Madame editior wakes up to the ''cocaine threat''

we know this thanks to a rambling screed in wednesday (july 4) I.T, which to be honest i can't be arsed pointing out all the logical flaws and pathetic argument contained therein. however i'll do a few.

first the totally unsupported assertion...

''Cocaine has become a major threat to our society''

..contains the usefully vague word society. how is it a threat, and to what exactly? society isn't a thing after all.

next this statement...

''It is highly addictive and is associated with physical and psychological effects, especially when taken with alcohol. Five deaths from cocaine were recorded in dublins coroners court in a single day this year.''

just to make clear since madame doesn't is that didn't die a single day they died over 2 months in 2006 the cases just happened to fall on the same day

''and there have been a growing number of leg amputations''

i dealt with this already, this is in here for shock value.

this is just stupid...

''Cocaine related offences quadrupled''

really from 1 to 4? from 1000 to 4000? but oohh, it quadrupled that's big.

the best is last however

''But we must also send an unmistakable signal to young people that cocaine use is not only harmful to their health, but may have negative legal, psychological and social consequences for them.''

what. the. fuck.

did madame leave her brain at home or did she just wake up feeling particularly authoritarian and patronising that morning? does madame think that she somehow has gained some right to tell people what to do? is it only because they're ''young people'' and therefore must be morons that just need to be given a good talking to.

jesus h christ

Women injecting cocaine have had legs amputated......sort of

this was in fridays IT. a story about cocaine which is now apparently the new heroin to the media. the latest drug according to them anyway destroying our communities and with plenty of scope for salacious horror stories.

i think the beauty of cocaine use to certain media people is that it allows them to write about hubris... lots of celtic tiger cubs reaping the whirlwind from their consumerist/materialist or secularist lifestyles. and allows them to bemoan the (alleged) fall of family values, religion or ''community'' and/or the selfishness of our liberal/neo-liberal society.

like a lot of these drug stories there's lots of anecdote and assertions but not much actual reportage. this piece basically just repeats statements made at a ''conference on cocaine use'' with some opinion from the reporter thrown in. and also as usual it reports as effects of drug use effects which should be more readily laid at the illegality of drugs.

anyway to the title of the piece. you might wonder how many women had their legs amputated?

"At the moment, we have one amputee on our programme, but we have seen a number of others."

one. but they have seen a number of others. so how does cocaine use result in leg amputation? indirectly it turns out as they result from the use of dirty needles....

"There is a huge health problem among the client group we work with, a big rise in HIV infection rates, particularly a lot of abscesses, and more recently, for the first time in the 12 years I've been working in Saol, a number of amputations have happened because of blood clots and septicaemia from cocaine use."

the same as heroin incidentally but needle exchanges can't be offered or letting them buy new ones is out 'cause the government fears that might encourage it. so we had the same thing with heroin and now (apparently) with cocaine but there'll be no change in policy presumably because that might result in fewer horror stories with which to scare nice middle class kiddies. fewer HIV infections and other disgusting ailments. instead we'll go with ''drugs are baad, m'kay''.

next we have...

"And if it's not cocaine use it's family members involved in cocaine use, and there's families in huge debt, there are young people under severe threat, threat of life and limb, threat of death. Families are having to go out and borrow money. The whole area is absolutely swamped with cocaine," she told the conference.

''threat of life and limb'' once again because it's illegal and therefore the trade ends up in the hands of the most ruthless and violent. duh

other problems with the piece, assertions....

"In the community where I work in the north inner city of Dublin every street and almost every house has been affected by cocaine," Ms Byrne said.

Dr Brion Sweeney, a consultant psychiatrist working with the HSE's addiction services, told delegates that the State's response to the cocaine problem had been too slow and that the drug barons were winning the battle.

and

''The whole area is absolutely swamped with cocaine''

this bit...''that the drug barons were winning the battle'' is just priceless as it implies that our poor innocent children are being led astray by drug barons and if they didn't exist no-one would take drugs.

if anyone's wondering why i'm being so hard on people who are trying to help their fellow citizens it's this quote....

"We constantly struggle for funding. We do not have enough staff . . . we try to manage . . . A lot of my time is spent searching for funding when it should be spent actually delivering the service."

...that makes me think that a lot of these stories are are trotted out in an effort to squeeze money out of government. also illogical thinking annoys me

question and answers

let me save you from ever having to watch question and answers ever again with my handy template.

first off the panellists...

2 politicos, 1 government, 1 opposition. no programme is complete without the input of these gods of the irish nation. in fact they are so important that when the dail closes for a nice long summer break apparently politics stops cause the programme also goes on holidays

3 commentators. now a note on this, these tend to be members of a lobby group that get invited on when their particular hobby horse gets an airing.

if you happen to be a lobbyist you can get your hobby horse onto qanda on a slow news week by releasing a study or survey with preferably shocking finding. or so you will say, if they're not actually shocking muster some outrage and appeal to the damage it will do to (godsend to busybodies everywhere) that
usefully vague but positive word society. with statistics, something like 70% of teenagers said they know how to get heroin or that 9 out of 10 cats do not prefer whiskers, good and shocking

at least one of these commentators will undoubtedly be independent (relatively speaking in that they're not pushing a particular agenda today) these tend to do awkward things like pointing out the stupidity of your plan. just ignore them nobody will notice.

