally I can get away with a rant with friends at work or friends elsewhere, definitely not the family though, there are some relationships that probably would cope with that level of anger potentially aimed towards their actions.

I think 2016 has finally got to me. I’m in such an angry mood today.

— Ian Parish (@iparish) November 24, 2016

Now I’m picking on a soft target for my anger. Education news. And I hate talking about education. I’ve been involved in education since I was 4. I don’t have the answers but there are times when there’s plenty of bollocks and bullshit messing with kids learning things.

So, the BBC headline is:

You can go ahead and read the story if you wish, I’ll be here, waiting.

This is a classic case of “shit goes wrong therefore blame education”. This country’s education system gets blamed for an awful lot. If there’s a need to tweek the way people feel about things then why not introduce that into schools? The government has always done one of two things:

Blame the education system for not influencing pupils enough the right way.
Blame the education system for influencing pupils enough the wrong way.

You see, the government thinks that all teachers are lefties, pinkos, commies, or liberal. The government doesn’t like teachers having power over pupils because all teachers are, by definition, caring about the future and society as a whole. The government sees schools as hot beds of resistance to the progress of society. That’s why teacher are called upon to include more and more social manoeuvring in all that they do. The government recognises that we have influence and while we influence lots the wrong way we can influence almost nothing the correct way.

What you should do is have a look over headlines and see how often “we will get schools to deal with this” crops up. It’s almost as if it’s a way for governments to say “we are dealing with that at an early age so it’ll be ok”.

Right, Brexit. In my opinion what caused Brexit? fucking austerity and a political class that shows little regard for the common man. A political class out to promote itself and not actually work for society and the progress of all. A political class whipping up notions of acceptable fascism and racism and a political class who consistently use an “us and them” rhetoric.

So there’s a correlation with social deprivation and the Brexit vote. Which means there’s a correlation with schools. THAT’S NOT CAUSATION YOU FUCKING TWAT.

So, here’s some of my views [no, they aren’t social science or proper investigations, therefore they are anecdote, but I don’t care].

Society has no control over what influences kids these days, social media is what influences them. They don’t watch TV like I used to or chat to their mates.
In the old days music was a concern because teenagers were obsessed with it. Now it is social media. Music didn’t try and sell them fake news and bullshit.
I might have a particular class for four hours a week. There are about 25 kids in that class. I am meant to be able influence each of these kids?
Kids spend 5 hours a day in lessons. Maybe another 90 minutes in school. The school enforces some of society’s rules and expectations. But that’s not a major influence on them.
Education, in this country, is not prized or treated as a good thing. If you have a keen, educated society you are less religious, more socially aware and more understanding. You might even pay attention to politics and things.
Knowing things (the correct things) should be prized. YES there are things that are correct. There is a right way to find out these things.
Learning to critically think and appraise news sources needs to be a skill ALL people have before being allowed to vote.

The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange – wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against “Intelligence” when in fact I am a big fan!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017

Possibly a little controversial here, but let’s face it, this communication has wandered a great deal. We have UK citizens [sorry, but really it’s fucking SUBJECTS] voting about shit they don’t understand, BREXIT, the general populous voting on a subject that the media has consistently FAILED to educate the public about what the EU does. A public that has taken all the information un-critically and voted correspondingly.

We also have the next PRESIDENT of the world’s most powerful country telling the world that you should let people make up their own minds about what is true! Utter bullshit. People have to be informed and have the facts as best determined by fucking experts. You very much don’t let the people determine what is true. You have experts, people who understand things explain WHY things are true to people.

I despair.

December 19 2014December 24 2014

Apologies And Why They Annoy Me

I’m fed up with people, mostly MPs apologising for their dim-witted ill-informed opinions/behaviour. I taken some clips from the BBC website. Here they are:

So, these people feel that they did wrong and believe that apologising means it’s all ok. I think the recent spate of politicians apologising just shows how bad our representatives are [I’ve no evidence that apologies are becoming more frequent, just I am noticing it more]. If you do something wrong while in the position of public office, then fuck off and resign. Grow some balls. Become a better person.

If someone says something that they later regret [because it affects their position of power] then we should embrace what they say and use it to inform debate and discussion. I want sincere apologies and education. I want reformed behaviour. How do you show you are truly sorry? You reform.

