Being Bored

I have spent some time recently learning to be bored. I guess what I really mean is trying to learn to give up social media and put my phone down.

[I’d like to propose that mobile phones are no longer called phones, or telephones. They are now Portable Digital Devices and I rarely use mine as a phone. These devices need re-branding. The name needs to change to reflect their usage. I suggest PDA. This is controversial because PDAs were used in the early 90s and they died. They didn’t succeed because mobile phones came and took over. That is capitalism or progress I guess. So, Portable Digital Assistants need a revival. It more accurately describes the function of the rectangle of black in your palm.]

There are four main reasons that I have opted to try and get bored more often. One is Brexit, then there is Trump along with all the “stupid” and finally there is All The HATE.

I have a couple of twitter accounts. In one of them I follow a few people and use it to communicate with friends. The other account is full of random people and politicians who I follow for the news and pictures of aeroplanes. Over the last couple of years I have noticed that my overall personal mood has reflected the level of crap I see on twitter. I would look at my twitter feed every hour or so and catch up with what’s happening. But quite often the anger, rage and shock supplied by people on twitter was reactionary. It wasn’t considered or sensible.

I would react emotionally. I would re-tweet people I follow. I would become annoyed and enraged at the injustices I saw. It felt like everything I held to be good about the world was deteriorating.

When you read tweets about what racist shit the foreign secretary has said, try to understand trump, see the hatred towards minorities, see the hatred of the religious, see the twisted responses by people with internet-balls, see the hatred and such low level of discourse, then you start to feel worried about the state of the world.

If you can’t manage a walk to the corner shop without staring at your phone, then maybe you need to stop and put it down.

I removed the other account on from my phone about a month ago. I also have stopped the side-bar on my PC from popping up with that twitter account. I try to get my news from a couple of websites and the radio.

I constantly worry that I am missing out on a gorgeous photograph of an airplane. I worry that something might be happening in the world that needs my attention. This is FOMO I guess. I understand the troubles of generations younger than me who have never known anything else. That constant connectivity to a world of opinion and thought. Here’s the news for you people: humans aren’t “built” to cope with all that. Also, and this might be news to you, getting bored is a good thing.

I will add some provisos to that last statement. Make sure your mental and emotional health is good before trying to get bored. You don’t want to end up in a cycle of bad thoughts while out and about doing nothing.

Our best ideas and processing comes when we are bored. We have the chance to think and ponder and imagine. We should learn to put PDAs down. For an hour at a time to start. Then we can increase that. I’ve tried to leave my phone in the other room. I’m almost at that stage when I sometimes can’t remember where my phone is in my house. I hope to get better at this over the next while. Keep a book nearby, you know a printed book.

It’s important to switch off. To chill out. To wander the streets/countryside while pondering.

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.

March 10 2018

Natural Consequence

Listening to the radio this morning and during the “What The Papers Say” section the presenters discussed an article in the Daily Mail. Now, clearly, anything in the DM is utter bullshit and should be ignored but I couldn’t help but be curious at the language the news BBC presenters used. It went along the lines of:

Councils are going to charge more for car parking . . . . . this will affect Sunday shoppers and church goers.

I’m not sure I agree with their assessment. I think it will affect people who want to park their cars. What those people do after they have parked their cars is entirely up to them. If you are using a service then you should expect to pay for it somehow, this seems a sensible approach to me. I’m don’t even want to get started on the righteousness invested in “church goers” as if they should have the freedom to do their religioning. I’ll shout this out later but going to church regularly doesn’t make you any more “moral” than the next person. May I kindly remind you of which system of moral belief has spent the last fifty years systematically covering up child abuse: step up the catholic church.

Councils charging more for the services they provide is a natural consequence of the austerity measures imposed on this country by successive governments since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Local councils have had their central government funding cut massively and so they need to either raise more money by themselves or cut services. It’s ingenious because it keeps the anger at local politicians rather than those in Westminster as your local council has to charge more but it’s NOT their fault.

Austerity has royally screwed this country over and the natural consequence of less money around was Brexit. The Tories have imposed their version of hatred on the peoples of this land and will make us all poorer.

Just for amusement here are some quotes from the DM website article about the parking charges and my comments:

Motorists face steep hikes in parking charges to plug holes in council budgets.

True, but no explanation about why the government isn’t funding the councils.

Some town halls are bringing in fees on Sundays to catch shoppers and churchgoers.

Replace “catch” with “charge for services”.

A number of local authorities are in extreme financial difficulties with much of the pressure coming from the rising cost of social care.

Because we don’t want to help those who are less well off or damaged within society. We want to park for nothing. The pressure is coming from chronic underfunding and rising inflation costs.

‘The war on motorists has got to stop,’ said Tory MP Robert Halfon.

