Category: Social

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Heuristic

This Fooyah communication is going to deal, on a basic level, with too much stuff. It is part of a series that I have been working up to for a long time explaining the way I think about things and how it is the correct way to think about things. I expect to expand on many of these themes over the coming dark months.

My recent communications including those about Osteopathy, Special K, Multitasking, Losing Mass and my Homoeopathic Discussion have all required a reasonable amount of knowledge and also some research.

I often mention that all claims should be appraised critically. I am not advocating cynicism, merely that we have the right to reserve judgement until we have investigated things ourselves. I think there are some basic areas of life where we can do this with little effort. Most claims on adverts can be investigated to see how they stand up to scrutiny. Claims made by friends can be investigated using the internet and maybe even a library!

I have been listening to sceptical podcasts for about 8 years now, moving from one to another as I hear about new ones. I have heard many discussions about the evidence for certain claims made in all walks of life and I think I have a good grasp of reality. Spending all that time listening to people explain logical fallacies and scientific evidence and how we know what we know has given me a good tool box to use to ask the rights questions and find out for myself. I have also read a number of scientific books explaining the meaning of evidence and the scientific method. Again, these have given me a good understanding of what it takes to be a sceptical thinker. I am, of course, open to biases like all people but I try to use the evidence available to question those and seek what is the real world.

Now, I can’t be an expert in many things, in fact I would argue I am an expert in none. I have developed heuristics. I have tools that I use to shortcut my knowledge process. There are certain people and presenters whom I trust and when they say they have looked at the evidence and come to a certain conclusion then I listen. I understand fully that one day they may be wrong but their credentials are good for now.

I also rely on the self correcting nature of science. About a year ago there was a story that made the news all over the world. Scientists had discovered particles travelling faster than the speed of light. This headline appeared everywhere. I was instantly worried as nothing should be able to travel faster than the speed of light [information can’t if you want to get technical]. The scientists weren’t that sure of their results and had opened the problem out to the press and the world, but it was reported as fact. Over the next year many people investigated it and they found the mistake. The particles hadn’t travelled past Einstein. Was this celebrated in the world’s press as a great achievement of the scientific method? No. It was consigned to page 13 in a tiny paragraph. Science corrects itself, that’s the great thing about it.

If I hear a claim that I think is dubious or not, then I do not pass instant judgement. I will investigate myself if it is approachable and see what the evidence is. If it is beyond my understanding then I will rely on others within the community to offer their understanding of what the evidence is and what that means.

In the case of news reporting around the world it is hard to investigate this myself and so I have to rely on the news organisations. This is why I look at quality broadsheet websites and the BBC website. I often rant about the BBC New service as they are meant to be the best but they fail [in my view] so often. For their “what’s going on in the world” section I have to trust them at the moment. There isn’t really any other news organisation that is comparable. It will be interesting over the next few years as social media tries to form a coherent news machine, but I fear it will be controlled by corporations and governments, restricting the views and news that we see.

We all have heuristics. Mine takes me on a journey of learning to seek the evidence.

The great thing about science is that it is right whether you agree with it or not.

Places to seek the truth:

Read some books:

By Robert Park
Voodoo Science: The Road from foolishness to Fraud (Oxford, 2000)
Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science (Princeton, 2008)

By Carl Sagan
Demon Haunted World

By Ben Goldacre
Bad Science
Bad Pharma

By Michael Shermer
Why People Believe Weird Things

These books will start to give you the mental tools to evaluate and critically appraise information that is presented to you. This is not an easy journey, takes time and is never complete.

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Special K

Only a minor rant today about how effective advertising is and how our views of the world are shaped by what we are told rather than what we try to find out for ourselves using sceptical thinking tools.

Special K is a breakfast cereal made by Kellogg’s. The adverts on television promote Special K as a healthy alternative to other breakfasts and good for losing weight. Most of the adverts have a good looking woman in a red swimming suit enjoying life to the full. The message is clear:

Eat Special K and lose weight, be healthy and live a wonderful life.

As far as I can tell, Kellogg’s are perfectly able to make these claims because they all mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The adverts make no particular claims that would require evidence, so I [grumpily] admit that the adverts themselves are perfectly ok to broadcast.

If you want to find out more about the sexual views and (non) medical ideas of the man who invented Corn Flakes then please look here. I am going to look solely at the information I can find about Kellogg’s cereals.