now the show goes like this......generally 3 questions are asked and ''answered''. brush up on these or better yet forget them completely, makes it easier on your eyes as theres no need to roll them in utter contempt as often.

audience member kicks it all off by asking a question..... surprise.

government minister. blah blah...we have spent 400 million euro (tap table for emphasis)...blah blah (more statistics) blah.

opposition guy. blah blah...waste...blah...when we were in government...blah blah blah.

lobbyist. blah blah... if we value our society... blah blah blah... more funding (never more money far too crass)... blah.

now repeat for all subsequent questions and shows. if you are none the wiser and have gained no insight about any of the topics, that's ok that's not what qanda is about. it's really just an avenue for propaganda, despite appearances no actual discussion took place, you just thought that's what happened what with all the talking and raised voices and emotion.

if you have actually learned something then something has gone wrong with someones spiel. or there was a really awkward panellist on.

the form of a discussion rather than actual discussion

i caught a bit of saturday view today and it just confirmed to me the reason why i don't listen to or watch political shows anymore. they basically only have the form of a debate, people sitting around together talking about issues of the day but unlike an actual debate there's no real information exchanged or real understanding of the views proffered.

the reason is the stupidity of the topics and the essentially talking head nature of the programmes by which i mean the tendency (it seems to me) of the participants to simply take turns to make speeches and not to actually have a debate. the discussion on these shows tends to be full of meaningless phrases and buzzwords which have very little meaning and convey no information and result in no actual argument but a kind of argument by label, i.e whether these phrases/buzzwords have a positive or negative connotations to the audience. the use of vaguely defined words or words that have an ambiguous meaning result in either misunderstandings or pretty meaningless answers.

that happens most with questions and answers where basically various interest groups and politico's get 3/4 of an hour to deliver un-illuminating propaganda. i'll do a separate post about that programme.

anyway back to saturday view and the very first question sets the tone....

is there a fear now that we are building more of an economy than a society ?

what i'd like to know if anyone has heard of a false dilemma? why is it asked as if the two were mutually exclusive? also the inherently vapid nature of the question renders the resultant answers both vague and pointless. first off we build neither an economy or a society, as both are the name we give to the emergent outcomes of the interactions between people.

they are not built as that word is usually used which implies working from a plan to get to a specific outcome. it's this kind of sloppy use of language which deludes all kinds of social engineers into thinking that with just enough legislation and spending that they can change the ''plan'' and build a better (as defined by themselves) society, economy or whatever.

take the examples above.... society, economy and some of the words used later in the show like quality of life, social cohesion, celebrating diversity. what the fuck do these mean exactly to people who used them? using words that have ambiguous meaning just results in other people not understanding exactly or even generally what you are saying. how the fuck can you have a discussion like that? what's the point of listening to a show like that?

take ''debates'' on immigration for example. celebrating diversity means what exactly? what actions does that entail? or the option usually expressed in opposition to that assimilation. assimilate to what exactly? what are the values that immigrants should have gained so that they may be deemed assimilated? who decides what these values are? but all you get on these shows are people bandying about these terms as though these terms had not only a very definite meaning but that also the audience knows them.

totally fucking pointless waste of time.

sorry about the ranting nature of the post

bloody flies

a freaking fly just committed suicide in my cup of tea. and a cup of the good stuff too, well the more expensive stuff at least. incredibly disappointing.

fudge it: part II, or do-gooders propose a stupid idea

this from the IT about the first ''national seminar on taxation, health and tobacco''(1)

Ash Ireland is campaigning for the Government to follow other European countries and remove tobacco products from the basket of items which are used to measure the CPI.

Ash argues that if tobacco products can be removed from the CPI - as has been done in other EU countries - the Government will have greater flexibility to increase tobacco prices because related inflation increase will not be an issue.

i wrote about this before removing tobacco (or anything else) from the CPI means that any tax increase will have no effect only on the reported inflation rate not on the actual inflation rate. the whole point of a CPI is to attempt to give the central bank and government some information on the actual inflation. so this idea is immensely stupid.

if we were to follow the logical stupidity of Ash Ireland in say, measures against climate change , we could remove CO2 from the list of greenhouse gases. this would allow us to pump out as much CO2 as we liked and it wouldn't affect the climate. if we say it doesn't have any effect then it doesn't have any effect!! wooo hooo!!!.

what a bunch of assholes.

now for rhetorical sleight of hand...

Ash Ireland chairman Professor Luke Clancy said raising tax on tobacco would be easy to administer, easy to justify on public health grounds and would guarantee an increased tax take while reducing consumption

public health grounds used to refer to dangers that were a public danger, in other words that affect anyone involuntarily like communicable diseases. now apparently it means anything that affects the health of an individual member of the public even if it can't affect anyone else.

"It is important for the Government to remove tobacco from CPI if they are serious about tobacco control and the denormalization of smoking," he said.

(emphasis is mine) good to see social engineering and manipulation is still around to make sure we make the right choices(2)

(1) a national seminar, makes it sound official and wide ranging, however it's not exactly non partisan...

The event was organised by Ash Ireland in conjunction with The Irish Cancer Society, Irish Heart Foundation and the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society.

