Posts by Stephen Judd
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stephen walker: how do you know an answer really is an answer? Science is the method for establishing that.
If I have cancer, and have given up all hope, and you shine pink light on me, and I get better, was pink light the answer? I'd say science is another name for the methods we use to assess the pink light solution. In that sense, without science there are no answers - or at least, no answers we can trust as likely true.
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Emma, the problem is "natural" remedies that are not so well studied or documented, provided by people who wouldn't give a rats' about double-blind trials anyway. I'm all for, say, St John's Wort for depression, or kavakava to help me sleep, as long as the effects are known, and the quality of the supply verified. But I have a big problem with someone offering some Vedic remedy which has never been subjected to rigorous trials, containing lord knows what, on the basis that thousands of years of traditional medicine can't be wrong.
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It is a little bizarre that the Greens take the "mainstream science" approach to global warming but not to what are, essentially, pharmaceuticals.
The sad fact is that there are a lot of people in the Greens who are just not concerned with rationality. They will happily quote science to persuade YOU, but they're not really interested otherwise. These are the people for whom anthroposophy is as valid as chemistry. That's the biggest single reason why I may vote for the Greens every now and then, for pragmatic political reasons, but I can't ever join them.
(As an aside, if you make up any old crap, as long as there's a lot of it, and it takes extensive study to master, there will be people who value it, on the grounds that anything that takes long study to master must have something it in it.)
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Nearly all the people i know who embraced all that shit are dead, while those of us who took meds that had been tested on kittens and puppies by scientists in white coats in labs are still around. Keep your hippy shit and give me Western medicine any day.
This deserves to be widely circulated.
When it comes down to it, some people treat it as axiomatic that the natural (whatever that is) is superior; the traditional is correct, and the older the tradition the more correct; that foreign, obscure and vague "knowledge" is more correct (the more distant the origin and the more obscure the better); and that herbs are always good and never ineffective, let alone poisonous. And when I say axiomatic, I mean those people will never ever be persuaded otherwise, because their convictions rest on a deep and emotional foundation. I don't think we should label these people insane, because if mere illogic were insanity, we'd all be comittable; but we shouldn't let them anywhere near policy.
I had the bizarre experience this weekend of sitting at a table across from someone extolling the benefits of homeopathy, while the person next to us was injecting her lunchtime insulin. If I'd had my wits about me I'd have asked where the homeopathic treatments for diabetes were... -
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Don't want to rain on your parade, Russell, but I hope that's cruelty-free kopi luwak.
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Oh lord I'm a sad nerd, but a) my 3rd gen iPod is just fine and b) these days I just use TCPMP on my Treo instead.
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However, with talk of introducing national identity cards (with the eventual goal of not allowing anyone to get a passport without one) and transport tracking (for the purposes of reducing carbon emissions), the UK government starts looking creepier by the month.
Don't forget the CCTV cameras and the spy drones.
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Oboe Player: My name is Ball, sir.
Sir Thomas Beecham: How very singular. -
My sympathies are not with those who make a habit of making life unpleasant for others.
Neither are mine. However, I care about civil liberty even more. ASBOs have a fundamentally arbitrary element, coupled with a neither-fish-nor-fowl legal character, and I think that makes them ripe for abuse.