If you want to lose weight then you need to follow this principle:

Calories in should be lower than calories out.

I’ve explained this before in this communication. Therefore you would expect that Special K has significantly lower energy content that other cereals made by Kellogg’s. Let’s see.

Special K Nutrition Panel
Special K Nutrition Panel

As you can see here, 100 grams of Special K contains 375 kcal. To burn that much energy off you would have to walk/run around 4 kilometres. Now, let’s see what Kellogg’s Original Corn Flakes contains:

Corn Flakes Nutrition
Corn Flakes Nutrition

I’m sorry this isn’t the actual panel from Kellogg’s but their website wasn’t working properly and I couldn’t get the information. Let’s read what this information tells us.

CORN FLAKES HAS FEWER CALORIES THAN SPECIAL K

Holy Cow! How does that happen? The adverts tell us one thing but in reality the truth is completely the reverse. I’m pretty sure that Special K tastes like cardboard too, so perhaps everyone should just swap to standard Corn Flakes. In fact when we look at the energy content of other Kellogg’s products we can see that there isn’t a great deal of difference in energy terms.

Crunchy Nut Nutrition
Crunchy Nut Nutrition
Special K with extra crap
Special K with extra crap

So, 100 grams of these cereals are all around 380 kcal. It doesn’t make a great deal of difference which one you eat. However, I am not sure of 100g of Corn Flakes LOOKS the same amount in a bowl compared to 100g of flakes with extra sugar coating. It could be that you will fill the bowl to the same level but end up eating many more calories because the coated flakes are more massive. This is a test I might do one day.

Also, I am not commenting on the extra sugars you will eat if you have sugar coated cereal. This is not a communication about how healthy a particular cereal is, it’s about the energy content and the impression given by advertising.

So, what should we learn from this? I think this shows clearly that advertising works extremely well at forming opinions about certain products and their effects on us in terms of health. ALL advertising claims should be taken sceptically until you have investigated them for yourself. Don’t dismiss or accept things straight away. It is perfectly OK for you to think or say:

That sounds interesting but I’ll form my own opinion once I’ve investigated it a little more.

In fact, that is generally a good approach to life itself.

 

One more thing. Anti-aging creams can legally ONLY advertise themselves as anti-aging if and only if they contain a form of UV sun protection. There is little evidence that any of the other stuff they put in creams will protect your skin from the 3/5/7 signs of aging.

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Multi Tasking

There’s a common myth that humans can multi-task and work well at all the tasks upon which they are concentrating. First, let’s discuss the term multi-task. It’s derived from computer speak then best definition is:

apparent performance by an individual of handling more than one task at the same time.

Now, I am going to mention what the science tells us about multi-tasking. When I say science in any of my communications I mean the broad consensus of the outcomes of scientific studies. I don’t mean just what a single scientist or person says, I aim to give you the CONSENSUS. Over time science has looked at things, asked questions and tried to answer them. The human endeavour has produced, over time, a consensus on how reality works. When we find errors we correct them. Science is a self correcting process. If things are wrong, science will correct them. The consensus changes with our latest understanding of what is correct. You will always be able to find a scientist who will disagree with the consensus, especially with politically charged ideas [anthropogenic global climate change], but the consensus is important as it gives us the best ideas of how things work.

OK, my research here is mostly from Wikipedia. I am perfectly aware that this can be a site that has reliability issues, but on matters of science I think it is a good start point. I would NOT look at Wikipedia to get a balanced view of politics or people, but on science issues it is very good.

There has been a reasonable amount of research into human multi-tasking and the results of these experiments indicate that although we can switch tasks quite quickly we can perform none at the best of our ability. If you multitask you are going to do all the jobs to a poorer standard than if you concentrate on a single thing at a time. Moreover, if you wish to complete all tasks to a good ability then you will get them done quicker if you concentrate on a single task at a time.

Our brain is NOT a computer and the analogy fails all the time if it is thought of as a computer. Our memory is remarkably plastic, our brain function is plastic and our concentration can only really be on one thing. If you start reading about how our brains work and the amount of information they ignore and just make up you will be very surprised.

There is no evidence that there is a gender difference in multi-tasking, so if people say women are good at it you should correct them. You should also correct people who say they can multitask. Point out the evidence says that you will perform the tasks less well than if you cover them individually. These people will try to argue from personal experience but they would be wrong to do so. We are very subject to confirmation bias and incorrect thoughts that personal experience is pretty much always subjective. The reality is often different – just remember that dancing bear in the basketball players video.

