Bullshit
Writers blocked
A while back I mentioned the “So You Want To Be a Writer?” ads, whose claims were a tad misleading. Rob Spence took ‘em to the Advertising Standards Authority and won.
The danger of selective quoting…
…is that people might go and see what the full quote was.
From the press page of Nicopipe.com, a place selling nicotine inhalers:
More Smoke, Rod Liddle - The Times OnLine, 6th July 2007
…A friend bunged me one of those new smoke-free smoking devices, called the “Nico pipe”, a slender, tapered, black metal thing into which you insert a nicotine cartridge purchased from “pharmacies or your doctor”…
What came after the dots? Let’s have a look at the Times piece.
I don’t think it’s for me. I’m not walking the streets sucking on what appears to be a weasel’s dildo, nor queuing up in the surgery for six hours to get a prescription. Also it seems like a particularly cowardly form of capitulation and collaboration with the enemy.
Oops.
Booze hooligan announces government crackdown on himself
If only.
CHEAP booze deals in shops and supermarkets are to be outlawed, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill warned today.
That’s Kenny “detained in 2000 for being drunk and disorderly at a football match” MacAskill.
MacAskill says that the government “isn’t anti-alcohol”, and I think he’s telling the truth. After all, in June - in a move that surprised Scottish Rugby officials - he speedily scrapped the 25-year-long ban on drink at Murrayfield rugby internationals. The booze ban still applies to football, though. As he said at the time:
There is still a difference between football and rugby in terms of alcohol.
The problem isn’t booze, then - it’s the sort of people who get pissed-up and cause trouble at football matches. Like, er, Kenny MacAskill.
Sheesh.
ASA clouts Clarins for phone fear nonsense
Remember those Clarins ads for face cream to protect you against evil electromagnetic fields? They’ve just been spanked by the advertising standards authority.
We told Clarins not to state that electromagnetic waves generated by modern-day devices or domestic communications equipment could damage or age skin or to imply anti-ageing and pro-health efficacy claims for Expertise 3P unless they held robust scientific evidence to support that. We also told them not to make an undue appeal to consumers fear of the harm that could be caused by man-made electromagnetic waves.
[Via The Inquirer]
Mobile phones and electrosensitivity, again
When I wrote about electrosensitivity for PC Plus a few months back, I mentioned that while every study to date had found no evidence that the condition was anything other than psychological, a key study at Essex University was taking place to look even more closely at the issues. The results are in, and guess what? There’s still no evidence that electrosensitivity is anything other than a psychological condition.
There’s much more here at Bad Science, and of course the newspapers are beginning to cover it too (although probably not on their front pages, I suspect).
Usual disclaimer here: I think that people who believe they are electrosensitive are indeed suffering. But while they believe that electromagnetic fields, particularly those from Wi-Fi and mobile phones, are causing their condition, there’s absolutely no evidence to support that claim. And the more scientists look at it, the more solid the “it’s got nothing to do with electromagnetic fields” case becomes. Something is making them sick, but it could be the nocebo effect: if you believe something will make you ill (mobile masts, a gypsy curse, a black cat crossing the road the wrong way) then it may well make you ill.
Aaaanyway. Comment number one on the Daily Mail’s report on the study, which notes that this is one of the largest and most detailed studies into electrosensitivity, is:
“In the short term at least.”
Note these words.
What about the long term?
*Sigh*
Update
The BBC quote from Powerwatch is interesting:
“So whilst it cannot be entirely ruled out that a small minority are truly sensitive, the proportions of any truly sensitive people are likely to be far lower than the 3% - 35% that has been quoted.”
Credit where credit’s due, that’s a decent response.
Even assuming that some people are genuinely electrosensitive (which I very much doubt), the research says the majority of ES sufferers are ill because of psychological factors. Hopefully some common sense will prevail and we can actually start treating them and making them better instead of chasing after electronic bogeymen.
Purity rings and hats of meat: what’s God got to do with it?
The Silver Ring Thing case has been thrown out of court on the entirely reasonable grounds that wearing a purity ring is as much a part of mainstream Christianity as wearing a hat made of meat. The only downside is that my plans to send my own child to school dressed as either a ninja or a pirate to honour the Flying Spaghetti Monster have been ruined by the judgement.
As ever, online comments prove that people never let the article get in the way of their opinions. From the Daily Mail’s article on the case:
Last year, Muslim Shabina Begum, 15, fought to wear a jilbab - a long loose gown - in class, and earlier this year a 12-year-old who cannot be named battled a Buckinghamshire girls’ school for the right to wear a full-face veil. Both were granted legal aid, and both lost their cases.
Presumably that was too far down the article for the commenters to read. Here’s genius number one.
Would not dare ban the ring if it was any other relgion than christrianity. What a country that denies its own culture and promotes others.
Our own culture? The Silver Ring Thing is American, and was created by a youth minister in 1995. It arrived in the UK in 2004.
Come in number two!
