Tomorrow could be boring

Library closures - should we just accept them?

There have been many library closures in the UK and North America recently. Meanwhile South Korea is opening new ones. What's going on? Are public libraries obsolete? I wrote an article about this topic at Blogcritics and would love it if you took a look and spread the word. I'm not willing to give up on the concept of the library, though I think the current model does need to evolve.

Thanks to Philip Bradley for the permission to use his excellent library posters.

Speaking of food...

I have food on the brain after the Special K discovery (see last post) and so what could be more appropriate than join in on the National Zero (food) Waste Week orchestrated by Rachelle at the Little Green Blog.

We, in the developed Western world, throw away sickening amounts of food every day. Big supermarket shops encourage us to fill our trolley with far more than we need. According to WRAP, 8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households in the UK every year.

That's just in UK. That's just household food waste. That's disgusting.

There's a separate website for the Zero Waste campaign here and you can join in this week by letting Rachelle know what you're up to. I'm going to keep a close look on how much we buy, how we cook and what we can do to reduce or eliminate food waste at home. I'll blog about my progress later this week.

One of the important things manufacturers and individuals should realise is that all that waste contributes significantly to the possibility of climate change. If more produce and packaging has to be produced than needed; if our waste has to be recycled and processed through the system - that all uses up energy and resources.

If the whiff of eco-warriorism is putting you off, there is one very good reason to eliminate food waste from your household: it's a terrible waste of money!

Disclaimer:

Whilst I fully approve of Rachelle's truly admirable efforts in encouraging the nation to reduce household waste, I must at this point state that I find it frustrating how some bogus treatments such as homeopathy are promoted at the Little Green Blog.

That is the kind of association that makes many people lump environmental campaigning, use of herbs and other valid issues into a giant hocus pocus pile, thereby invalidating great many a completely valid thing.

The excellent book Trick or Treatment co-authored by Professor Edzard Ernst, the world's first professor of complementary medicine, should answer all of your questions about which alternative therapies actually work and pass proper clinical trials. The answers might surprise you.

Many of the medicines we use today without batting an eyelid (aspirin and penicillin to name just a couple) are of 'natural' origin. Because they worked and were shown to have an effect beyond placebo/regression to the mean - they are now considered part of actual medicine. I'll leave you with this:

Strictly for geeks

Script errors :)

Click for full view.

I am missing the series, but can't stand how they wrapped it up.

Once upon a time I was virtually cool

The trick to Sky's 'free broadband' offer is that they don't provide you with any. That's what it's beginning to feel like. We moved here on the 21st of December and through various trials and tribulations managed to finally get a broadband activation date for the 4th of February. This itself is horrifying for internet nerds like us. We've been surviving on the dial-up dongle.

It is now 13th of February and we still haven't got broadband and don't know when it'll be connected. Good job it's FREE!

Meanwhile, our alter egos on World of Warcraft are twiddling their thumbs and kicking around tumbleweed. There they are, in their shiny (then) top of the range gear, which we earned through many late-night and weekend hours of end-game raiding. Once upon a time we had a very high gear score. Now, with two new patches between the time we were able to play and the time we'll eventually be able to log on, we'll suck again. We'll no longer be top-of-the-range virtual heroes. We're behind! The guild we were in has disbanded and our raiding buddies have scattered across the server.

In November, I said to Timo: "This is the first time since we've been playing that I feel we're actually not playing catch-up."

I kind of jinxed us, didn't I?

I did get Spore for Christmas and was so excited by it that I ordered the extra parts pack and Galactic Adventures too. Unfortunately Spore has some fatal flaws. Its early gameplay is by far the most enjoyable; swimming around in the primordial soup and evolving your tiny cell. The creature stage is a lot of fun - collecting parts and designing your creature (in a way that has nothing to do with actual evolution, since you can just rip off your limbs and start again if you find suckers instead of hooves and fancy those because they give you better stats). There are millions of possible combinations. I spent hours over Christmas creating all kinds of bizarre monsters and cute two-legged cows.