An MP plays Candy Crush during a meeting. Why? What is wrong with his job/meeting/attention span? After our representatives are caught out they should use this as an opportunity to explain themselves, not run and hide behind an apology. The media should use this as a chance to inform and educate.

Tory Peer says the poor can’t cook. She apologises because that’s easier and quickly forgotten rather than explaining her comments and having an informed debate about why she said that. Is there a reason she believes this? Perhaps we should educate her and the rest of society. This gaff should have been used as a tool for informing people what is really going on in society and facing up to our collective responsibilities. Informed, evidence based discussion is how we change people’s minds. Apologising is the easy way out.

Image from #Rochester pic.twitter.com/rOjTgpskmF

— Emily Thornberry MP (@EmilyThornberry) November 20, 2014

This tweet caused no end of trouble for the MP. I don’t understand why. She tweeted a picture of a house from Rochester. It looked pretty standard to me. She apologised. That was easy. What we didn’t have was a debate, an informed discussion about what that picture meant. We didn’t use this tweet as a opportunity to educate and inform people. The mass media used “outrage” to force an apology rather than look into the deeper social issues. We shouldn’t pretend that houses like this don’t exist, we should work at getting everyone involved in our society.

My message here is that I want people to stop apologising for things they say or do. It’s easy to apologise. It’s easy to stand up and say sorry. What is harder is admitting you have biased or poor views of the reality and then trying to change future behaviour and inform and educate people.

“I deeply regret posting that naked picture of my cock on twitter and apologise for any offence caused” – a poor apology.

“I wish to inform you that I am a bigoted old man who lusts after young women. I thought that posting a picture of my cock would encourage women to want me back. I realise that I am the product of a mostly misogynistic world where women are treated like property and I will now work tirelessly to educate people and to improve the balance of the sexes within our patriarchal inherently sexist society. I have joined the following organisations and will form a political committee with powers to adjust laws and highlight the injustices we have in our society.” – this man would get my vote.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I’m annoyed by people apologising and thinking it’s all forgotten. I want apologies and then a CHANGE in behaviour. I want reformation. I want education of the issues. I don’t want these issues just dismissed with a simple apology.

I think this communication, as rambling as it is, goes with another to come. It will be titled OUTRAGE.

September 17 2014

Chin Strap

This really is a headline on the BBC News website. There’s a picture below this of a piece of chewing gum.

Apparently two engineers have taken a pre-existing material and attached it to a chin strap. It then produced some electricity when the user used their jaw and it could feasibly be used to charge a device.

I don’t even know where to start being annoyed at this. While I am nearly impressed with their idea it seems ludicrous to me that you would wear something on your FACE that then required you to use your jaw constantly. SURELY there are other parts of a body that move further and more often. This would only work if you have to wear a chin strap for safety reasons anyway [definitely not Sikhs].

Most of my anger remains directed at the BBC. They are the premier news reporting service in the UK and yet they constantly produce shit like this. Is it really someone’s job to read science journals and then EXTRAPOLATE wildly to make some form of headline that will attract readers. I hate it. It’s lazy and not what a NEWS service is for.

Let’s see what the final line of the article is:

“This is just a proof of concept,” Dr Voix emphasised. “The power is very limited at the moment.”

If you have to include this in your story then it is NOT a story. Report on real science responsibly.

July 7 2014

False Debate

Well, I have had this communication as a draft title since 8 April 2014. I thought I should write some more on sceptical thinking matters since I wrote the piece on osteopathy. I have returned to this matter today because for the last few days the virtual world has been lit up by the news that the BBC are no longer going to be allowed to have quacks and frauds on TV programmes to give the “two sides to every story”.

In a nutshell you take a generally accepted view on reality and interview an expert in that subject and then because you can’t appear to be biased you give a nutter the chance to speak about what they think. So you might have someone on the news or science programme discussing evolution and to “balance” the argument (there is no argument, evolution is pretty much done and dusted) you get some religious nut who really thinks the Earth is 6000 years old and therefore evolution can’t exist.

When a view of reality is considered fact (as far as we can accept it) you then have to understand that it takes a huge amount of evidence to over-throw those views and not just someone from a lobbying group going on about how climate change doesn’t exist.

Here’s the link to the Telegraph’s new story.

