13 things that do not make sense

New Scientist has a list of 13 things that don't make sense, starting with the Placebo effect.

This reminds me of the famous lecture by Lord Kelvin in 1900 where he said there were just two problems left to solve in Physics.

As I recall it, his advice to students was not to go into Physics as Newton's Laws of Motion and the Theory of Thermodynamics had pretty much explained everything - apart from these two minor issues - but I couldn't find any reference specifically giving that advice on the Internet.

The two problems were to do with detecting the ether (the medium through which it was assumed electro-magnetic radiation such as light was propagated) and describing the radiation emitted by a black body.

In seeking the solutions to these, physicists came up with the Theory of Relativity to describe how gravity works and the Laws of Quantum Mechanics to describe how sub-atomic particles (such as electrons) behave. In other words, the whole of modern physics.

UFO Excitement

I was surprised to find this exciting picture on my camera, I wonder what it is.

Pope begins landmark turkey visit

Pope Benedict XVI begins landmark turkey visit on his first trip to a poultry farm since acceding to the papacy.

The visit has been overshadowed by anger among many turkeys, enraged by comments the Pontiff made about what to have for dinner on Christmas Day.

A spokesturkey for the political organisation Turkeys Against Christmas said of the Roman Pontiff:
'What have the Romans ever done for us?'

Meanwhile, the Vatican released the following statement:
'His holiness the Pope wholeheartedly condemns the massacres of innocent Muslims, Jews and non-Catholic Christians that were perpetrated during the medieval crusades, but notes that no turkeys were actually killed at the time as they did not reach Europe until after the discovery and conquest of the Americas (for which he also apologises). Sorry.'

Blind Van Man

Whilst driving in this morning, in the gentlemanly (or ladyly) style that I'd like to think is still a distinctive feature of British roads, I let a small van pull out in front of me from a side road. On the back of the van it said something like:

"This van is being driven by a blind man".

Ho, Ho! It was, of course, owned by a company selling blinds. It didn't make me want to buy some blinds (horrible things) just smile in a world-weary, middle-aged sort of way.

Later on, I got stuck behind a long lorry full of concrete blocks which had stopped in the middle lane of a main road in order for the driver to get out and ask directions. Not quite as bad as being in a car reversing in the middle lane of the Hangzhou-Shanghai expressway because the driver's eyesight was so bad that he'd missed the junction.

Death of a Seagull

Driving to work this morning, I noticed a flock of seagulls hovering immediately above the cars ahead; I couldn't work out what they were doing but at least one of them appeared to be trying to land amongst the traffic, so I assume there was something fairly tasty lying on the road. I passed by in a different lane but saw one of the seagulls in my rear-view mirror get low enough to the road to be immediately caught by the wheel of a car and crushed to death on the road.

It reminded me of an incident that occurred when I was at university. I was walking along a footpath in a fairly introspective mood when I saw a ladybird on a leaf (ladybug, if you're North American). It suddenly opened its wing-casings and flew up, right in front of me; at the same time, a robin flew down from the other side of the path and swallowed the ladybird in mid-air.

Shy Bladder, Bashful Bowel

There was an obsessive compulsive,
With bowels in spasms convulsive,
But they just couldn't do,
A poo on the loo,
'Cause they found public toilets repulsive.

In today's news, we learn that the UK National Phobics Society is launching a campaign to help the estimated 4 million UK people who suffer from toilet phobia.

Dumpty Rumpty

Donald Rumsfeld was set on a war.
Donald Rumsfeld was terribly sure.
But American forces and American men,
Couldn't put Iraq together again.

The Middle East Today

Whilst having coffee with GG earlier today, it was noted that I never post anything controversial in my blog, hence the lack of comments. Given the results of the US mid-term elections and the obvious effect that the war in Iraq had on the outcome, I thought I'd make some comments about the Middle East.

To my mind the invasion of Afghanistan was entirely justified given the nature of the Taleban regime and the fact that they were harbouring the main bases of the Al Qaeda terrorists. When I first heard it suggested that the US was considering invading Iraq, I thought that was a completely mad idea as it would not get any support from other Arabic or Muslim countries.