It's the space-stage that makes this game suck big time. Nonsensical gameplay design aside (you can't build a proper fleet of different ships for starters), the bugger keeps randomly blue-screen crashing on you. And there is no autosave. I'm yet to complete a single game. Instead I keep designing creatures in the designer. That's fun, but then you want to do something meaningful with your critters.

There is a patch that's meant to solve the space-stage crashes, but I'd have to be able to download it online. I've tried logging on with the dongle connected, but no patch seems to want to download. Either this is Electronic Arts' fault, or down to not having a proper internet connection.

Either way my gaming-hobby has certainly suffered lately! It's just about the only thing that stops my brain turning over work-things, so I hope I get it back soon. Everyone needs down-time.

Chemicals and mind-crushes

Isn't the picture Grant drew adorable? It makes more sense if you read my new column at Basenotes. This is the second in the series, entitled "A Very English Problem".

I've also got a new mind-crush in the form of Dara O'Briain. His rant about homeopathy and nutritionists is brilliant. Best quote: "Science knows it doesn't know everything or it would have stopped."

I brought back a toxic book from the library: "Toxic Beauty: How Hidden Chemicals in Cosmetics Harm You." It's written by a Reiki-healer who is convinced she knows what she's talking about, a bit like an astrologer might be convinced she knows better about heavenly bodies after talking to some people at NASA. I would despair, but luckily I've built up some resistance to this by now and my own chemistry studies are adding a whole new backbone to the way I view these scare-mongering messages nowadays. Once I finish my course I should really focus on the book I've been researching for the past few years and get it out there. It's time people stopped worrying about insignificant things and started worrying about stuff that could cause real harm instead. To themselves, to the environment and ultimately to the existence of human life itself. Trust me, whether we ingest a bit of lipstick isn't on that list.

Trains, planes and moral choices

Unless you live in a cave cut away from any kind of media (self-sufficiently, perhaps? Well, now that would be lovely) - you must know that travelling by train is the morally correct choice these days. Planes? Definitely not acceptable, at least not for domestic journeys. Automobiles? Hmm, if you drive a hybrid, or a Smart like I do is it a bit like greenwash? Is it really much better to do slightly less harm than regular cars? Aren't you adding to the grand total anyway?

I'm trying to be reasonable and make compromises.

I've never been big on flying all over the globe anyway, so that's fine. The trips I've taken have mostly been work-related and faraway holiday destinations or frivolous weekend trips to Europe using cheap flights have never attracted me. Check.

Driving - well, I've only been driving for a few years out of my life; I got my UK license and the Smart about 5 years ago. It was at a time when I was feeling extremely stressed and burnt out so having the independence was important. Nowadays I really try to think about the trips I make (almost all of them work-related) - should I drive or take the train?

Some longer-distance journeys really feel easier by train versus the car: you can settle down for a good while and work on your laptop or read a book. I travel a fair bit for work and do tend to take the train most of the time. It just makes sense.

And then some trips make you want to scream in frustration and never take another train journey ever again. Like the one I had yesterday.

A simple enough proposition - 2 hours one way with 2 changes. Not too terrible, right? Except that due to some incompetent advice and one train cancellation, the journey turned into 4 hours and 4 changes. I was frozen into a solid flesh-ickle by the time I fell out of the train that had carried me on the last leg of the journey. And thanked my earlier self for having driven to the train station so I didn't have to walk 20 minutes in the cold to finally get home.

I want the futuristic criss-crossing overground bullet-train networks, or cool, magically unpolluting hover-cars, or teleportation, please.

Why have we all been so slow to adopt new ways of conducting business? Some individuals and organisations have embraced video conferencing and systems that allow remote communication and distance leadership. Maybe we need to make all modes of (polluting) transport so excruciatingly uncomfortable that we'll only use them when absolutely necessary.

How toxic is this blog post? (Or: Television review for Beauty Addicts: How Toxic Are You?