I was going to give you personal examples of failures to multitask, but my previous paragraph excludes me from doing so. In which case I will just give you some more general ideas to confirm in your heads that what I say is generally true [I’m using your preponderance to have confirmation bias as a route to accepting this communication].

Ever been driving and talking or doing something and then suddenly thought: I don’t remember the last mile of driving?

Ever phased out of a conversation because something is happening in the background?

If you talk to people who design cockpits for airplanes they will always talk about reducing the pilot work-load. This is so that the pilot can concentrate on flying the plane rather than have to worry about checking things all the time and flicking switches. If the pilot has a reduced work-load s/he will be better at doing his/her job properly and being aware of the important things.

When driving cars it is important to concentrate on the driving aspect of being on the road and not other stuff happening in the car. It is your job to make sure you are safe to you and the other road users around you. If things go wrong it is your concentration that could save you and others. The problem is that for most of the time when driving nothing goes wrong and so people concentrate minimally on driving and spend their time “multi-tasking”. This reduces their ability to pay attention to what is going on around them. Gladly it is quite rare for shit to happen but it does happen and you need your whole attention when it does. Pilots spend their entire careers practising over and over again the drills needed to save an aircraft and the lives on board so that if/when it does happen they can automatically make the right decisions. We don’t practise any of this in cars, apart from an emergency stop for our driving test, and so this causes problems when things do go wrong. People are not practised at what to do. I would argue that this is largely because it is not financially worth it to save a few lives on the roads compared to the investment that would be needed to make everyone practise car saving techniques regularly.

That last paragraph loses the plot a little. But here’s the summary and a little more exposition. People can only perform a single task to their total ability. If they attempt to multi-task then the overall effect is a significant drop in their output and understanding.

In terms of education this communication explains why children can’t do homework in front of the television. I would also argue that listening to music will hamper their understanding as they will concentrate on the music and not what they are studying, or they are doing both but to poor effect. I have some music on while writing this but I couldn’t tell you what words they are singing because I am mostly concentrating on this writing. I am using the music to block out other distractions and this may prove useful for learning if it is in an environment where there are auditory distractions. Finally, we take examinations in quiet rooms because the quiet allows us to concentrate on the task in hand.

Now, for some Gran Turismo.

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Switching

Today [Wed 20th August 2014], I am switching broadband supplier. I have been with EE for about 18 months and am moving over to Sky broadband. I think one of my first communications on here was about changing to TalkTalk from PlusNet. Now I am moving to give even more of my money to Murdoch and his family of companies, something I am rather unhappy about. If I was to total up how much I spend on TV and now broadband I would be horrified. I pay for my television because I like the following:

  • Cricket
  • American Football
  • Formula 1

It is currently 0730 and my broadband seems to be working fine on the old router. When things seem to break I will swap over to the new Sky modem router and also change the micro-filter. I will then spend some time messing around with the router settings so that my home network things work as they should. I set up static IPs for all my devices, mostly because it keeps things nice and neat and not because it is necessary.

[Follow up written Fri 22 Aug 2014]

Went to the park in the afternoon. Had already been out in the morning and broadband was still working once we got home. Once we entered the house I glanced at the EE router and it was flashing “no internet”. I changed the router and micro-filter. Plugged in and watched the lights flash. Eventually some bits were steady white. This meant I had an internet connection.

I logged into the router and changed the SSID so it would work with all my devices. Once that was done I slowly started plugging in all the network.

So, now I am on Sky broadband and phone rental. My initial thoughts are:

  • Not enough settings I can mess around with inside the router. This may, or may not, be an issue. Some of the following could cause me to change router if the issues continue.
  • The download bandwidth is poor compared to what I got with EE. It’s about half at the moment.
  • The router doesn’t like me doing some computer stuff and listening the internet radio. The radio keeps cutting out.

Apparently Sky are spending the next 10 days testing my line and working out a good connection bandwidth for me. I hope that I get more than 5Mb/s. This was my normal bandwidth before Sky. I also hope that the router can cope with all the traffic on my network. I will give it about a month before I seriously consider getting a new router and setting it up myself.

There is an issue with getting my own modem-router to use. Sky will not release my broadband login information. This means I will have to make sure I can find that information in the router before I get a new one. A quick internet search brings up software that will work to find out those details.

Let’s see what the next few weeks bring. I am hopeful.