By the time it happened, I assumed that they would not have invaded unless they really knew there was an imminent threat and I certainly wasn't sorry to see a dictator like Saddam Hussain overthrown. The great shame for the West is that it support this bastard in the 1980s when he was at his most lethal: invading Iran, using poison gas against the Iranians and then against the Kurds in Iraq. When countries like France, Germany and Russia - who had all had dealings with Saddam's Iraq - started taking the moral high ground in the run up to the Iraq War, I really did think they were being very two-faced

Since then it has become very clear that the arguments for going to war in Iraq were fatally flawed and the plans fro what to do afterwards were almost non-existant. Personally, I don't believe that Blair or Bush lied; it just doesn't make sense to me that very canny politicians would choose to knowingly lie when it was obvious that these lies would be found out. During the Cold War the US was very susceptible to panics about gaps in particular defensive or offensive technologies that the USSR might have, often based on flawed analysis by the intelligence community egged on by sympathetic political interests and the military/industrial complex. For the US, I think something similar happened here: they got it wrong because they wanted to 'know' certain facts. For the UK, I suspect that it was more likely that we were overawed by the US and the resources it can commit to these things - we simply assumed that they must be right. I don't believe that even someone as dubious as Rumsfeld actively and knowingly lied; to my mind politicians try to evade saying the truth they don't point at a horse and say it's a deer (as the Chinese say).

The way out of Iraq is to do some kind of deal with the various armed groups there, to bring them into the political process - in much the same way as the UK had to deal with the IRA and Israel had to talk to the PLO. The situation is bad and a great many people are being killed, however, I suspect that this would have happened when Saddam died (or was overthrown, either of which were only a few years off) and it is the main reason why George Bush's dad didn't invade Iraq in the first Gulf War

Looking around the rest of the Middle East, it's all a bit of a mess. Key US allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are hardly western-style liberal democracies and personally I think we should openly acknowledge the difference between an ally who we hope will reform (e.g. Egypt) and one that is in the process of doing so (e.g. Afghanistan). The Israeli-Palestian problem continues with no end in sight - this, I feel, is another case where we would do well to talk to the opposition (i.e. deal with Hammas), however abhorent their professed views - they have a country (or a territory) to run and ought to make compromises for the sake of their own people and it would do no harm to acknowledge that the Palestian refugees did not volunteer to leave what is now Israel.

Further afield, we can see the US cosying up to various dubious regimes who offer some advantage in the War on Terror. I think this is wrong and it is the same sort of thing that led to us supporting Saddam Hussain in the 80s.

One country that has been beyond the pale for the US for a quarter of a century is Iran which the US regards as part of the axis of evil. I think that there is actually great hope for Iran, it is a democracy - at least in the sense that it has periodic elections and that the vast majority of the population actively exercise their vote. The non-Western aspect of their democracy is that it has a theocracy on top of it that weeds out what it deems to be inappropriate candidates and can over-rule the will of the people. However, I believe that Iran can and will evolve into a true democracy (in the same way that Britain did) as the practicalities of running a successful economy and dealing with material issues become apparent.

Blind Mice

In today's news we hear that UK scientists have restored sight to a few blind mice by transplanting precursor retinal cells into their damaged eyes.

When questioned as to how they can be sure that the mice can now see, the scientists retorted: "See how they run, they all ran after the farmer's wife; before this, they just use to blunder around bumping into things!"

However, doctors announced that they had been unable to reattach the blind mice's severed tails: "If they had been packed in a wet tea-towel with a packet of frozen peas we might have had a chance."

Later, police raided Old MacDonald's farm and a woman was taken into custody; a spokesman said, "We are awaiting the results of forensic tests on a carving knife found at the scene."

Britain AD

I've just read Britain AD by Francis Pryor, he reviews the archaeological evidence for what happened in Britain in the first 500 years AD and points out that it doesn't tally with the traditionally accepted history.

Mythology
43 AD. The Romans invade Celtic Britain and build lots of roads, towns and Hadrian's Wall.
410 AD. Barbarians are pressing in on the borders of the Roman Empire; the Romans try to play different groups of barbarians off against each other. Ultimately, the Roman army is withdrawn from Britain. Britain descends into chaos, towns are abandoned, fields revert to forest and Anglo-Saxon invaders raid the coast.
450 AD. Anglo-Saxons warriors, invited in to help defend the country, decide they would like to stay and eventually conquered the whole of what is now England pushing the Romano-British Celtic people into Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.

Archaeology
Britain retained a prosperous rural economy after the Romans left. There's no evidence for massive population decline - except in urban areas where the disappearance of a central tax collecting authority had removed the logic behind having towns in an overwhelmingly rural country. There's no evidence for a whole new population coming in with a different set of traditions, but there is evidence of individual families gradually adopting what we think of as 'early Saxon' culture over several generations. Above all, there's no evidence of large scale displacement of the existing population - either people moving en masse or genocide.