The recent furore in UK over misleading television should not only focus on rigged phone-in contests and kittens called Socks; television programmes like Beauty Addicts: How Toxic Are You? (Channel 4) are an example of a new kind of highly irresponsible shock-schlock TV where the content is designed and edited for maximum tabloid value and can end up seriously misleading viewers and consumers.

Beauty Addicts: How Toxic Are You? aired on Channel 4 (UK) on Thursday 11th of October 2007 and was presented by Sarah Beeny. Sarah is a British television presenter who is best known for presenting Channel 4 property shows. 

The programme was interesting, but also incredibly frustrating to watch. This type of ill researched, scaremongering journalism (and I use the term journalism loosely) actually damages the cause of those who would wish the truth be known about benefits of using natural ingredients and safe synthetics. The truth, as it is, will evolve as new research is conducted and we learn more about the subject through experience and experimentation. Making any kind of categorical statements in this type of context is not helpful to anyone in the long run.

Two young girls were selected for a check-up on their cosmetic and cleaning product usage. Sarah examined the amount of products the girls were being exposed to, blood tests were conducted, and some alternative products offered. The girls in question were extreme product addicts, using ludicrous amounts of personal care products, colour cosmetics, and strong cleaning agents in their daily routines. They were not average consumers. In many ways, it would have been much more interesting to see an average example. It may not have made such great television though. Watching one of the girls admit to eating her toothpaste every day and the other to using up a can of hairspray in a week provided far more entertainment value. It's just a shame this programme appeared to pitch itself to us as a source of information rather than as car-crash TV.

The content also included a "natural hair colour test" performed in a hairdressing salon (in fact, none of the hair colours featured were totally natural; if we take natural to mean no synthetic ingredients). There were also some interviews of the general public on their perceptions of marketing and brand statements made by cosmetic companies. It was this section that left me especially frustrated, as I found it to be the closest to what this programme could have been — helping us all to get to the root of the issue and learn how to decode product labels and confusing advertising.

Indeed many sections left me wishing that more immediately useful information would have been on offer - instead we were served throwaway sound bites, unsupported vague claims, and scaremongering. In one particularly badly thought out scene, Sarah warned new mothers of the dangers of breast feeding as "chemicals will be passed to the baby".

It might have been better to stress the benefits that breast feeding has for both baby and mother (reduced risk of breast cancer for mother and huge immune system and emotional development benefits for baby) - and to help adequately educate people on what's likely to be genuinely toxic in their lives.

On the whole, I felt the terms "toxic" and "chemical" were thrown around far too freely without real explanation as to the programme makers' interpretation on what they wanted those terms to represent.

The language used in the programme appeared to have been designed to make viewers believe the following statements:

• Every man-made chemical is bad for you.
• Everything natural is good for you.

Just because something is a man-made chemical, doesn't automatically make it unsafe, or toxic.

If anything, sometimes it is entirely beneficial to produce something in a more controlled environment so that one ends up with a less volatile substance. The intended action and effects can be predicted to some extent, which can't always be said about natural materials. The trick is to get the balance, intended effects, formulations, dosages and usage instructions correct.

Just because something is natural, doesn't automatically make it safe. (Some of the most potent poisons in the world come from plants and animals: digitalis, deadly nightshade, belladonna, deathcap, black widow spiders, scorpions...). Natural ingredients are still made of chemicals. Yet the programme was fudging the issue by using "chemical" like a swearword.

Furthermore, the programme attempted to make the case that sodium laureth sulphate is bad for you. Sodium laureth sulphate is a coconut-derived surfactant used widely as a foaming agent in shampoos, bubble baths, and even toothpaste.

Now if you remember, one of the test subjects was a girl who actually ate quite a bit of toothpaste on a daily basis. Just because something is bad for you when used inappropriately doesn't make it a bad ingredient (cinnamon is lovely sprinkled on my best apple pie recipe, but if I asked you to down a bottle of it in one, you would probably get ill). The programme also failed to present examples of toothpastes without sodium laureth sulphate. They exist and there are some lovely ones out there. Instead the poor girl was given quite an extreme option to try — a traditional Japanese seaweed product that made her gag.