(2)the right choice is whatever do-gooders tell you it is, not what you think it is. just thought i'd clear that up for you.

greens talking rubbish on housing

a story about the greens here....

Speaking in Dublin today party housing spokesman Ciarán Cuffe said: "We will end the culture of development-led planning, which has left many communities without the basic amenities of schools, hospitals and access to public transport.'' (1)

what a complete load of arse, all these problems have been created by the slow, bureaucratic responses of the government departments involved. politicos seem to give the impression that developers, apply for and get permission, and then build an estate in about 2 weeks. nobody could see this coming, it's all the fault of the greedy developers (boooo).

as anybody with an eye in their head could tell you the time from planning application to even the start of construction takes at least months and possibly years. they can be seen coming. even the much shorter period from getting permission to construction lasts at the very least a month.

even when the estates are built the basic amenities are still not provided, how can you blame developers for that? the primary school in the town where i work has been gathering pre-fabs for the past few years. surely the shock of estates appearing out of nowhere should have been overcome by now and new buildings provided?

one of the ''solutions'' that i've heard mentioned is for planning permission to be withheld until facilities are built. a marvellous plan i'm sure save for the massive retraction in the number of houses built while we wait for the government to get the finger out. it's pretty amazing that developers and builders are made out to be the bad guy because they do what they do (i.e build things) well. apparently not allowed to show up government

(1) in fairness the greens are not the only ones who talk this crap, the article just happened to be about the greens. hardly matters now of course, unless bertie decides he needs their support.

oh no the meedja are out to get bertie

the times today has a selection of letters from people who seem somewhat irked that journalists and papers might dare to question the taoiseachs receipt of £30,000 from his landlord (???).

standard pooh-poohing that you tend to get from party hacks or from true believers, with plenty of illogical rubbish masquerading as some kind of opinion.

letter writers 1 and 2 try to imply that it's unimportant and implore the times to get back to real issues like health, crime, education, blah, blah, blah....

letter writer 1 tries the sob story approach, bertie's being ''hounded'' by vincent brown, the break up of his marriage and so on. (is that a violin i can hear playing mournfully in the back round?)

letter writer 2 says (this is the best)....

i am sick and tired of reading about bertie's £30,000 sterling (equal to weekly wage of a premiership football player) during this election.

equal to weekly wage of a premiership football player? is that all? trivial, laughable really, ha ha ha. not really worth worrying about then is it? but then i remember that 30,000 sterling is around 40,000 euro give or take a few thousand, and that's not adjusted for 13 years of inflation. that works out as one and a half times my yearly salary (at least) so no i don't think it's unimportant or trivial.

letter writer 3 thinks the coverage is unfair and unbalanced, bertie shouldn't be questioned on it 'cause kenny didn't get 30,000 from his landlord, so kenny can't be questioned about money he didn't get so it's unfair.... or something. anyway it's unfair.

i used to think that these kinds of letters could only be written by party members as damage control, until i got in a conversation in a pub (i know) with a guy who thought that this story was all down to the fact that the irish media wanted to like the british media, media peer pressure if you will. and nothing else. needless to say i wasn't convinced by that hypothesis.

sunday indo wants the greens to win.

lol, of course they don't.

today, fianna fail managed to get a typically soft focus interview with bertie ahern into the sunday indo to coincide with the announcement of the general election date.(1) the pr guys are earning their shillings there anyway.

some more enda kenny bashing in a piece by brendan o'connor, though the article is more about the sindos other hobby horse, the abolition of stamp duty. it's full of statements like..

And it might seem like an obvious one now that stamp duty is one of the major issues in this election if not the major bone of policy contention, but that's only because we banged on about it so much we normalised it

i personally doubt that it's a major election issue as o'connor himself makes clear, just cause the sindo goes on and on about it doesn't mean other people care as much.

For years we had all experienced anecdotal evidence about how first-time buyers were unable to buy because of it, how second-time buyers who wanted to have a kid couldn't upgrade from one bedroom to two because of it

that might be true, but removing it wouldn't automatically result in lower prices.

(1)doesn't appear to be a link to it on the website.

wille o'dea is a gobshite

i know it's pretty much a pro government paper but for some reason the sunday indo feels the need to give minister/master of obfuscation wille o'dea a column, which seems pointless 'cause they do a good job of kissing bertie's ass all on their own. anyway the first line of the article, unsurprisingly a personal attack on enda kenny, starts.....

it's hard to know what's more repugnant: fine gaels capacity for dirty tricks, or its sanctimonious holier-than-thou posturing while indulging in them.

ha ha ha ha ha, oh minister, your fine sense of irony really cracks me up. i especially liked that bit about sanctimonious holier-than-thou posturing.

in a previous post i said i wouldn't vote for fine gael, i'd like to amend that. i don't want to vote for fine gael but i'll have to just to get that smug, pompous collection of cunts (also sometimes known as fianna fail) out of power.

damn it.

fortis and an posts joint venture

and i should care because? generally i know it's nice to let the staff what's going on in the business, but i or anyone else who won't be working directly in this don't need to know so badly that we have to get an individual letter telling us about it. it's just not necessary.

usi types talk shite (as always)

the usi had a publicity stunt yesterday, ''calling on''(1) the parties to maintain free third level fees for at least the next 5 years.

now the annoying bit as far as i'm concerned is this from current usi prez, colm hamrogue...