Hmm
It's all a bit puzzling that the traditional story (admittedly from a very narrow base of biased written sources from post-Antiquity) should look so flimsy when compared to the archaeology.

Invasion Theories
It does appear that invasion theories have largely dropped out of fashion. They used to think that different groups of people invaded Britain in successive waves throughout pre-history and that any change in archaeology, e.g. different types of pottery or different ways of disposing of the dead, signified a new population coming in and taking over. Such events would lead to sudden changes in the archaeological record, as each new population came in and did things according to their own traditions. Since the 1960s, archaeologists have pooh-poohed this idea as more and more evidence for incremental cultural changes has been uncovered.

Nowadays, more emphasis is placed on the idea that indigenous populations remain largely in place but there is much more travel (rather than invasion), communication and trade. It's recognised that communities can adopt new practices (particularly if they are beneficial) such as different types of pottery or styles of dress without having had to be invaded - much as renaissance ideas spread to England without the need for any invasion by Italian city states.

Uh?
A question that jumped into my head was 'how come we speak English?' One would have expected the existing (presumably Celtic language) to have survived rather than be replaced by a language related to dialects spoken around the various continental and Scandinavian coasts of the North Sea. Unfortunately, Mr Pryor doesn't analyse this point too deeply as it isn't his area of expertise; although he does make the point that Eastern and Southern Britain were much more closely involved with the continent than had previously been thought.

It is true that language does change and is heavily influenced by the language of those at the top of the social pile; so by the time English displaced French as the language of government in England (200-300 years after the Norman Invasion), it was very different from Old English and massively influenced by French. Perhaps something similar happened in the 200-300 years from the end of Roman rule.

Where does that leave us then?
The image we're left with is of the Romano-British population of post-Roman Britain as living fairly comfortably in a prosperous rural economy, in touch with, and open to, cultural influences from other areas around the North Sea; gradually they became Anglo-Saxonised. It doesn't mean there were no battles; petty kings would have been quite happily slaughtering each other (and, of course, their own close relations); but that's just stuff that happens rather than the mechanism by which the culture changed.

Something similar happened before the Roman invasion, when the rulers of areas in close contact with the Roman world chose to adopt Roman culture. Of course, it's also happening today in countries such as China, where people at all levels of society are adopting and adapting Western culture.

A Journey through the Digestive System

I found this quite difficult and couldn't get my sandwich out of the bum: http://www.gutweek.org.uk/game/gutAlpha19.swf

Pregnancy Test

It's that time of the week and I've just read James Randi's newsletter. I enjoyed this link and I'm sure you will too: www.thepregnancytester.com

On the way to work this morning

As I drove out of the older of the two Mersey tunnels this morning, the lights of a pedestrian crossing were against me, so I slowed down to stop - as one does. The crossing is close to John Moores University and one often sees students using it; today there was a Chinese-looking fellow about to cross while a number of other people were crossing at the same time; however, he looked up and caught my eye, although the lights for him were still green, he hesitated as if unsure of my intentions.

It occurred to me that if he was from mainland China, this would be a perfectly normal reaction as making eye-contact with the driver is usually taken as meaning that the pedestrian has seen the approaching car and will stop, so the driver will swerve around them or accelerate very fast so they can pass extremely closely and dangerously.

I could be wrong, for all I know he's lived in Liverpool all his life and was hesitating because he'd left his wallet at home; but it did remind me of the difficult and occasionally perilous nature of crossing the road in China.

Later, after I'd parked and was walking to the office, I noticed a shoe in the street. I always wonder what it means when you see a shoe in the street. Has someone dropped their shoe and continued walking without it? Perhaps they were attacked or were drunk? Did someone have a big bag of clothes for charity or for recycling and a shoe dropped out? Was it stolen from outside of a shoe shop? Had the old woman who lived in it been jailed for beating her children and the kids taken into care?

I couldn't eat a whole one

It's funny that the articles in The Spoof have to have disclaimers at the bottom (The story above is a satire or parody. It is entirely fictitious).

God-Bothering

Top Ten symptoms of what I would call god-bothering.
(I saw this on James Randi which has a link to the This is True site but it's actually on jumbojoke.)

#10 – You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

#9 – You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that humans were created from dirt.

#8 – You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

#7 – Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the male first-born babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" – including women, children, and trees.

#6 – You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods consorting with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

#5 – You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is about a couple of generations old.

#4 – You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs – though excluding those in all rival sects – will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering, and yet you consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."

#3 – While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor “speaking in tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" your choice of religions to be the correct one.