If you happen to be unable to use products with sodium laureth sulphate because you have an allergy, the good news is that there are now plenty of alternatives available. Making that ingredient out to be bad for everyone, because "it is used in higher concentrations in garage floor cleaners" (I suppose garage floors can get greasy, so why not use an effective surfactant?) or because sodium laureth sulphate can cause irritation in some people is silly.

People can be allergic to anything. Just because someone gets a rash when they eat strawberries (a person I would feel very sorry for), doesn't mean we all have to stop eating strawberries, or that strawberries should be removed from all food and cosmetics and declared evil and toxic. There are even people who are allergic to plain water.

There is a very virulent myth about sodium laureth sulphate out there. This myth has penetrated traditional and online media to such a degree that researchers now quote it as gospel. Those who dig a little deeper usually find out that it's a hoax, but the makers of this programme did not.

Sodium laureth sulphate is an effective de-greaser and very bubbly - lovely when used correctly - but not suitable for eating or for products that stay on your skin for a long time. I have seen it used in body lotions, which did not seem like a good idea, but when used in a shower gel, or any product that gets rinsed off, it's perfectly safe. It can be a skin irritant (but most people don't react to it) and if ingested, it can cause a stomach upset. That's about it. The "SLS-is-bad[sic]" myth started as an online hoax chain email some years ago. There is suspicion that the myth was started by a source intending to market "sodium laureth sulphate free" products.

Regurgitating other people's marketing messages, generating deliberate hoaxes for profits, badly researched publicity releases and repeating easily obtained anecdotal data makes things so much easier, not to mention has the added credibility of having been repeated via various sources to such a degree that when a consumer is exposed to it, they think "oh yes, I saw that mentioned somewhere else too, so it must be true."

One of the other main claims in the programme was that parabens are bad for you. (Even though when you closely listen to the script, the main statements are: "Parabens are preservatives used widely in food, cosmetics and toiletries. They are man-made chemicals. They can be found in your urine.")

Presence does not prove causality. Just because something can get into your system and can be found in your urine doesn't automatically make it a toxin. Vitamins? Minerals? Beneficial medications? Again, it can be about dosage and appropriate use.

For example certain apparently benign over-the-counter health supplements can cause liver damage and serious medical complications if used inappropriately.

I went to the Channel 4 website to check what they'd written about their own programme. I found this [emphasis added]:

Parabens are related to a chemical called benzoic acid which was discovered in the 16th century, and subsequently used to preserve products against moulds, yeasts and some bacteria. The most commonly used parabens have been methylparaben (E number, E218), ethylparaben (E214), propylparaben (E216), and butylparaben. But E216 is one of two parabens (the other being sodium propylparaben, E217) which have recently been withdrawn under revised EC regulations on food additives. While some parabens are found naturally in plants, those used as preservatives are made in the laboratory.

Recent worries about parabens are based on a series of British studies linking the chemicals to breast cancer. In one study, laboratory tests showed that parabens weakly mimic the activity of the natural female hormone, oestrogen. While all women need oestrogen, the hormone is known to help some breast tumours to grow, and part of breast cancer treatment aims to stop the effects of oestrogen.

In another study, parabens, especially methylparaben (E218), were found in 18 out of 20 samples from breast tumours. While there is no proof, it has been suggested that parabens contained in deodorant products may be absorbed through the skin under the arm and be involved in development of cancer in nearby breast tissue.

Neither of two leading cancer charities, Cancer Research UK and Breakthrough Breast Cancer, support this theory. Instead, they point out that it was a very small study, and it did not compare parabens levels in breast tissue from women who did not get breast cancer. Instead, they quote a large

US study which failed to show that women who use deodorants or antiperspirants were more likely to get breast cancer.

Cancer Research UK points out that over 90% of today's deodorants and antiperspirants don't contain parabens. So if you are worried about a possible link with breast cancer, you should be able to find products which are parabens-free.

