by webmaster on February 8, 2010
When I first heard about ten23 (which in case you don’t know was the mass suicide attempt using homeopathic products which took place recently – you can read Martin Robbins description of that event here http://bit.ly/cX9bTH) in relation to homeopathy, I thought that it might have been when homeopathy started up. I mean it would explain a lot if it had been with us through the ages. Imagine Harold at the battle of Hastings with an arrow stuck in his eye, and ye olde homeopathy surgeon standing pouring bottle after bottle of water into his eye socket to restore his vision.
I’m being deliberately facetious here but the question has occurred to me why homeopaths stop with just the curing of diseases that we still struggle to cure with conventional medicine. Why for instance did they not pump homeopathic remedies into JFK as he lay mortally wounded in a Dallas hospital? Because it wouldn’t have worked? Why then do they persist in pretending that remedies which have been diluted beyond the level where any possible active ingredient could be present can work? There’s no more evidence for that than there is to suggest that homeopathy can cure loss of life due to horrific gunshot wounds.
Is it something so shallow as mere profit? Hardly… (I am being understandably careful here because I have heard that the homeopathic associations are a little touchy on the subject – though perhaps they also have a remedy for paranoia!)
Homoepathy still tends to be a widely blogged and written on subject, and yet doesn’t seem to gather the same level of scepticism that, say, climate change does? Why? Answers on a postcard please…
by webmaster on January 20, 2010
At long last the new episode of Science Chat is done… I’m blaming the unseasonably bad weather which came right after the new year which meant that the holiday break was a little extended…
In this episode I talk to Professor Colin O’Dowd, Director of the Centre for Climate & Air Pollution Studies (C-CAPS) in the National University of Ireland (Galway) http://www.nuigalway.ie/c-caps/
The podcast itself can be found in the usual place… http://www.sciencechat.podomatic.com/ as well as on iTunes.
by webmaster on December 31, 2009
“another year over, and a new one just begun” as John Lennon once sang, and for most of us along with the parties and the incredible hangovers that we’ll have tomorrow, there will be the inevitable resolutions.
Some write them down, some tell their friends and family, some keep them to themselves but are just as adamant that they will follow them or achieve them or whatever the particular resolution calls for.
This year, I decided yet again not to make any.
But if I had, I would have for the first time applied a little business/quality philosophy that the profit making world always applies to its business plans – I would have made sure that they were SMART.
For those of you that don’t recognise this acronym, this means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely… not often an acronym applied to life of course!
Specific – not ‘I will lose weight’; more ‘I will lose one stone (2.2 kg)’
Measurable – see above
Achievable – not ‘I will lose one stone’ if you aren’t going to change your lifestyle
Relevant – not ‘I will stop drinking’ if you only take one drink a year on New Year’s Eve
Timely – not ‘I will stop smoking’ instead ‘I will have stopped smoking completely by end of January by decreasing steadily over the first three weeks using replacement therapy and then quitting completely in week 4′
Actually I could have just used the last example for the entire thing, but one other thing I’ve put in there is the definition of the tasks to be completed in a kind of project timeline. This is the other component that successful businesses use of course, and it’s also analogous to the scientific process. Not many scientific research projects proceed without a plan which define the actual breakdown of tasks to be completed and when they are to be completed by.
It seems to me logical to do this for New Year’s resolutions too, but whatever way you do your resolutions, whether public or private, whether SMART or not, good luck to you all and Happy New Year…