''education is a right and not a privilege - it's enshrined in the constitution"

all true. the right to education is a right insofar as the state cannot stop you from acquiring one. however it not a right for you to have your education paid for by other people. if people or the government generally decided tomorrow to stop subsidising third-level, then that would just be tough luck.

having other taxpayers pay for your education is in fact a privilege.

(1)why does everyone ''call on'' the government to do stuff. nobody asks or requests. only public sector workers are honest enough to demand, though in reality all people who ''call on'' actually demand

hacks

i know it's almost impossible for journos to resist, a shameful compulsion even, but if you find yourself typing any sentence that contains the hoary, smug-fest of a cliche,

american dream turns into a nightmare

you should delete it immediately and go on a strict programme of fasting and beating yourself with hazel rods. this extreme measure is all that can save you from slipping into the depths of hackiness*. repent!!!!!


*if already in the depths of hackiness please disregard

undocumented irish

this article in the times, Irish illegals get support from home, quotes minister for foreign affairs dermot ahern,

"Our increasing prosperity is a phenomenon that all Irish people should take pride in. However, we should never forget the trauma of those who were forced to emigrate in less fortunate times or neglect those who remain in need today.

"Our new prosperity at home brings new responsibilities towards our communities abroad, particularly those who feel marginalised and isolated. The undocumented Irish in the United States are one such group."

Mr Ahern said while the undocumented were committed to building their lives in America, they also longed to have the opportunity to visit Ireland without fear of being denied re-entry.

"I am deeply conscious of how traumatic it is for an undocumented person to learn of a serious illness or death of a loved one in Ireland and be unable to visit the hospital or attend the funeral," he said.

"The awful pain of separation is particularly acute at such times."

of course our own government of which dermot is part, makes sure that the undocumented persons here can travel home to their countries when the same circumstances arise.

yeah right. the government doesn't seem to care how committed people are to building a life here when they're undocumented, more like deported as soon as possible. more than a bit cynical and hypocritical, or maybe politicians have learned doublethink, but what do expect out of politicians. sad thing is plenty of non politician eejits will spout the same rubbish.

that's totally different of course, we're irish, sure aren't we a great addition to america what with our natural charm and general fabulous-ness. see, obviously totally different to undocumented people here, anyway they're illegal not undocumented, sure they're probably all crooks and...... uhh well that's why is why

fucking aaahhh!!!! no.2

load of arse-biscuits number two, patricia casey on why cannabis is dangerous. it's basically a report about the independent on sundays in britain apology on cannabis. some of the claims in that report, especially about the links between cannabis and mental illness, were covered on the badscience website. anyway the point of this is that professor casey as though in a game of chinese whispers, manages to re-report the IOS arse ways

The variety of cannabis now being smoked is called “skunk”, and the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, is up to 25 times more potent that the stuff beloved by the 1960s hippies.

first off it is alleged (look on the first badscience link) that ''skunk" contains 25 times more THC, not that THC has suddenly become 25 times more pharmacologically active. duh. even if it was getting stronger it doesn't mean everyone is getting higher. for example, vodka has a lot more alcohol than beer volume for volume, but how many people drink a pint of vodka in the same way they drink a pint of beer?

for a psychiatrist this next bit seems bizarre.

There is now a realisation that cannabis can provoke schizophrenia and other psychoses in vulnerable individuals, particularly young people, by releasing dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with schizophrenia. This is borne out by research at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, in which young people are given cannabis followed by a brain scan using modern imaging techniques.

The results show that the group who are given cannabis have higher levels of dopamine then those given a placebo.

dopamine is a neurotransmitter in everyones brain. incredibly sloppy reporting. dopamine is considered part of the brains reward mechanism, the release of dopamine is probably why people like cannabis. therefore the comparison with placebo says nothing, the study merely states the obvious. indeed schizophrenia is associated with dopamine (the dopamine hypothesis), but not in the clearcut way the professor implies.

In its recent editorial called “Cannabis: a retraction” on March 18, the Independent courageously stated that current concerns over its impact on mental health take precedence over the liberal instincts that inspired its campaign 10 years ago. Concluding its retraction, it quoted the economist John Maynard Keynes, as saying: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Let us hope that the answer from those on this side of the Irish Sea who call for its legalisation will be, “So do I, sir”.

it's not up to anyone else to decide the correct level of risk in relation to your own affairs. no matter what the IOS or any experts think they don't have a right to control other peoples actions even if they've got good intentions. it also ignores the one of the main arguments for legalisation which is the easing of the effects of criminal control of the drugs trade. really annoying.

fucking aaahhh!!!!

there i was checking out the news on the indo's site (registration required) when i stumbled across two pieces of rubbish from march.

load of arse-biscuits number one. a piece of propaganda for an ''alternative therapy'' called earth energy healing. apart from promoting a total load of rubbish, the writer niamh hooper uses one of the hoariest rhetorical techniques, beloved of CAM boosters everywhere. the '' i was skeptical but...''