UPDATE 25 August 2014:

The download bandwidths have increased slightly. I have reached about 5Mb/s which is on a par with my previous provider. The router seems a bit shaky when there’s a lot going on with my network. It doesn’t like uploading large files and streaming downloading at the same time. This means I will probably change my router once the bandwidth settles down. I have a plan to use my EE router. It is more customisable than the Sky router and worked pretty well, even if it was free and I don’t like the design.

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An Homoeopathic Discussion (maybe)

I saw a retweet or tweet, I’m not sure how a saw it as I don’t tend to follow anything on this subject matter. I saw this on my general twitter account, the one I use for following things I’m interested in rather than just my friends.

I re-tweeted this myself in a kinda ironic way. I also asked if there were any papers to back up the claim.

I actually got a response. Which was good. I was expecting to find that I was ignored. 

So, this was good. I went to see if I could find the science paper. It is here, at the Journal Of The Royal Society Of Medicine. I have looked at the abstract and I have the following points to make:

  • This is a meta-analysis of many previous trials.
  • This is a study of Adverse Effects of using various homoeopathic preparations (see the table).
  • The study looks at AEs of provings. A proving is not a treatment for a particular illness or problem. A proving is a way of matching a homoeopathic preparation with what symptoms it produces, thereby giving an indication of what it could be used to “treat”.
  • This study shows that the AEs of homoeopathic preparations are pretty much inline with the AEs of giving people placebo. There was one result which showed that placebo had statistically higher AEs and one where the homoeopathic thing was much worse than placebo (see this table).
  • The paper shows that the AEs from homoeopathic preparations are broadly the same as placebo (nothing). This shows that homoeopathic preparations are nothing.
  • This paper does NOT consider the efficacy of these treatments for any particular illness or problem.

My summary so far: I have been given a paper which shows that homoeopathic preparations are the same as placebo for various treatments. So I would say that homoeopathic preparations are safe to use. Whether they work or not has not been explained, yet.

Here’s what I got back.

Here is a direct link to the review of evidence published by two practising homoeopaths. I looked over this review [from under the “news” section of the website] and found that it was essentially filled with contradictions. There wasn’t much talk about methodology of the trials and which particular remedies were used. It then goes on to include a table about which remedies could be used and includes statements such as:

Homeopaths contend that respiratory allergies are best treated by professional homeopaths who prescribe individually selected homeopathic constitutional medicines according to specific and unique genetic history, personal health history, and totality of present physical and psychological symptoms being experienced.
Although homeopaths assert that this method of homeopathic prescribing provides the longest-term benefits, no research confirms this observation.

If you include a statement like the second paragraph in your writing then you absolutely should not have the first. The meaning goes thus:

“Some people think this, but there’s no evidence for it”

It’s a very similar technique used by newspapers and the Discovery channel in its “science” programming. “Some people believe Jesus was an alien, we will leave it for you to decide”. Whether some people believe something or not is irrelevant. Belief does not change what the evidence shows. The review also uses the brilliant argument that “further research” is needed. Well, if the trials you are mentioning in this review don’t give stand out evidence and they are the best you’ve got then asking for more research is a form of special pleading.
My next response was aimed at getting a link to the BEST paper that a homoeopath can produce.

Here’s the next response.

Here’s a direct link to the “best” trial. Which isn’t a trial. It’s a puff-piece from a British Homoeopathic organisation. Having had a look through this publication I have searched for the two references to allergies.

The first reference to allergies is:

Bornhöft G, Wolf U, Ammon K, et al. Effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of homeopathy in general practice – summarized health technology assessment. Forsch Komplementärmed 2006; 13 Suppl 2: 19–29.

I’m not going to read this because the title has nothing about the effectiveness of homoeopathy in treating allergies. It’s about safety. I can assure you that taking homoeopathy is the same as taking nothing and so it’s safe because it has nothing in it.

The second reference is:

Bellavite P, Ortolani R, Pontarollo F, et al. Immunology and homeopathy. 4. Clinical studies – Part 1. Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine; eCAM, 2006; 3: 293-301

Here’s a link to the paper stored at the US National Library of Medicine. From the conclusion of this meta-study:

In summary, there is an efficacy/effectiveness paradox (similar to that found in several other areas of complementary medicine research) with a weak evidence in favo[u]r of homeopathy when studies are done in randomized and double-blind conditions, but yet there is documented effectiveness in equivalence studies comparing homeopathy and conventional medicine and documented usefulness in general practice.