Just in case you were wondering, here’s some things that are scientifically accepted:

Gravity
Evolution by natural selection
Immunisations
Anthropogenic Climate Change

Here are some things that are considered bullshit:

Young Earth creationism
Homoeopathy
Chiropractic
Osteopathy
Reflexology
Zero loss power machines
Astrology
Crystal energy

Here are some things you are welcome to argue the toss about but there is never going to be proof of the positive:

Existence of god and or gods
Telepathic powers
Mediumship
The “soul”

April 5 2014April 5 2014

Spot The News

Can you spot the news in the following BBC Website clip?

NO?

Neither could I. This appears at first reading of the headline to indicate that they’ve found a signal from the airplane. Then you read the next bit and realise it isn’t. Maybe, just maybe the BBC should have waited for the Chinese to confirm something. The endless speculation about this airplane has driven me to indifference.

Here’s a crazy idea for the BBC News people:

How about you report something when it really is new and confirmed from two independent sources.

Can you believe that this organisation is the pinnacle of reporting in this country? No, once again neither can I. I have pretty much given up following the news. I get most of my information from the following sources:

The Today Programme on Radio 4
The New Quiz on BBC Radio 4
Private Eye

Here’s a recent tweet of mine to show I don’t hold The Today Programme in high esteem all the time:

Here’s a link to a recent rant about BBC News Reporting. I find that I get the general idea of what is going on in this country by listening to and reading satire. While listening to the radio I used to think that people were being a bit harsh in their picking on Ed Milliband’s voice, but that was until I heard him. Thank goodness for satire. Putting the stories in their place.

I am sure this isn’t the last of my rants and moans about news reporting. There’s plenty more to come in future communications. Happy weekend.

January 29 2014February 13 2014

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh

I don’t understand the logic or reason behind this:

My questions are:

What colour would 54.4% be?
What colour would 59.15% be?
What colour would 64.5% be?

Why are they coloured using whole numbers to differentiate the boundaries and then why tenths for the light blue-ish colour?

Ohhh, I think I get it. Because the national average is 59.2% that means it’s ok to have three colours below that and only two above it.

Does this chart say that no local authorities managed to get the average but some were below it and some were above it?

There are about 52 areas below average. There are way more (I got bored of counting) above that. Does this mean there is positive skew?

Do you know what?

I CAN’T TELL FROM THIS DIAGRAM. IT TELLS ME NOTHING OF ANY USE.

November 23 2013

Dr Who

I tweeted about giving up Dr Who and it seems fair to give you more information, dear Fooyah fans.

I’m (most likely) middle-aged. I grew up believing in The Doctor. The glory days of Tom Baker as the time traveller. I liked Peter Davison as the Doctor and also watched a little of Sylvester McCoy. By this time I was a little older and TV had outgrown its purposes of entertaining me for a while.

I remember looking forward to the Doctor Who film in the mid 90s. I quite liked it but had hoped it would prove to be enough for a new series. The things of wonder from my childhood still provide wonder as long as I don’t return to them because the adult mind is so different to that of a young boy. Things I thought were great don’t always stand the test of time.

When the BBC returned the series in the 2000s I was hooked. It was great. Funny, exciting and what it should be. Ecclestone was good and although I was rather shocked when he left I still enjoyed the story line with Tennant. Personally I found that the series peaked with the discovery of who the Face of Bo really was. It was such a revelation that I can’t wait to watch the first few series with my children when they are older just to see their faces at that point. I think that occurs about 4 seasons into the new imagining of Dr Who.

When Matt Smith took over I had no problem accepting him as the Doctor and I didn’t stop watching because of him. I stopped watching because the plots and solutions to universe ending crises seemed too thin and similar. I don’t need the Doctor to save the existence of the entire universe once a series. I just want intelligent scripts and reasonable effects. The sonic screw driver seemed to have become such a plot device that it could do anything, boring. The Doctor would think for a while, rush off while our companions are in mortal danger and fix everything with a zap from the screwdriver. More boring. Deus Ex Machina. Boring.

I gave up watching it. I only have a certain amount of time I give over to television and Doctor Who dropped of the list of things I like to watch. There, said it for the world to see. I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be. Put that in your screwdriver and smoke it.

So, here’s W.A.S.P. singing “I don’t need no Doctor” [yes, I know that’s a double negative but you know what it means].