I found it interesting that the content on Channel 4's own microsite presented the subject with a different slant. The above text was not included in the script of the TV show. Instead the programme was almost devoid of real content. A good addition to the television show, for example, would have been to report that The European Commission had planned a technical hearing on behalf of the Scientific Committee on Consumer Products (SCCP) on the safety evaluation of "Parabens in cosmetic products", in order to follow-up the SCCP opinions on the subject. The hearing was on 23 October 2007 in Brussels.

Telling the truth about matters, whether you're a business representative or a journalist, or a medical professional, or an aromatherapist should be on everyone's top agenda.

It most certainly isn't. Why? Because telling the truth requires patience, knowledge, the ability to be objective, and real effort on all sides. It also requires continuous further study and is often not the most immediately profitable option for businesses or anyone with something to sell or promote. And it doesn't always make for very exciting television.

The consumer is left out of the loop in terms of easily available unbiased information on cosmetics. There press releases from beauty companies that beauty writers use as their primary source of material are a closed circle. Most beauty scoops and articles are almost exact reprints of a patchwork of press releases; nothing more. I have spoken to beauty journalists off record and they tell me how frustrating it is for them to be effectively pushing product rather than to actually report on anything. The mutually beneficial relationship between the beauty PR and the beauty journalist is unlikely to change in a hurry, if ever. It is in neither side's best interest to break the deal.

I feel that this television programme was such a huge wasted opportunity.

My advice? Don't blindly buy into any lovely marketing stories, brand names, press releases, beauty articles, or any of that jazz. It is all subjective and often heavily tainted. The best thing we should all campaign for — as consumers and as business people — is a case for CLEAR, HONEST and EASY TO UNDERSTAND labelling. If you know what's in your product and what it's supposed to do for you, you'll have all the information you need to make your own decision.

There are some real poisons that we are exposed to; some of them can indeed be found in commonly used cosmetic products. Now we just need proper exposure on these issues.

--------

This was first seen at BlogCritics

Soy or not to Soy, that is the question

First, a small aside: I was listening to Radio 4 yesterday on the way to work (as I always do when I drive in; it's the sort of thing that seems right in the mornings) and the decline of "traditional newspapers" was being discussed. Apparently newspapers, in their frenzy to halt the declining circulation figures, have given away more DVDs in UK this year than the UK consumers bought from shops. That definitely smacks of desperation.

However, I don't think the newspaper will die entirely. There may be some form of the "paper" left, even if the best part does happen online. Take The Guardian. A little while back, one of the supplements in the Guardian newspaper published an article entitled "Should we worry about Soya in our food?". It was a well articulated and effective article. As someone who has been lactose intolerant from birth and always hated the taste of neat cow's milk, I've been a mass consumer of soy milk products for years. And here, in this article, a reputable newspaper was saying that, actually...

...soya contains toxins and plant oestrogens powerful enough to disrupt women's menstrual cycles in experiments. It also appeared damaging to the thyroid." James's lobbying eventually forced governments to investigate. In 2002, the British government's expert committee on the toxicity of food (CoT) published the results of its inquiry into the safety of plant oestrogens, mainly from soya proteins, in modern food. It concluded that in general the health benefits claimed for soya were not supported by clear evidence and judged that there could be risks from high levels of consumption for certain age groups. Yet little has happened to curb soya's growth since.

That was uncomfortable reading, but the article had more in store:

...raw mature soya beans contain phytates that prevent mineral absorption and enzyme inhibitors that block the key enzymes we need to digest protein. They are also famous for inducing flatulence.

Christopher Dawson, who owns the Clearspring brand of organic soy sauces, agrees. He lived in Japan for 18 years and his Japanese wife, Setsuko, is a cookery teacher. "I never saw soy beans on the table in Japan - they're indigestible."

Dawson describes the traditional craft method of transforming the soya bean through fermentation, so that its valuable amino acids become available but its antinutrients are tamed. The process involves cooking whole soya beans, complete with their oil, for several hours, then adding the spores of a mould to the mix, and leaving it to ferment for three days to begin the long process of breaking down the proteins and starches. This initial brew is then mixed with salt water and left to ferment for a further 18 months, during which time the temperature will vary with the seasons. The end result is an intensely flavoured condiment in which the soya's chemical composition has been radically altered. Traditional miso is similarly made with natural whole ingredients, slowly aged.