This says that when the “gold standard” of medical trials are applied to homoeopathy, the randomised double blind placebo controlled trial, then there is weak evidence for homoeopathy. If homoeopathy produced any outcome at all we would expect strong evidence in these trials. The paper summary does not state that “placebo-controlled” so it is possible that they were really just measuring a placebo effect.

Placebo Effect – An Aside
Very briefly I would like to point out that the placebo effect is a nill-effect. Your body will heal itself what ever you decide to take. Taking any form of medicine garners the placebo effect. so, you could take homoeopathy with no clinical effect and only the placebo effect [zero real effect] or you could take real medicine and have the bonus of the placebo [zero real effect]. Placebo – you might “feel” better, but you aren’t. Simple.

I’ve followed the reference from the paper for its conclusions in this area.

Walach H, Jonas WB, Ives J, Wijk RV, Weingartner O. Research on homeopathy: state of the art. J Altern Complement Med. 2005;11:813–29.

Here’s a quotation from the summary available here.

While there are nearly 200 reports on clinical trials, few series have been conducted for single conditions. Some of these series document clinically useful effects and differences against placebo and some series do not. Observational research into uncontrolled homeopathic practice documents consistently strong therapeutic effects and sustained satisfaction in patients.

So, this is a meta-analysis discussed in another meta-analysis and it states that virtually no trials have been done on a single condition. This is common with CAM as it means there’s more chance of finding an effect when you mine the data. Some trials are tested against placebo and some not [another CAM trick]. As is most common, when good double-blind placebo controlled trials are completed the effect of homoeopathy is reduced to virtually zero although “observational” studies [self reporting and other subjective stuff] reveals strong effects. These “observational” studies may report strong effects but it does not mean that they are real.

Another of the references in this paper links to some allergy investigations so I looked through those.

Aabel S, Laerum E, Dolvik S, Djupesland P. Is homeopathic ‘immunotherapy’ effective? A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with the isopathic remedy Betula 30c for patients with birch pollen allergy. Br Homeopath J. 2000;89:161–8.

Link here. Answer “no”. There is no difference to placebo, except for a couple of days in the middle of the trial where we have pointed out small differences because it confirms what we think. But overall there is no effect.

What we think this means is that there should be further investigation. What I think this means is that there’s no need for further investigation. It’s quite clear it doesn’t work.

Another paper about allergies:

Aabel S. No beneficial effect of isopathic prophylactic treatment for birch pollen allergy during a low-pollen season: a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of homeopathic Betula 30c. Br Homeopath J.2000;89:169–73

Link here. NO BENEFICAL EFFECT.

Another:

Aabel S. Prophylactic and acute treatment with the homeopathic medicine, Betula 30c for birch pollen allergy: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study of consistency of VAS responses. Br Homeopath J.2001;90:73–8.

Link here. This trial looked for correlation between taking homoeopathy and the self-reported symptoms of people and found correlation. r=0.7 or so, which isn’t bad, but then although it shows correlation it most definitely does not give any causation. So this is a mostly useless study.

Here’s the final one I’m going to look at. I was trying to make sure that I have looked at most of the evidence before replying to Mr Homoeopathy man.

Lewith GT, Watkins AD, Hyland ME, Shaw S, Broomfield JA, Dolan G, Holgate ST. Use of ultramolecular potencies of allergen to treat asthmatic people allergic to house dust mite: double blind randomised controlled clinical trial. Br Med J. 2002;324:520

Direct link here. Here’s some words from that paper:

Results

There was no difference in most outcomes between placebo and homoeopathic immunotherapy. There was a different pattern of change over the trial for three of the diary assessments: morning peak expiratory flow (P=0.025), visual analogue scale (P=0.017), and mood (P=0.035). At week three there was significant deterioration for visual analogue scale (P=0.047) and mood (P=0.013) in the homoeopathic immunotherapy group compared with the placebo group. Any improvement in participants’ asthma was independent of belief in complementary medicine.

Conclusion

Homoeopathic immunotherapy is not effective in the treatment of patients with asthma. The different patterns of change between homoeopathic immunotherapy and placebo over the course of the study are unexplained.

So, this was a double blind randomised controlled trial and it showed no effect. time for a reply to Mr Homoeopathy. I’ve asked for best evidence but have found none of good quality so far. Even the best RCT says no effect. It’ll be time soon to call quits on this discussion.