“WAR”. Ha ha. Making people pay for a service they use is considered “WAR”. Perhaps the Tory MP could argue for increased central government funding for the councils to ease the legitimate parking charges. I hadn’t noticed a “war” on motorists. I’d love to hear an expanded explanation about that.

Dover and Bristol are planning to reintroduce Sunday charges in car parks as well as on streets.

So why the fake outrage? It’s hardly a war is it if these charges were in place before.

‘When will councils recognise that growing their income depends on low-cost and accessible parking, not knee-jerk cash grabs from hard-working motorists?’

English councils made a £819million surplus from parking fines, fees and permits during the 2016/17 financial year.

“Cash grabs” interpreted means paying for services. “Knee-jerk” implies a sudden change and easy decision. I suspect that having to raise charges is the last thing the councils want to do but is a necessity. The £819 million figure is disingenuous as it includes parking fines and is spread over the whole of England. Let’s face it, if you park somewhere you shouldn’t and get caught then pay the fine. There is no distinction in the article about how much income comes from those who break the rules. This figure use is designed to increase rage at councils rather than place that anger where it is deserved. This is what happens when your media is biased. To balance this I will probably have to have a look at a left leaning newspaper and so I promise to do that at some time.

Ninety-five per cent of town halls plan to increase council tax next month. Meanwhile, bin collections, libraries, social care and other services have been slashed.

NO DISCUSSION OF AUSTERITY MEASURES IMPOSED BY CENTRAL GOVERNMENT.

The number of households enjoying weekly rubbish rounds has plummeted by a third since 2010, the National Audit Office revealed this week.

OK, and this is important because? . . . . . . .

There are three paragraphs defending the action and it would be remiss of me to neglect to mention them.

Martin Tett of the Local Government Association said: ‘Local authorities remain on the side of hard-pressed motorists, shoppers and businesses and do not set parking charges to make a profit.

‘Car parks cost taxpayers money to maintain and improve and any surplus is spent on essential transport projects, such as tackling the £12billion roads repair backlog and creating new parking spaces.

‘To protect such provision, and in the face of an overall funding gap that will exceed £5billion by 2020, councils are being forced to make difficult decisions.’

These are followed directly by a paragraph telling of charges increasing in Bournemouth. The overall “reporting” in this article is designed to keep people angry, to keep them annoyed at “social costs”, to keep them thinking that motorists are hard workers and shouldn’t have to pay for these things. This is social engineering on a massive scale and it keeps happening in EVERY article in the piece of shit newspaper and website. The DM claims that the web version is an entirely separate entity but as Private Eye points out they both share the same executive editor.

The DM and Express along with other media have used their positions and influence over the last 12 years to engineer a social divide, to encourage hatred, to encourage an insular approach. They are the scum of this country. They are the ones fostering hatred towards people who are different or have needs. They promote the entitled view they so desperately mock.

It is time for me to stop or I’ll end up in a full blown rant and that’s not needed on a Saturday morning. I’ll leave you to ponder the use of language by our media.

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.

March 15 2017

Irresponsible

I know they are the best we have but sometimes there needs to be some serious editorial control from the BBC because they publish utter rubbish like this:

This is the first article in the Health News section for today. Click on the story and you get this:

First up, a warning. The word CHIROPRACTIC already flags this up as a terrible article. The only responsible news item that mentions CHIROPRACTIC is one where there is a decent discussion of why it is rubbish and doesn’t work.

Rather than get enraged at the poor reporting lets look at the data and quotations included in the article.

First the BCA is quoted as saying that clothes can be bad for us. Then in the next paragraph:

However, the research has been rejected by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and other back experts.

They say we shouldn’t be afraid of our clothes.

Real doctors and scientists say this is bollocks. Then there follows plenty of gumpf from the BCA about what items can be damaging. While the BBC do “balance” this with more quotations from proper scientists they have already done the damage by publishing this shit.

In a section called “What’s the reality?” [it’s not reality, it’s written by the BCA] the BBC write:

The BCA’s poll of 1,062 people found 73% had suffered back pain and 33% were not aware that clothing could affect their back, neck or posture. They warn that any item of clothing that restricts movement, or that leads people to stand or walk unnaturally, can have a negative impact on the posture, back or neck.

There are major problems here. First they say a survey found that people have suffered back pain. So fucking what? I’ve suffered back pain. Most people have. Then, apparently, one third of people aren’t aware that clothing can affect your back, neck or posture. Well, given it’s not a thing they can’t know about it can they? This article relies on people being unable to understand a causation-correlation problem. Surveys are the worst of scientific evidence, but slightly better than anecdote.

At the base of the BBC article there is a quotation from the head of practice at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy who says that disseminating this false information could lead to real problems. The BBC need to get an editor who understands a load of bollocks when it is written and when to pull it. I am not going to look but I bet there are loads of news articles online and in print running this bollocks too.