The article presents quite a few alarming points for consideration. That the soy bean was not even considered fit for animal feed in its natural form; that the isoflavones (supposedly famed for their health benefits) may actually be doing us harm, and so on and so on. Reading through it, I felt fairly convinced. I would have to cut out soy milk and find an alternative that wasn't cow's milk. Fermented Tofu, Miso and Soy sauce would still be okay to eat.

And here's the bit where my aside from the beginning becomes relevant. I decided to look the article up on the Guardian Unlimited website, just in case there had been any further discussion on the topic. A rebuttal was posted and entertaining comments added. Too right there had been discussion! This is the bit where the Internet wins hands down. I've touched on this subject in my own posts before (about how the "article" - be it a blog post or a newspaper article - is only the beginning, where the Internet is concerned, whereas in a dead tree publication you may get a few letters to the editor, or may not, but there is unlikely to be instant and comprehensive two-way dialogue about the subject).

Sadly, the quality of the rebuttal in the case of the Soy argument was not particularly high - it really did seem more Ad Hominem attack than a proper counter-point that would have attacked the original article's research instead of attacking the people behind the article. Nevertheless, it is always good to have more than one viewpoint, particularly since most people have an agenda to promote something or another.

One of the most amusing comments posted as a reply to the rebuttal, comes from someone calling themselves "germanvegan":

I find it rather silly that the motivation of vegans to oppose or support a view is projected onto the same level as commercial interest, thus greed. People seem to either deny, forget or ignore that vegans are ETHICISTS. Like, hello?

Secondly, and to increase the silliness, one should know that the defamation of soy started the second it was clear that it contained all essential amino acids. You know, like meat. This sent all the people with their claws hacked into the glass of the meat counter into a panic frenzy. In their mind, this was a threat to their beloved meat. This continued even when common nutritional scientists backpeddled on their antivegan stance claiming plant proteins are inferior, when in reality all one had to do is eat two different plants at different times with different protein contend to have a complete dietary protein ratio.

Germanvegan makes some good points there. His comment goes on beyond the bits I quoted. He fails to consider that promoting a vegan lifestyle could still be considered a business interest. Nothing is ever that black and white. Sadly. Life would be so much easier if that weren't the case.

It's usually best to take everything with a pinch of salt (or should that be with a pinch of soy sauce?) and do your own research if you are truly concerned about something. So my question "to Soy or not to Soy" has therefore not yet been answered to my satisfaction.

One of my biggest pet hates about people, is the frequency with which you bump into single-minded blinkerdness (sorry, I just made up that word; hope you don't mind). People with such need to be right about something that they willfully ignore evidence, or don't even realise they're ignoring it, or interpreting it to suit their agenda. Having said that, it's almost impossible for any human being to be wholly objective, but that's another blog post's worth of material, so I'll leave that there for now.

Hello from HelSTINKI

Just a quick "hi" from my friends' computer at Helsinki's Punavuori. It's been a mixed visit so far. I am over the moon about being with my family (that's who they are, really) and it is wonderful to eat lots of Finnish chocolate, sleep enough and mill around aimlessly. Kind of like being on holiday, oddly enough.

But there's a melancholy tone to this visit. It breaks my heart to see a certain kind of veil - part dirt, part apathy - covering what used to be my old hunting ground. I've posed a question to my dear friends: what the hell happened to Helsinki? More to the point: what the hell happened to Finland?

The standards of maintenance, availability of fresh produce and type of customer service you might expect now resemble any random European country, but before they used to be better. It really used to be true when we described Finland as a clean and pure place. It doesn't appear to be true any more. I'm so saddened by the drop in standards that I've considered sending a letter to the editor of Helsingin Sanomat (Finland's largest daily newspaper).

Anyway. It's not all doom and gloom! I guess I'm just feeling a little odd at the moment. Trying to establish how much of this is the outside-in effect of coming back year after year to an ever changing country and how much of the change is actually for worse.