1) introduce therapy by telling how you heard about it, preferably through an a ''friend'' who swore by it.
2) profess skepticism of alleged healing therapy, but also profess possession of an open mind.
3) try therapy, and describe. describe the history. try to work in science or evidence angle. use words like knowledge, ancient, healing, holistic and so on.
4) practitioner describes some aliment or problem you're having (correctly of course). possibly you may be ''amazed'' or some synonym of this .
5)describe feeling better, lightened, cleansed, whatever and pronounce yourself convinced, your ''skepticism'' overcome. hallelujah

anyway back to the rubbish

Could energy fields radiating from deep within the earth be hazardous to your health and cause havoc in your life? Many practitioners are convinced that harmful energy fields arising from underground streams, large mineral deposits, faults or underground cavities could be compromising the health of millions.

The condition is called geo-pathic stress (GS) and is even said to be a contribution to all kinds of ailments including infertility, cancer, divorce and ME.

note the use of generic ''energy fields''. at the end we're informed it's an electomagnetic field. how exactly does this contribute ''to all kinds of aliments''. standard sort of pro-CAM argument, simply state things as though they were fact.

Considering that water has been proven to carry memory and that humans are made up of 70% water, he says it's natural that we would soak up the emotional energy in the earth.

no water has not been proven to carry memory. emotional energy of the earth? crap

He begins clearing the GS by working with the subtle energies and earth consciousness to bring about positive change.

earth consciousness??

Within seconds, my partner says he feels lighter. It's not until we're in the next room that I can feel a tingling warmth seep into my feet. He gradually works through the house.

For days following the clearing, I'm unusually emotional, after which there's a sense of clarity. Several weeks later, I'm sleeping better.

testimonial alert. my partner says he feels lighter. eh yeah.

pimp my ride uk is shit

i think that title says all that needs to be said. the wikipedia entry on tim westwood gives an indication why, most of it is criticism of his preposterous rapper speak. it's annoying out of americans, it's even more annoying out of an old white english guy with a bad haircut.

won't be voting for fine gael

yet more mindless populism from a political party, when during the dail debate on the criminal justice bill, fine gael attempted to add an amendment which would have allowed unconstitutionally obtained evidence to be used in trials!!!! WTF. but only when it was "accidentally" obtained so it's all right apparently. obviously fine gael don't want pesky technicalities (1) like constitutional rights to get in the way of them getting some votes, eh sorry getting justice served, yeah that sounds better. snark aside the amendment was thankfully not put into the already crap bill (2). right to silence, who needs that, lenghtened periods of detention for questioning for certain crimes. we have to "get tough on crime". election coming up after all.

it apparently didn't occur to the brains in fine gael that accidentally is a very broad and ambiguous term. what counts as a accident? who gets to decide whether it was an accident or not? did it occur to them that the gardai might, gasp, lie. god knows, it's never happened before. bunch of morons.

(1) yes, evidence not allowed because it was unconstitutionally obtained was actually described as a technicality.

(2) the reason given was that it would make the entire bill subject to challenge in the supreme court, rather than that government limiting citizens constitutional rights should be an idea completely beyond the pale in a republican democracy.

morons

unfortunately i left it too late to go to the shops to get a times today, so when i got there they were all gone and i had to make do with an indo. feck it. i hate the indo it has, in my totally unsupported opinion, a smug, self satisfied, middle class, fianna fail, know it all air about it. the times gives the same feeling (but change fianna fail to left) but the quality if the argument is better. anyway, a good example (1) today of this is in the letters section with a few letter writers patting kevin myers on the back for his rant against climate change and a real humdinger of a letter from one conor o'riordan titled ''Universe could not have created itself''. mr. o'riordan enlightens us....

According to evolutionary theory, starting with the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and the simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases, the universe created itself.

This is clearly a violation of natural law, namely the Second Law of Thermodynamics. According to this law an isolated system can never increase in order and complexity, transforming itself to higher and higher levels of organization.

except this is clearly not a violation of natural law, as first the laws of the universe as the name would imply came into being with the big bang. secondly the second law of thermodynamics states...

The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

increasing entropy does not mean increasing simplicity it means increasing disorder. by the time the universe had developed to the point where hydrogen and helium existed as elemental gases the universe was highly ordered. matter existing in the main as only 2 gases, with small variations in density. simple but ordered. it has since gotten more disordered, matter existing as many elements and with wildly varying densities. this simple misunderstanding, that increasing entropy means simpler leads to this....

An isolated system will inevitably, with time, run down, becoming more and more disorderly. There are no exceptions. Contrary to this natural law, evolutionists believe the universe is an isolated system which transformed itself from the chaos and disorder of the Big Bang and simplicity of hydrogen and helium gases into the incredibly complex universe we have today. This is a direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If natural laws are natural laws, the universe could not have created itself.

utter rubbish. it hasn't occurred to him that even with the increasing order that results when a living thing turns simple molecules to more complex molecules is far outstripped by the increasing entropy of the universe (i.e the system) as a whole. next follows the standard creationist rubbish

The only alternative is that it is not an isolated system. There must be a Creator that is external to and independent of the natural universe who was responsible for its origin and who created the natural laws that govern its operation.

The design we see in living things is far too complex, too designed, too engineered to be the result of mere undirected, random forces. Even the simplest thing we could call "living" is vastly more complex than a super computer and super computers don't happen by chance. Every cell is composed of many constituent parts, each one marvelously designed and necessary for the whole.