October 6 2013October 6 2013

Shame On The BBC

It’s a crying shame.

I had intended to use this site to moan about various BBC news articles where the reporting was poor. It is quite clear to me now that if I pointed out every problem with just the news section I would have to leave my current job and spend all my time informing you about how bad the News section of the BBC is. It is truly awful. However, it is the least awful source of news within the UK. I occasionally look at the HuffPo app on my phone and it reports complete bollocks and also has blog articles masquerading as news items. The BBC quite clearly feels it is in a free market and that readership or just spouting news for 24 hours a day is the most important thing. Well, it’s not. I would quite happily watch BBC news if it was only on twice a day and not around the clock as it currently is. Let’s get this straight, for most of the day: nothing happens. Nothing worth reporting.
Breathe.
Calm.

My latest problem is with one line in the new Atlantis series. Jason says to Pythagoras something along the lines of

Well, you and your triangles have been boring school children silly for thousands of years.

This is utter populist arse. Pythagoras’ Theorem occurs everywhere and is even used within relativistic equations. The music work Mr P did founded European music. All the great things that have happened can be linked in someway to Pythagoras and the early pioneers of the importance of mathematics. Perhaps Jason should have said:

We owe so much to your thoughts and insight, it’s a crying shame most people don’t value mathematics.

There are enough problems caused by a pride in how poor we are at mathematics and script writers don’t need to add to the perception that this is ok.
Wake up and smell the importance of mathematical literacy.

Rock is my life and this is my song
It’s a crying shame
That some of us have not survived
No use in asking how it happened
But very few are left alive

Bachman Turner Overdrive

November 21 2012

BBC News Comments

It had been my intention a while ago to comment on BBC News articles every now and then. See my initial news communication. I am going to try and resurrect this over the next while but if I am being honest I think that:

There’s just too many stories on the BBC News website that are clearly sensationalism and non-stories.

So, I will comment on some over the next few weeks and see if I get a severe reaction to the general anger that these “news” stories give me. If I find that I am too angry and can’t stop moaning about these things then it will be time to quit and find another niche for my considerable intellect and comment.

May 22 2012

BBC Headline #9

Headline from the BBC website.

Bogus PPI Complaints “Hit 6000”

My issue with this as a headline is that it is plain wrong. I know that they put the hit 6000 in quotes and therefore can pretty much say whatever they want because nobody believes anything in quotes, but quite clearly the text in the article states that it is 5661 bogus complaints. I’d argue that this is not 6000.
Perhaps I’m being petty but I always assumed the BBC had particular standards but it is clear they do not and are quite willing to “lie” to make a headline. In reality the real story is that there has been such huge miss-selling of PPI and that the banks are now making massive losses to cover paying people back thier own money. There were just more that 157,000 complaints last year (from the article) and so the bogus claim level is running at 4%. Whether that is a lot or not I’m not sure. There are probably people out there who don’t understand finance and also some people out there are complete blaggers.
I think the BBC should campain and help people understand the real story of our capitalist banks rather than sensationalise such a small part of the PPI scandal.

April 19 2012

BBC Headline #8

Headline from the BBC website.

Scientists create “Dr Who sonic screwdriver”

This fails on the following levels:

Quotation in Headline
Extrapolation
Bull

Quotation in Headline
~~I’m pretty sure they used the quotation marks here to show that they “just made it up”~~. Having looked at the article the reference to Dr Who was made by one of the researchers who is obviously trying to get into the news cycle so he can keep his research grant. In reality it’s an ultrasound device that can turn objects under specific conditions not just make them move backwards and forwards as sound waves would normally do. Now this is very clever but I’m pretty sure that Dr Who doesn’t use an ultrasonic screwdriver. All the references in the shows are to a sonic screwdriver that is the biggest deus ex machina device I have seen and turned me off the show.

Extrapolation
The ~~BBC writers~~ researchers obviously got a little excited and decided that if they followed the technological line for a few thousand iterations then we could link this current device to the Doctor’s sonic screw driver. This is rubbish. It’s like saying that because cars have improved their fuel efficiency over the last decade we should be able to travel miles on a thimble of fuel some time in the future.

Bull
It’s just rubbish to suggest that this device is anywhere near a sonic screwdriver.