Meanwhile, Timo and I have started to make real wedding plans. We're meeting a Finnish wedding planner tomorrow and we might end up booking their services. Depends how complicated an affair it's developing into. We're still not in favour of pomp, but it seems that Timo has a guestlist three times the size of mine, so we may need some help in arranging even a simple kind of party!

I'm not really on the computer much this week (we'll be in the countryside tomorrow, swimming in a lake somewhere), so apologies if I don't reply to comments until I return to UK.

Cadbury's is vile. I feel like saying I told you so. So I will.

There are now fresh fears over more Cadbury's brands, as the original Salmonella contamination has now thought to have spread to other products. A leaking waste pipe is the culprit, apparently. I've ranted about the poor quality of Cadbury's chocolate before, but the image of some unhygienic factory with waste leaking into the food mixture just really seals the deal. Luckily I've been avoiding Cadbury's products like the plague anyway.

Arf arf.

The official Cadbury's website displays an understated product recall, but is trying hard to send a message of luxury on the front page. Brr. Well, can you imagine? "Hi, welcome to our chocolate factory where we have just developed a new product for the summer called Salmonella Surprise!"

They even had the cheek to delay the release of this information to the Food Standards Agency.

Questions were being asked why it took Cadbury more than five months to report the contamination. Although the incident occurred in January, the Food Standards Agency was told only on Monday.

In the intervening months, the number of cases of the same, unusual strain of salmonella poisoning trebled. Health experts are unable to say whether there is a link.

I want more FlyFly

Timo played a really cruel trick on me recently.

He bought FireFly and Serenity on DVD and made me (yes, forced me!) to start watching. He thought I might like them. Well, he was wrong.

I fell in love with them instead.

The fucker! After getting caught up in the characteristic Joss Whedon layers of emerging and intriguing stories, ready to bubble into the surface... I get told, sorry, you'll never find out how they'll develop. Will they, won't they? Does River lose it completely, or will she now become the best pilot in the known universe? What was all that about Book's past? How... when... who?

We watched couple of episodes a night, finally finishing with the film yesterday evening, and then, it was all over. I sat on the floor, forlorn, repeatedly mewling: I want more FlyFly.

This is indeed, a cruel and hard world. And there are too many moronic American TV executives who should have their innards fed to them in some peppery sauce.

Theme from Firefly

Take my love.
Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don’t care, I’m still free.
You can’t take the sky from me.

Take me out
to the black.
Tell ‘em I ain’t comin’ back.
Burn the land and boil the sea.
You can’t take the sky from me.

Have no place
I can be
Since I found Serenity.
But you can’t take the sky from me.

Words & Music by Joss Whedon
Performed by Sonny Rhodes.

Homeopathy hocus pocus

It's lovely to have alternatives available for "conventional", Western medicine. It's nice to have an "open mind". I make these statements with only a touch of wryness; I do sincerely try to keep an open mind. Nevertheless, I am really rather relieved to read news reports about a group of leading British doctors who have directly challenged the way many NHS trusts use their funds.

A GROUP of Britain’s leading doctors has urged every NHS trust to stop paying for alternative medicine and to use the money for conventional treatments. Their appeal is a direct challenge to the Prince of Wales’s outspoken campaign to widen access to complementary therapies. Public funding of “unproven or disproved treatments” such as homoeopathy and reflexology, which are promoted by the Prince, is unacceptable while huge NHS deficits are forcing trusts to sack nurses and limit access to life-saving drugs, the doctors say. As reported by The Times Online

I have very little faith in the NHS, as some of you may already know, but, rather ironically, the aforementioned doctors' lack of faith towards unproven alternative therapies is increasing my faith towards the doctors.

Some alternative therapies may form a solid support mechanism for suffering patients, but I do think they should be an optional extra; a luxury in a way; not something that the taxpayers pay for. If any of the alternative therapies would be scientifically proven to be consistently effective in treating serious conditions, I'd be saying different things.