Without any one of its parts, the cell could not live. All of it is organized and energized by the magnificent DNA code, an encyclopedia of information which, even though modern scientists can't read it, it is read and obeyed by the cell. Surely some things need a Designer/Author.

total shit. scientists can't read DNA??? jaysus better call the university departments, biotech and pharmaceutical companies and let them know then. idiot

(1)this smug know it all attitude can usually be seen in anything written by that puffed up bag of ego kevin myers, who incidentally motivated this letter with a spectacularly ignorant rant bemoaning evolution. gobshite

carrying on from the last post...

saw this in the comments

It's good to finally see this debate. The media have allowed the alternative medicine industry to propagate false claims and squeeze money from an uninformed public. The Irish Times has been just as uncritical as every other media outlet. A recent Health supplement printed without challenge the ridiculous claim that reiki is explained by quantum mechanics. Genuine science is unfortunately confined to a single weekly page. Alternative medicine is the greatest health rip-off in this country and yet The Irish Times is not covering it.
David H Ireland

i remember that article too, it had an argument that basically said..

''quantum mechanics tells us all molecules vibrate (presumably means the z.p.e) at a basic level and it's this universal energy that is manipulated in reiki''

..and yes while paraphrasing, no i'm not being unfair it really was that stupid. non sequitur anyone? evidence?

though what do you expect from the IT health supplement, it's full of lifestyle crap and self help mumbo jumbo. and the science page, jaysus, would be a lot better if the good doctor william reveille could spare us his periodic meditations on religion and richard dawkins

like talking to a wall

i just waited to see the final result of the head to head section (1) in the times before i wrote about this. anyway the results are in... 72% of voters on the poll want alternative medicine to be included in the health system (2). if you read the comments section underneath you'll see that a lot of the pro alt. medicine commenter's didn't bother to read the anti side as a lot of the comments are along the lines of ''i tried it and i subsequently felt better so it must work'' testimonials and anecdotes. the anti guy (can't find his name at the mo, sites having a flip out) covered this and cited the placebo effect as the main reason people think alt. medicine works. that's probably true in the case of pain, but obviously one of the other reasons is far more mundane crap thinking and correlative fallacies.

my son had a stomach bug, i gave him some alternative remedy, he got better so the alt. remedy worked. this is a (paraphrased) letter i read in the times months ago. it obviously didn't occur to this woman that stomach bugs aren't exactly a chronic illness and that the things generally clears up by itself.

(1)nice to see the times get something that isn't suffixed by the P (premium, i.e subscription), even the freaking letters page is premium.

(2)the question ''Should alternative medicine be integrated into the health system?" really should read ''why should alternative medicine be integrated into the health system?'' the original question makes it sound that alt. medicine was already proven. really annoying

that's not reassuring at all mr. dog owner

when the postman comes up to your house and your dog starts growling, barking, showing any aggression whatsoever, saying something like ''don't mind him, he won't go near you'' is a sure way to piss off the postman. he won't bite you maybe but that's hardly surprising he is after all your frigging dog, that's not to say he won't decide to bite me though. it's also extremely stupid to dismiss aggression just cause the dog is small and cute, the little fuckers bite can still break skin, and if that happens i feel perfectly entitled to give fucker a kick with a steel capped boot. so dog owners, you've been warned.

very handy

today the times has a pull out section on the northern ireland elections. makes it so much easier to ignore. pull out, throw away.

crap statistics again

in today's IT yet more misuse of statistics by a lobby group, in this case the public health alliance. the conclusions drawn from the study* by the pha and as reported in the times are not supported by the data, and could only be arrived at by confirmation biases and the correlative fallacy. for example this..

The study by the Public Health Alliance shows factors linked to a person's economic background can put their lives at greater risk.

Children in low-income homes are more likely to be born small with low birth rates, leaving them with poorer health in later life and reduced life expectancy.

Men from the lowest socio-economic groups in Northern Ireland live an average of six-years less than those from wealthier backgrounds. Death rates among people in the lowest occupational class was up to 200 per cent higher than the rate for the highest.

Among those in the lower work classes, the death rate for circulatory diseases was 120 per cent higher, 100 per cent higher for cancers, 200 per cent higher for respiratory disease and over 150 per cent higher for injury or poison-related deaths.

....somehow implies that this requires redistribution by government, and that this will make theses differences disappear.

Given the evidence of the impact of inequality on the health of the population it is clear that in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland any attempt to improve health and address inequalities in health must be rooted in social justice, resulting in a fairer distribution of wealth, as well as provision of appropriate, accessible services provided on the basis of need and not ability to pay".

personally i think the whole premise of the study is bogus. comparing the health statistics between economic classes rather than between jobs and education levels, which determine economic class, seems designed to produce this result, which can be used as a pretext for redistribution.

*this study sounds like a rehash of one that vincent browne talked about last year. also when i was looking for the phas site i came across this one. take a look at the poll....

