I paid a short visit to my parents in the UK during the Winterval, but by the time I got there I had developed full-blown tonsillitis and spent most of the time feverish and delerious in bed. Fortunately I was able to get to a doctor who took my temperature, peered down my throat, made the [...]
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Book Review: The Heretic’s Guide to Vegan Cookery Warning! Not suitable for Breatharians Andy Murray The Good Elf Press 2009 187pp Astrology is an amazing tool to run your life by, without having to waste time with the fraudulent pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of Science. Astrology explains wars, thunderstorms and plagues. We can even use it historically. [...]
I am on this week’s episode of the UK-based Pod Delusion talking about Biodynamics and the environmental movement: This week: David Nutt’s Sacking and Government Policy by Simon Howard A.N Wilson’s Attitude to Science by Pete Hague Irrationality and Environmentalism by Graham Strouts Collective Worship in Schools by Owen Duffy This is a weekly podcast [...]
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Update Aug 10th: Thanks to Robbie for sending me the link to Dominic Lawson’s piece on the FSA report and responses from the organic movement in the Times. Lawson quotes research suggesting farmers may have lower cancer rates possibly because pesticide use may protect against cancer! Now that has just got to be corporate spin… [...]
Brilliant article here by John Gibbons in The Times making the same point that I have been making, linking climate change denial with Quackery and other types of pseudoscience. When science is reduced to a game, anyone can play. Scientists say the arctic ice sheet is disappearing; I say they are stuffy old sausages; and [...]
Book Review: The Transition Timeline for a local, resilient future Shaun Chamberlin Forward by Rob Hopkins 190 pp pbk Chelsea Green 2009 The follow-up to Rob Hopkins’ seminal The Transition Handbook uses the method of “backcasting” from an envisioned future from which we create a timeline of how the transition to a more local, resilient [...]
As the measles epidemic in Britain gathers pace, and the woo-woos who still do not acknowledge that their refuasal to vaccinate is not because of some higher spiritual knowledge, but simply ignorance brought about by bad science and an irresponsible media, this account by Roald Dahl on the dangers of measles makes sober reading. It [...]
Saturday, February 7, 2009
From the BBC yesterday: “Measles cases in England and Wales rose by 36% in 2008, figures show… “Professor David Salisbury, director of immunisation at the Department of Health, said it was “irresponsible” for parents not to have their children vaccinated. He said: “I think it’s irrational, I think it’s putting children’s lives at risk. I [...]
Update: Jan 9th 2009 “Unprecedented” rise in Measles cases in England and Wales due to poor uptake of MMR: “ “We shouldn’t forget that the children who weren’t vaccinated many years ago are at real risk.” ” ‘Big pharma is evil’, goes the line of reasoning, ‘therefore homeopathy works and the MMR vaccine causes autism’. [...]
Richard Heinberg has recently written about how our understanding of our place within ecological systems- the ability to see the “big picture” of energy flows and resource constraints on human activity- could be seen as a kind of “enlightenment”- a new vision of the world not necessarily obvious or intuitive but closer to reality than [...]