If I have a tension headache, or if I am feeling the pressure of stress, aromatherapy might help. But I wouldn't dream of making someone else pay for my treatment.

If I have an incurable disease for which I am receiving conventional treatment, I might also wish to use some additional therapies. But the additional therapies should be a choice, an extra and entirely at the expense of the private individual.

Some alternative therapies seem to hover between the line of "conventional" and "alternative". That's when this whole thing becomes very messy and it's hard to hold on to a hard line on either side of the argument. The BBC website has a wonderful set of resources, examining these very issues:

Research conducted by the BBC has shown that alternative medicines are becoming increasingly popular. Yet their effectiveness is yet to be proven to the majority of medical practitioners in the UK and there are concerns over safety as many of the treatments remain untested. BBC News Online's health team examines the issues.

Paris, 20e arrondissement
Originally uploaded by mainblanche.

My biggest beef is with Homeopathy. You see, it's utter bollocks. Well, apart from the - sometimes, admittedly, very vividly experienced - Placebo effect.

Let me elaborate (although the above statement sums it all up quite tidily). The original concept of Homeopathy, when explained to a person to whom metaphysical matters are of interest, will sound inviting, promising and even plausible.

To treat the patient with a little bit of what might be making them unwell.

Classical homeopathy is generally defined as a system of medical treatment based on the use of minute quantities of remedies that in larger doses produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated. Hahnemann believed that very small doses of a medication could have very powerful healing effects because their potency could be affected by vigorous and methodical shaking (succussion). Hahnemann referred to this alleged increase in potency by vigorous shaking as dynamization. Hahnemann thought succussion could release "immaterial and spiritual powers," thereby making substances more active. "Tapping on a leather pad or the heel of the hand was alleged to double the dilution" (ibid.). From (the utterly scrumptious) The Sceptic's Dictionary.

So, the original concept seemed to have a little bit of potential, well, to gullible sorts anyway, but good grief. Basing the entire treatment on how much, and through which very specific methods it has been diluted?

Let me put this in other terms. Let's say we start with a few drops of a plant extract. All well and good. I actually DO believe that plant-based medicine and treatments can be incredibly effective. After all, much of the now so-called conventional medicine started that way.

However, in Hocus-pocus-pathy, you take the plant extracts, dilute, shake... then take the diluted mixture, add a few drops of that to a new batch of water and dilute, shake... then take the diluted mixture, add a few drops of that... well, so on and so forth, until the final "remedy" has as many molecules of the original plant as you would randomly find by chance in, say, sea water.

Just think about that quietly for a moment.

Various tincture-based elements are then added (alcohol, grapeseed oil, or perhaps something else to give the remedy a medicinal consistency) and abracadabra, a cure-all is ready!

Homeopathy is based on the notion that water has a memory. That its molecules can remember the presence of a substance that, for all intents and purposes is no longer there.

Did I mention the word BOLLOCKS yet?

What homeopathic practitioners do very effectively, is provide consultative, holistic treatment to their patients, complete with such apparent (or quite possibly very sincere) care for the wellbeing of the patients that the experience in itself must be very healing. And I don't dispute that. I just so wish that people weren't being told, well, bollocks.

I wish that if a practitioner were to set up a councelling and spiritual support service, they'd just set up one of those; not a charlatan outfit designed to exploit the weak and vulnerable. Homeopathy is the Scientology of alternative therapies and I really don't think it's fair to charge people horrid amounts for so-called remedies and therapies when it's all a bit of a con, really.

It's been bugging me for some time to know that in this country, my tax money has gone towards paying for someone's homeopathy treatment - I would certainly let out a little whoop of delight if NHS dropped that form of alternative therapy from their list of funded services. It is none of my business if people wish to pay for this kind of stuff privately (it doesn't harm me; and I know lots of people get something very real out of it), but I don't think it has any place whatsoever standing shoulder-to-shoulder with therapies that have been scientifically proven to be effective.

Cross-posted to: Blogcritics.org
EDIT 30/05/06: This entry was chosen as one of the "Editors' Picks" at BlogCritics.