Do you agree or disagree that:
"The tobacco, alcohol, food and pharmaceutical industries have too much political power and that this is damaging the health of the Irish population"

framing the question anyone?

liam doran assumes people are fools

liam doran on pat kenny today tried to tell us that reducing the working week of nurses from 39 to 35 hours a week wouldn't require thousands of new nurses just to keep total hours worked constant, tried to imply to kenny that such a notion was some ''health employers''* propaganda and if the health employers just sat down and agree to the ino demands reality will magically bend to so that when the 35000 ino nurses each work 4 hours less a week they will still manage to work the same amount of hours as now. (i may be paraphrasing in parts here)

actually it would take around 4000 extra nurses just to do stand still in terms of hours worked. more revealing is, when trying to justify his obviously absurd statements, he said that the extra work could be done by ''changes to the roster... to the role... to the way we work''. which brings an obvious question to mind, why hasn't this been done already? oops slight slip there liam, kinda implied that nurses are working inefficiently at the moment.

*liam is a good union spokesman all right, he gets round mentioning government by using health employers to put distance between his unions pay claim, 35 hour week and 10% rise in pay, and the fact that everyone else i.e taxpayers will have to pay it.

in the sindo

homes seized as property crisis worsens

this means that some people took out a mortgage that was at the edge of their ability to pay and surely this is indicative of why there's a 'property crisis' in the first place. banks freely dispensing credit and people stretching to take out the largest mortgage possible, both ignoring possible interest rate increases and poo-pooing anyone who pointed this out as a possible problem. both also for some reason assuming that the value of the house wouldn't fall and so their money would be safe. i don't understand why people assume that houses are somehow different to any other manufactured object and are somehow immune to fluctations in price due to changes in supply and demand. the price of a house is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for it, rather than by how much the seller thinks a buyer should pay. now it's being blamed on stamp duty as a convienient scapegoat. blind

help stop global warming, become vegatarian!!

i was wondering when someone would mention this. in the sindo today, there's an article by eilis o hanlon where she points out that a good way to reduce global warming would be for everyone to become vegetarian. ok so being the sindo it actually comes across as simply a way to bash pinkos and greens, but the point still stands. methane kilo for kilo has about 20 times the greenhouse potential as CO2, animals such as cows and sheep produce methane in their guts so reducing meat consumption and production could lower the rate of increase in temperature. it would also have other environmental benefits as she points out, but neglects to mention that the land freed up could be used to produce biomass.

so from the new scientist 10 feb 2007 at the moment the concentration of methane is 2000 ppb and of CO2 is 400 ppm or 400,000 ppb. atomic mass of CH4 is about 16 and that of CO2 is 44. so scaling the kilo for kilo measurement above to parts, i.e per molecule, a molecule of CH4 has roughly 55 times the greenhouse potential of CO2. so ''converting'' if you will, the CH4 concentration to a CO2 concentration for comparison gives you 110,000 ppb. now methane doesn't last as long in the atmosphere as CO2 so that number doesn't give a particularly accurate reading but still reducing methane emissions could be a very efficient way of slowing global warming.

as methane from agriculture is only part of the total of methane released (also some of that results from rice growing), reducing livestock numbers would only save some of this. i should say i'm not particularly in favour of government regulation, in fact i'm skeptical of their motivations, to slow global warming and this only reinforces that stance. apparently not too many governments want to piss off farmers, nor does it have the protectionist potential of carbon taxes. this, along with the debacle that was the Eu's attempt at a carbon market, make me think that the idea that government regulation will save us from global warming is a joke. if you want a job done do it yourself.

i should also say that i'm not much of a meat eater, though not vegetarian. and the methane link, this link all do the above calculations far better, i just like to do them roughly myself.

futility

haven't posted lately, simply due to the futility or the feeling of same of blogging about things the that annoy me. for the simple reason that i'm liberal (or libertarian in american, some dispute though here) and i live in not-even-remotely-liberal ireland so almost everything that politicians or lobby groups propose, manages to offend my belief system. they generally also offend logic and reason but that a seperate issue. anyway this leads to a sort of paralyis, which stupid idea to bitch about first? with the result that nothing is bitched about. on the blog anyway needless to say i do a good bit of eye rolling and disgusted head shaking every day.

for example, just taking what's in the news today

from the IT rabbitt wants state to jointly fund house purchases.

so the government wants to take other peoples money and give it to other people so they can spend more on a house, apparently labour has no idea what a price is or how it is determined, what inflation is, or how the well intentioned zoning laws have the unintended, though inevitable consequence, of driving up the price of land, and therefore houses by artifically limiting supply. in fairness to labour all parties idaes are stupid in this regard though this 'idea' takes the buiscuit.

Opening Labour's annual conference in Dublin, Mr Rabbitte said the housing crisis has created "impossibly long" housing waiting lists, forced unsustainable commutes upon workers and damaged family ties. "We have to come to grips with this issue. What is required is a mechanism that allows people to get a foot on the housing ladder," the Labour leader told delegates. Unlike existing affordable housing schemes, which are limited to those earning below €40,000, homebuyers would not have to meet income limits, nor would they face restrictions about selling the house at any time.

what a load of crap. first off housing crisis? this is apparently where people can't buy a house where they want at the price they they demand. this is not a housing crisis or market failure, it's exactly what happens when government bodies try to ''plan'' development as i pointed out above

The lack of qualifying income limits would not be abused, he said: "People will not want to own less of a share of a house than they can afford. People want to own their own homes." However, qualifying homebuyers would pay a still unfixed monthly fee in return for the State's assistance with their mortgages: "It will be low enough to be affordable, high enough to discourage abuse," he said.