#2 – You define .01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers, and consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% failure was simply the will of God.

#1 – You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history – but you still call yourself a Christian.

How to tell if you are dreaming

I can't remember where I heard it but one of the ways to tell if you are dreaming is to read something and then try to read it again - if it has changed then you are dreaming. The context I heard this in was about realising that you were in a dream and exercising some control over the direction of the dream. There's some stuff in a similar vein (about lucid dreaming) in Wikipedia.

The nearest I came to this was when I was dreaming a few nights ago. I can't remember much about the dream other than that I had a large map with me; remembering the tip about trying to read, I began to look at it. I can remember distinctly that the words were in different fonts and sizes next to little dots, squares and circles - just like you have on a map to show the difference between hamlets, villages, towns, cities and counties - but all the place names were interrogative words like Where, Which, When, Who, etc. It was at that point that I became fairly sure that I was dreaming.

What are eyebrows for?

Today, in Liverpool, we have what I would describe as Manchester weather: grey and dreary with lots of rain. The sort of conditions I associate with November in Manchester, UK or indeed in Hangzhou, China.

It started off as an electrical storm in the dark before dawn, which slowly made its way over our house. At one point there was a flash and an almost instantaneous crack of thunder, which scared the willies out of everyone. Later when I tried to log on to our laptop, that I realised that it was running on battery power rather than via the adapter; it would appear that there had been some kind of electrical surge which blew the fuse in the plug - leastways, I hope so, as I'd rather buy a new fuse than a new adapter.

So at lunch time, I walked into the centre of Liverpool to buy a fuse thinking the rain had abated; alas, I was wrong and returned very wet. As I came into the building I realised that my eyebrows were holding a considerable amount of water - Ah! so that's what eyebrows are for!

Straw Veils

Jack Straw (if you don't know: he's an English MP) has stirred up some controversy by expressing his dislike of veils as worn by your more traditional sort of muslim lady (see Reuters). This has already had some come back for him (see Voice of Reason). Personally, I think that if Mr Straw doesn't like veils then he should not be made to wear one.

I listened to a programme on the radio whilst driving to work a few weeks ago, it was about the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979; one of the interviewees observed that prior to the revolution, her mother rarely left the house because she felt unable to go out without a veil (which the Shah had banned); after the revolution, her mother, and the many other traditionally minded women in Iran, suddenly had access to public space again.

So, whilst I agree that the wearing of full-facial veils does create a barrier (and that is part of the point of them), I do wonder if a move to stop people wearing them will, rather than opening up communication between groups, actually stifle communication as women feel they are no longer able to come out in public.

James Randi

James Randi is a professional magician and exponent of critical thinking, who has spent many years exposing the nonsense behind the paranormal. He did an excellent TV series in the UK in 1991, where he investigated various paranormal claims. Anyone who can actually demonstrate a paranormal effect (e.g. finding water by dowsing) under a mutually agreed protocol (e.g. where the dowser doesn't know where the water is beforehand) can apply to win his $1 million prize (no one has won it yet).

I emailed him quite a while ago about a Ricky Gervais podcast in the Guardian that used critical thinking to good comic effect. I'd quite forgotten about it but then last week I was prompted to email him again about a comment in his newsletter of last week. When I logged on to my yahoo mail at home I found a reply to my original email apologising for the fact that it had been filtered off into a spam folder. What a co-incidence. Anyway, I mailed off my minor point about use of psychic helpers by chess players and suspected that this would be the end of it.

However, I was even more amazed when I logged on to his website and found he'd printed my email (Chess Brouhaha) - perhaps there wasn't much news to cover this week.

JP

I'm sure the small number of people who read this blog are already aware of the road traffic accident and hospitalisation that befell JP as described by dB (who is much closer to the event than me).

When I was coming to the end of my sojourn in China, early last year, I had to remain in China for a few months after my wife and kids had returned to the UK; I was very fortunate to be sharing an apartment with JP immediately after they had gone. This gregarious and lovable chap helped me to switch into work hard/play hard mode rather than just moping around lamenting my fate (although I got to do that as well as there are so many hours in the day). The limited role I've played in propagating information to JP's colleagues has allowed me to feel I was part of his support network in some small way.

After all the ludicrous, madcap and nerve-racking things that have happened to us all whilst in China, after all the drunken exploits, near-misses in taxis and white-knuckle rides to the airport, and especially after all the improvements to road safety (new traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, making people wear seat-belts, etc.), it seems so bizarre that JP could have suffered such an accident right outside the office. It couldn't have happened to a nicer person.