The reply was thus:

As of yet I haven’t received a reply. When I do I shall continue this communication. I hope to get a reply with a good RCT with a positive result for homoeopathy.

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Boardom

I went walkabout on Sunday with my niece and we spent the day wandering around 35 km around London with me boring her most of the time. We had lunch at the RAF Club and also saw a gig at Electrowerkz in the evening. One of the things I did was to show her around Imperial College and the student union.

In Beit Quad of Imperial College there is a place that used to be my office [it’s no longer an office] and also the union dining hall. Inside the hall are some honour boards and on there, my name! I have wanted to go back and get a photo of this for some time now and this proved to be the perfect opportunity.

Dep PresIf you look, you will see me in the 1994 to 1995 season, just after Charles Leary.

Honour Boards

Here’s a link to a previous communication about IC.

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Aesthetic Perfection – Electrowerkz

So, Alt-Fest got cancelled. Rather gutted about that. I was looking forward to a weekend seeing some favourite bands and also discovering new music and bands along the way. I guess a number of bands had already organised travel to the UK as a (much) smaller festival turned up at Electrowerkz in Angel.

The SOS Festival played over this weekend and many of the bands who were booked to appear at Alt-Fest played here instead. One of my favourite bands played on Sunday 17 August and I travelled there to see them. I also took my niece as I was going to take her to Alt Fest for her birthday.

Here’s the timings sheet from the front door of the entrance. It’s blurry because I took it in a hurry.

Eelctrowerkz Play List

This bothered me slightly! The last train home was at 23:43 from St Pancras, just over a mile from the venue. It wouldn’t be worth it to leave early, or to get the tube, the quickest method to get to the mainline would be to run. We decided that was what we would do.

Jared Louch and Mark Plastic were good fun. Mark Plastic was a guitarist and he played along to a backing track while Jared Louch sang. The songs were reasonable but it was the segways what were great. Jared Louch was an older man of rock and didn’t care. He was funny.

Jared Louch and Mark Plastic

Next up were Global Citizen. As a band they were good but the music didn’t do a great deal for me. There were two keyboardists, a drummer and the singer. The structure of the songs didn’t really have any bass lines. The bass sounds were created using a chord progression on the keyboards with a choral sound. It just didn’t work for me.

Global Citizen

XP8 were playing their last ever gig. This is a shame as they were really good. According to Wikipedia they are from Rome, which surprised me somewhat as they sounded perfectly English, but then, what do I know? There songs had pumping bass lines and a good fast and hard dance beat over the top. They had a video show in the background to which I didn’t really pay attention. Their songs were interesting, well structured and both of them seemed to be having a really good time. A minor thing is that the not-singer seemed to look a lot like Greg Wallace from Masterchef and this was a little off-putting, although more my problem than his. I’m not sure what they are going to do now, but I was pretty impressed with their set. They did over-run by about 20 minutes!

XP8

XP8

Finally Aesthetic Perfection were on. This was causing me slight problems as they were due to do a seventy minute set and they were late. I didn’t want to miss any AP but then again, I didn’t want to spend the night in St Pancras station waiting for the first train home [I’d done that plenty as a teenager].

Aesthetic Perfection were excellent. All of their songs were good and they had great energy. I do have a problem with their live sound. This is the second time I have seen them and some of the best bits of their songs are the high pitched “twiddly” bits. When playing live these seem incredibly quiet in the mix. A lot of the timings in the songs come from these sections and I feel that something is a little lacking. This *could* be my problem, maybe my ears are too old, but my niece also couldn’t really hear those bits. She had a great time, and even got to hold the singer’s hand.

Aesthetic PerfectionThere was slight confusion on stage as they played a song and then announced that it was their last one. I’m pretty sure the club has a curfew and so the band had to finish. I was starting to get worried that we wouldn’t see all of the AP set. They had about ten minutes before we had to leave. AP left the stage, we called for an encore and then they played two more songs.

Aesthetic Perfection

After the last song, which conveniently was “Spit It Out”, I say conveniently because I think it’s their standard set finisher, my niece and I ran out the door, down the steps and then the mile and a bit to St Pancras station. We got there with just enough time to buy a bottle of water and get on the train before we departed.