In an example given in a Labour briefing document, seen by The Irish Times last night, a couple able to qualify for a €250,000 mortgage would be able to bid for a €400,000 property once they have been given clearance by their local authority.

"The housing authority will guarantee the balance of the loan necessary to buy at that price - the authority can do this by taking a proportionate stake in the property, with the house-hunter undertaking a minimum quarter stake in the home," the document declared.

"The couple will then repay their approved mortgage in the normal way." The housing authority will also finance the balance, through a new Housing Assistance Fund.

problems with this
1) if someone can only qualify for a 250000 euro mortgage, it means a bank somewhere has looked at their income and doesn't think that they can afford more. i'd like to point out that irish banks aren't stingy with credit and they have a far more knowledge than the government in this area. so how does labour think that these people are going to pay back the other 150000???

2)it presupposes that houses have a fixed value, it obviously hasn't occured to labour that doing this would cause massive inflation in house prices. repeat after me when more money chases scare goods prices go up.

3)the lack of qualifying limits will not be abused???? what planet does this guy live on? i have to admire his faith in his fellow man.

i'm assuming that this is supposed to make people want to vote for them. so will i vote for a party that has absolutely no knowledge of even the most basic economic ideas? emmmm...... no

On wikipedia for some reason the word "gobshite" is listed as a fictional expletive, which would presumably be news to most Irish people I'd know anyway.

The post new year funk.

It always comes year after year, the ''what the hell am I going to do with myself?'' type questions and attendant lethargy. I'm in the same place and job for the past 2 years (all my own fault, I know) and another round of fucking interviews before I can get anywhere else. It's very hard to start looking for something new simply because I'm too pissy and unarsed (if I may use this non-word). I'm not in the mood to blog either or start reading any of the 15 book backlog that I've built up since Christmas, I just haven't got the attention span at the moment. Fuck it, roll on February.

Yea broadband!!

Haven't been posting very frequently lately, problems with the 'ol broadband. It takes an age to load a page or what seems like it, it's at dial up speeds. I'd forgotten how crap that was. Thankfully it's all back to normal.

I see

Also from todays Times, Special forces attack (1) based on "credible intelligence". So is that credible like "Saddam has WMD" credible, or what....?

(1)In Somalia

Cheeky fuckers

From todays Times "Free pub transport proposed for isolated rural areas" So because of new random breath testing (1), pub trade is dropping (3) as people are presumable less willing to drink-drive(2), all other taxpayers will have to subsidise publicans by paying for a rural transport scheme to get theirt customers to the pub? Minister O' Cuiv said apparently that the scheme is "a mechanism to deal with market failure" Please note Minister that being too cheap a cunt to spend money on a taxi to go to the pub is not a "market failure". Surely if this is such a problem it would still pay publicans to organise their own transport for their customers.

(1)Random breath testing seems pretty sneaky to me, along the lines of "If you haven't done anything wrong you've nothing to worry about". The situation previously, was that the gardai needed a "reasonable suspicion" to stop and breathalyse someone. Random breath testing did away with that irritant. But if it's not obvious that someone may be drunk (enough, in order to form a reasonable suspicion), are they really all that dangerous?

(2)Taking publicans at face value, this massive loss of business would imply that many people were drinking and driving before. (I don't take this at face value by the way, this is simply grasping at straws, see 3)

(3)From what I hear pub trade was dropping before this (and the smoking ban) simply because it's cheaper to buy drink in a shop and have your friends over, with the added bonus of quicker service and control over who forms your drinking company.

Idiots

I'm just listening to Marian Finucane (no link yet). Marian and her panel were talking about the judiciary and of course no discussion of this topic is complete without some commentator, in this case Jim Power, talking about the "perception'' that the law comes down on the side of the criminal over the victim. Jesus H. Christ. The whole point of a trial is to determine whether or not someone is guilty of a crime and to safeguard that person constitutional rights from the mob. Guilt or innocence is not determined by "common sense", by what you read in a paper, what you hear on telly or by what "everyone knows".

Of course there is a perception that the law comes down on the side of the criminal over the victim, if every time this is talked about somebody repeats it. People then think "well if it keeps being repeated then there must be some truth to it". Not quite. It's not helped of course by Gardai leaking details of investigations to journalists, which are then quoted anonymously as an "informed source". Journalists accept what their told (at least enough to print it), without thinking that the Gardai might not be a fully disinterested or impartial source.

This perception is also very useful to politicians, "We're doing our best on crime but look it's all the judges fault, uhhh here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey! I'm talking to you Micheal, I fancy myself as a libertarian but that should be authoritarian, McDowell.

Thanks, (now what am I going to do with this??)

I got a tip today (a Christmas one) of a large bottle of whiskey, which brings my Christmas booze haul to 2 bottles of whiskey (good stuff too, eh.. I'm told) and 5 bottles of wine. Now, the only problem with all this is that I don't really drink, the odd (as in one a year) beer maybe. Not that I'm complaining, I just hate getting tips, seems sort of pointless somehow. I never got the point of tipping the postman it's not as though we're on starvation wages, or that if you don't give a tip all your letters will end up in a ditch. Very hard to refuse though as people tend to be either offended or to think that your just going through standard motions when someone gives someone else something,

''Oh you shouldn't have''

....and so on. That kind of crap's a bit fake anyway too.