Steve Tolan, head of practice at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, says “reading scare stories about skinny jeans is probably more harmful than actually wearing them.

“People should wear whatever is comfortable and they feel good in – skinny jeans and hoodies included. They certainly shouldn’t fear that their clothes are going to do them harm as there is no evidence for that.

“What is probably more relevant is whether a woman thinks that they are wearing something that is damaging their back, says Dr O’Keeffe.

“The beliefs about the jeans and bags may not only be incorrect, but detrimental if they cause worry about the spine being fragile and discourage women from moving normally and wearing what they want.

“Misconceptions regarding the causes and treatments of low back pain are widespread. This story about skinny jeans and heavy bags is just another myth in the long list of myths about back pain.

“It fits with the misconception that load and movement are bad and that the spine is a vulnerable structure that is easily damaged. Strong evidence shows that this is not true.”

I thought I ought to look at the BCA article or press release to see what it said. So I went to their website.

I clicked on the link, which I shall paste here:

https://chiropractic-uk.co.uk/womens-back-heal%E2%80%A6ing-sake-fashion/

I get the following page:

~~So, I can’t even read the actual article.~~

Scratch that. I found the proper link using their site search. I hope others don’t bother.

Women’s back health suffering for the sake of fashion

The “research” was probably a telephone or internet based survey. The BCA don’t link to the actual results. There is so much wrong with this article it infuriates me. As my tweet earlier said:

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
Research from the BCA! Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

— Ian Parish (@iparish) March 15, 2017

This “news” article is an advert masquerading as serious science. It’s bullshit. It’s designed to make people think “oh, I feel like that”, then they visit the BCA website and try to find a local chiropractor. This will cause proper injuries as chiropractic DOESN’T work.

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 24 2014December 24 2014

OUTRAGE

[The title needs to be shouted in an Ian Paisley type voice.]

Have a look at these:

From my humble point of view it seems that we are outraged often these days. The media jump on the OUTRAGE bandwagon pretty quickly. The media believe they represent our views, what the population think. But they don’t, they just tell us what to think. The media is controlled by few, very rich people who want to keep us supressed and the politicians jumping from one thing to the next. The politicians have to be seen to be doing something. Using “outrage” allows the media to claim “public opinion” but I doubt they’ve really surveyed this. It’s what the string pullers want, not what the public want.

I’m not happy with the definitions given by the Cambridge Dictionary. Outrage to me is more than anger. It’s almost violent. Nothing seems to make me this angry. Perhaps I am too old and have an aire of cynicism about me now, although I feel I’ve been like this all my life.

I would like the media to gain a sense of proportion [and for Christmas I want a unicorn]. Let’s use “outrage” when it means something like Blair taking us into an illegal way. Let’s use outrage when it’s something really worth fighting for. Let’s keep the public informed and tackle the politicians when they aren’t fighting for social justice and freedom for all.

[happy christmas]

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.

November 26 2014November 26 2014

The Extreme Rule – A Gaussian Explanation

Why do nutters make the headlines? Why is it reportable if a 13 year old kid decided to go and fight for Islamic State? There are plenty of people who have decided to go and fight, it shouldn’t surprise us that one of them turns out to be a youngster. It WASN’T news. People lied about their ages and signed up for WW1, that was seen as patriotic [different issue though].

The crazy 5% of our population seems to inhabit 95% of our news time and concern. This is pathetic. The news reporting for the Islamic killer kid should have been more realistic, along the lines of “This kid has decided to do go to Syria and fight for a cause he believes in but there are approximately twenty million children who haven’t”.

Crazy person drives down the wrong carriageway on the motorway, it happens and makes the news. The reporting is never “out of 200 million journeys this has happened only once”.

Here’s a diagram to show what I mean [with apologies to Karl Gauss].

The continuum in the top graph is meant to describe how there are stupid people who do stupid stuff and there are nutters who know what they are doing but do it anyway. 95% of the population are somewhere in the middle.

The media seems obsessed with crazy or stupid people who, by definition, do crazy or stupid stuff. This is made even more evident by the amount of this shit on the internet. There is never a realistic version explaining that actually this is a rare event and we shouldn’t be bothered by it.

Humans have a very poor “risk calculating” ability. We are unable to understand probability correctly. Partly because it actually gets quite hard and complicated and partly because we are shielded from correct interpretation of risk by a culpable media.

Some things we don’t seem to understand:

Flying is safer than crossing the road
MMR is safe
The difference between relative risk and absolute risk
Crime is falling
Education is a good thing [the stupid are celebrated]
Weather is not climate

A final hurrah before I go and do some ironing:

Q: If you have twenty people, how many different soccer teams could you create from those people (if you specified which position they played in)?

A: 6,704,425,728,000

Wow, that’s a lot you should say.