Here’s how far we moved over the entire day:

IMG_7246.PNG

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Animals In Sport

This communication is going to be a little different. This entire website contains a lot of stuff written by me, most of it is pretty dull. I’m not really sure of my motivation but it’s something to do and it makes me feel modern even though I’ve been writing web pages since 1995 [Imperial College Student Union web site].

Over the last year or so I have been thinking about horse racing and whether it is morally justifiable to allow this to happen. I have slowly come to the conclusion that there is NO moral justification for humans to use animals in sport.

I dislike the idea that we, as a species, put ourselves on top of horses and then race them as hard as possible around a track and that it is then broadcast for people to watch as sport. I do realise that it is a huge industry and that many people rely on this for their livelihoods but that doesn’t get around the fact that I find it impossible to justify as a just thing. Horse racing is a hangover from a time when we were not a liberal society. I would argue that our society (esp in the UK) is largely liberal and we seek reason for doing things. I do not see any reason why we take large beings and race them against each other for the financial gain of ourselves.

Sport is for human pleasure and social cohesion so we can only use humans to help us create that. I do not see any reason why humans should be using animals for sport. I would happily sign a petition calling for the end of animals in human forms of entertainment. Sport is, essentially entertainment. It doesn’t matter who or what wins, we just use it as a distraction from the more important aspects of our lives, such as our moral duty to save this planet and ensure everyone has enough to eat and freedom to be what they want. [Deep breath] Here goes:

Animals should not be used for sport

I’m pretty sure that this also goes for greyhound racing, fishing, cock fighting etc. As I said, this topic is one that I have been thinking about gradually and so “pretty sure” means I am working through the arguments in my head and trying to decide on what is “right”. Just in case you are wondering, I do NOT need a god to help me decide what is just.

I am happy for humans to be used in sport. Having said that, we generally don’t have to “destroy” humans if they fall in a race. Yes, some sports people die for what they do and that is sad, but at least they were (hopefully) aware of the risks.

I am reasonably happy to grow animals for food. I like eating meat and poultry and fish. I am aware of the inefficiencies of us growing meat to eat and that is a problem I should think about another time. We specifically grow animals to kill and then eat. I understand that, morally, that is different from growing animals to use as ENTERTAINMENT. This does not make me an hypocrite, just in case you were thinking that. I’ll explain my rationality for you: growing and eating animals to survive as humans is ok, growing animals for entertainment is not. Whether it is justifiable to grow animals for food, given the energy constraints this world faces I shall deal with another time.

I do know that when I try to put my thoughts down in writing that I struggle a little to get my ideas across. This is because writing is not a natural thing for me. I also haven’t spent all my time covering every aspect of this communication because I haven’t got the time. What you are reading here is the condensed version, putting my argument as simply as possible and trying to justify it. If you have problems with what I say, I don’t care. Perhaps you will start to think about this and work out what your arguments are.

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Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

This was a much better film that Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes which I watched at the weekend and was just not fussed by it. I went to see “Dawn” last night because it was the only thing on at the cinema worth watching and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to spend the time going. It was only after I looked at the IMDB Critics’ Metascore that I decided I would see the film because it had scored 79, which is pretty good.

The animation was stunning. The acting was stunning. I believe ape culture was reproduced accurately. I thought the whole film was a good piece. It showed just what assholes apes and people can be, this film could be attached to any of the trouble spots around the planet at the moment and used as an allegory. The film is worth watching.

This film is really about two groups who know little of each other and how they handle the first encounter. All of the behaviour is brilliantly human. It quickly descends into violence. Just look at human history and what we have done to each other over the years. Overall this is a sad film commenting on how crap humans treat each other.

SPOILERS
I had a couple of issues with certain points of the film. I was happy to accept intelligent apes, that’s the main premise. I wasn’t particularly happy with three people being able to get an hydro-electric dam working again after 10 years of non-service. That seemed rather unlikely to me, but it was a minor thing.

I was also rather unsure of Caesar’s final conversation with the man. I felt that Caesar wouldn’t have accepted that war was an inevitable part of the future. It didn’t quite fit with the rest of the film. It was exactly at the point that the two characters needed to stand up and be leaders and organise peace. Two cultures can exists next to each other but there has to be movement and discussion. There is always a need for negotiation. As an example I give you the fact that all the time the IRA were bombing the shit out of the UK in the 1980s the government [we do not negotiate with terrorists] were secretly negotiating with the IRA. It is the only way to make progress, to allow differing cultures to live together. Forgiveness needs to be learnt by all to allow healing and future cooperation.

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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.

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