Another case of religious freedom for anyone but Christians…
This is not a religious thing. It’s a business thing. Irrespective of its intentions, The Silver Ring Thing is a business that sells costume jewellery, clothing, DVDs and training courses - and the girl at the centre of this case is the daughter of two key figures in the UK franchise for that business. That SRT claims to be non-profit is irrelevant: it’s not a registered charity, and therefore its status is identical to any other limited company. It’s no different to a McDonalds.
Actually, that’s a thought - a marketing opportunity for your local burger bar. Jesus was a fisher of men, yeah? Well, that means preventing kids from eating Filet-O-Fish in class is a breach of their right to religious expression! Yeah!
Let’s backtrack. School has uniform policy, kid breaks uniform policy by wearing costume jewellery, kid gets away with it until she recruits a bunch of other kids to buy the same jewellery from her parents’ business, kid claims religious persecution and nearly costs the school £12,000 in legal fees. What a nice, heartwarming story. Maybe the Beeb should rewrite its intro:
A 16-year-old girl was not discriminated against when she was banned from modelling her parents’ jewellery range in class, the High Court has ruled.
Jon from London, you’re a breath of fresh air:
The school isn’t banning the universally accepted symbol of Christianity - pupils can wear a crucifix if they so choose. It is banning, under its existing rules, a piece of jewellery - the purpose of which was almost unknown in this country until all the free publicity generated by this court action. A court action started by Lydia’s parents (who also just happen to be the UK agents for the movement’s founders in the US - from whose webshop the ring can be exclusively purchased along with a range of other expensively priced ‘merchandise’).
Update, 18 July.
As Simon Pickstock points out over at the PC Answers blog, Ministry Of Truth uncovered key information that changes the story completely, and it’s appalling that MOT’s information hasn’t been reflected in any of the subsequent coverage:
It’s a shame that traditional news sources can’t be so thorough in their reporting, especially when it makes the front page of so many papers.
Keep taking the stone tablets
I think the writer of this piece is getting a bit carried away:
THE British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archeology - proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament.
A tablet that verifies the entire Old Testament? Blimey. So it’s a giant tablet’o'facts? Er, not quite.
The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time - revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.
It is rare evidence in a non-biblical source of a real person, other than kings, featured in the Bible.
And that’s it. It’s fascinating from a historical perspective and of course, it’s a big deal in biblical scholarship circles, but it hardly justifies the opening paragraph.
A Digg user finds the flaw in the 9/11 conspiracies
As yet another “9/11 was an inside job” link hits social news site Digg.com, Red2600 spots the obvious flaw:
If the government truly did do it, I’m sure it would take a lot more than some morons on the internet to uncover it.
Just ’cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there
I haven’t been called a child killer for a while, so let’s talk about Killer Wi-Fi again, shall we?
Gary Robertson’s show on BBC Radio Scotland this morning was about mobile phone masts, although inevitably killer wi-fi featured in there too. Gary’s a decent bloke and I do wonder what he makes of some of the callers, but what struck me about this morning’s programme wasn’t the depressingly predictable range of opinions - “yeah, well, scientists say there’s no danger but they always say that, don’t they? I mean, they say alien abduction isn’t real but I was taken into space last week and anally probed” and all that crap - but the way the killer wi-fi “debate” is yet again being fuelled by crap reporting.
What I mean by that is: in addition to the usual stuff, several of the callers talked about the recent Panorama programme about killer wi-fi, which countless bloggers have debunked and which various concerned parties have filed formal complaints about (if you didn’t see it, here’s a two-word summary: scaremongering bollocks). The fact that a BBC TV programme has covered wi-fi and suggested it’s a killer, it seems, is proof: forget science, Panorama says it’s evil!
Yeah, and Panorama said that cricket coach was murdered too.
Balance (or: stop giving nut-jobs a voice)
Imagine you’re a journalist, writing a story about the families who lost loved ones in 9/11. Would you print the views of someone who said that 9/11 never happened, and that the families were all part of a zionist plot, in the interests of balance? Or let’s say you’re writing about the deaths of soldiers in Iraq. Would you quote Fred Phelps, the loathsome arse who pickets funerals because “God Hates Fags”, in the interests of balance? Of course you wouldn’t, because these people are nutjobs who deserve (at best) pity, not publicity.
So why, when we’re talking about vaccinating kids against cancer, do papers interview Christian Voice?
Devil’s Kitchen is on the case, and he’s using even more swear words than usual. And while he’s being a tad unfair - he’s using the term Christians to refer to a small subset of idiots whose views, I hope, aren’t representative of mainstream Christian views - he’s nailed the “vaccination will turn kids into tarts” argument.
For crying out loud, we don’t complain that people who are given a tetanus or rabies jab will deliberately go out and encourage a dog to bite them, do we?
I laughed so hard at that, coffee came out of my nose.
The problem with this story is that the “balance” means the debate we’re getting isn’t the right one. The “will the jag cause promiscuity?” thing is a non-issue, but it’s taking column inches that would be better spent on more serious questions such as: is the vaccine as effective as the manufacturer claims it is? If a child is vaccinated at 12, will there need to be a booster shot a few years later - and if so, what do we need to do to make sure those shots happen at the right time? Are there any potential side effects that mean, for example, that some kids shouldn’t be vaccinated?
Everything else is just noise.