Q: If you have twenty people, how many different soccer teams could you create from those people?

A: 167,960

Q: Suppose you were the captain. How many different teams could you create from the remaining nineteen people?

A: 92,378

See, you are useless at numbers and probability.

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 21 2014

It’s What Happens

I teach. It’s what I do. I teach teenagers. A lot of people I meet consider this to be a mad career. Teenagers are horrible. They wonder why I don’t teach younger kids. I teach because of a long series of accidents and uninformed choices throughout my life. However, after starting my teacher training in 1995 I found that I loved being in the classroom and working with kids. I consider myself utterly fortunate to have discovered a career that I enjoy so much. I have often said to myself that the day I “have to go to work” is the day I quit, at the moment I still get up every (working) day and “go to school”.

Teenagers are hilarious. They try to argue and make valid points, they are starting to learn the craft of putting together valid arguments and come to valid conclusions. Some can do this well, others take quite a bit longer. They often try to communicate their thoughts are struggle to do so. Daily I am involved in creating new thoughts and ideas and methods for explanation. This is great. It’s exciting and when the teenagers mess it up it’s just funny. I work with some of the brightest and [unintentionally] hilarious young people.

You’ll have to take this on trust but having a teenager try to explain his/her actions in a logical manner leaves me laughing (inside rather than in their face). Although my role is to teach mathematics I also aim to offer up techniques for questioning and finding out what really happens, how to get evidence, how to appraise arguments. I see this as far more important than the actual mathematics I teach. If I can help people seek their own evidence and make their own decisions then I have succeeded in improving their contributions to future society.

The title of this communication is “It’s What Happens”. I’d just like to point out that society seems to have a massive “downer” on teenagers.

Said Socrates [not the footballer]:

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.

This is a quite well known quotation. It’s definitely gives the impression that we hate teenagers and have done for many years of society. There are often modern headlines in the newspapers and web-news-services where the implication is that modern society is going to ruin because of a type of behaviour of teenagers or young people. This is utter rubbish.

Here’s some cases of behaviour of the youth ruining society:

Pinball machines in the 1940s
Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1950s
Sex and drugs in the 1960s
Punk in the 1970s
Alcopops in the 1990s
Mobile phones in the 2000s

Most of the people “corrupted” by these forms of behaviour are now the ESTABLISHMENT. I’m pretty sure that if you look hard enough you will see that society isn’t ruined. My theory is as follows:

People who write opinions and the news are jealous of teenagers. They don’t like the freedom, the care-less-ness, the risk taking, the fun that teenagers have. It reminds them of what they have lost and the dreams that have dimmed. It reminds them of mortgages, children and politics. They want to be young again.

The constant dislike of teenagers in the press is a constant of society, it will always be there. Are the youth terrible? Are the youth poorly behaved? No, not really. Teenagers are meant to be restless and care-free. It means they move on and develop in to fully functioning adults. It’s what happens.

July 10 2014

Daily Fail

I shouldn’t really pick on the Daily Mail because it is like shooting fish in a barrel. This was the MAIN headline earlier today:

Firstly, my response to this is “you are stupid and you should say NO to her”.

A bigger issue with this, apart from the celebration of the outliers of society rather than concentrating on reinforcing the good of society, is that this was the FIRST story on the Daily Fail website today. I’ll say that again: The FIRST.

Today there are massive public sector strikes, the government are bringing in a snooping law and there are wars still killing people around the world. Even the soccer world cup is on at the moment and this was what the Daily Fail chose to inform the world about. Tossers.

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.

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.

January 4 2012January 5 2012

BBC Headlines

This is, hopefully, going to be a semi-regular blog post topic. I’ve decided now is the time to give this website some meaning other than my vanity project! It’s taken a while to think about and find my area of “expertise” but this is it:

Rubbish headlines on the BBC News website

It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel! I used to have an image of the website here but have decided it was a copyright infringement. All headlines will be linked to the original stories.

Spiderman web ‘closer to reality’

Headline taken from the BBC News iPhone app. As a first example this is a goody. We have two main headline issues:

Unreasonable extrapolation
Quotation in the headline

Unreasonable Extrapolation
Take a science paper and then make the most extreme possible prediction based very loosely on the science. As an example, lemon juice killing cancer cells in a petri dish does not lead to drinking lemon juice curing cancer in a human.

Quotation in Headline
Anyone could be asked for a quotation and then that used in a headline. Quotations need to be in context so the reader can decide their validity. For example a peddler of quackery might insist (incorrectly) that there is plenty of evidence for the efficacy of homoeopathic products but that does not mean that should be in a headline. People rely on headlines being true.

Spiderman web “closer to reality”

I don’t think anyone would be taken in by this headline. Get the credit card out! I want a wrist ejaculator now so I can fly from building to building.