Bullshit
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.
Now Sony’s being accused of blasphemy
Sony’s in trouble again, this time because the game Resistance: Fall of Man features Manchester Cathedral.
THE CHURCH of England has threatened legal action against Sony after a violent PlayStation 3 computer game depicts Manchester Cathedral as a back-drop for a battle.
Church leaders accused Sony of “desecration” and said it had not asked permission to use the building.
The new game, Resistance: Fall of Man, sees a virtual shoot-out between warring soldiers inside a mock-up of the cathedral.
If I were a smart-arse I’d make a sarky comment about Church officials being unable to tell the difference between reality and fiction.
Wi-Fi again
With Wi-Fi scares proliferating, Bad Science is still on the case. Two brilliant comments in particular:
There’s just no point arguing with stupidity. If their arguments were not based on evidence and logic then you’re wasting your time. I can’t remember whose quote this is, but it has served me well.“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It’s a waste of your time, and annoys the pig.”
And a good point here:
In contrast to the few smoking studies before 1950 there are a lot of EM studies now. The studies are ignored by the EM scaremongers because they don’t like the results. So EM scaremongers are something like smoking-is-harmless people.
Phoenix First would like to give me a free holiday
Mrs Bigmouth was at a baby show the other week, and entered a few prize draws. And she won a holiday!
Well, not quite. What she did win was the opportunity to be ripped off by a bunch of bastards. Nice of them to go after pregnant women and tired new parents, isn’t it?
Let me explain. Phoenix First called her and said she’d won a free holiday - all she needs to pay is the £32.50 admin fee for each of us. Bong! Scam sign number one!
The next step is to choose the destination - there are 28 to choose from - and pick up the tickets. They can’t do that by phone, internet or post, we have to go there in person. And by “we” I mean both of us. Bong! Scam sign number two!
The company is based in 278 St Vincent Street in Glasgow, but the pickup won’t happen there or during working hours, and we can’t just pop by. It’ll be a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, in a hotel. Bong! Scam sign number three!
And so on. So here’s what I know courtesy of Mr Google.
Phoenix First is a marketing company, not a holiday company - so when they claim on the phone that they’re a travel agent, they’re lying. More importantly they aren’t ABTA registered, so you don’t have any of the consumer protection you get from traditional travel agents and reputable online ones. They aren’t a limited company - if Mr Google is correct, they’re a trading name of a limited company whose director has been involved in similar things before, which were forced into liquidation - and while the wee nyaff says they aren’t selling holiday clubs, that’s essentially what they’re doing. The registered office of the parent company is the address of a company formation firm - a holding address, in other words.
Here’s the pitch. And by all accounts it’s a long pitch - nearly three hours. You go to a presentation and you’re offered an unbelievable deal: amazing discounts on holidays for the next X years. All you need to do is pay a joining fee (just under two grand) and then a membership fee (several grand more). And then all your holidays are cheap!
Not as cheap as you’ll find through Mr Internet, though. And remember - no ABTA protection, and because you’re paying by cheque (Mr Google suggests that Phoenix First either doesn’t have credit card processing facilities or has had such facilities revoked by the banks) you have no consumer protection either. Even if the deal is as good as it claims to be, which it isn’t, if Phoenix First disappears tomorrow, so does your money.
And the free holiday? This is the nicest thing I’ve found anybody saying:
For the totally free option (apart from the “admin” charge of about £50-£70) each, you might be offered somewhere you don’t really want to go, leaving from an airport miles away from your home. When you decline this offer you can normally upgrade to the next option, where you pay for your flights.
If you get a call from these twats, report them to trading standards. If you want a cheap holiday, book it on the internet.
Update, 9th June
Phoenix First isn’t the only firm running prize draws at shows in order to flog holiday clubs: I’ve also been contacted by a firm called Hospitality Scotland Promotions, and it’s the same story (although in my experience at least, the callers are less aggressive). Once again the promise of a “free” holiday is there in order to get you to a high-pressure sales presentation. Until 2010 the timeshare laws that enforce a cooling-off period don’t apply to holiday clubs, so attend these things at your peril.
You’ll find a long discussion, advice from trading standards and relevant links in the comments.
Mobile bloody masts and wireless sodding networks
We’re doomed! says the Times.
We’re doomed! says the Independent.
Not so fast! say the people of Fark.com, destroying the Indy’s alleged expert with one beautiful, beautiful link and throwing in tedious little facts about the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation, how radiation exposure works, where wi-fi sits in the electromagnetic spectrum and why lightbulbs don’t kill you.
Sunday Times photo competition: bastards
This week’s Sunday Times went into great detail about a photography competition for landscape snappers, but strangely didn’t highlight that you have to pay to enter: £7 for one image, or £25 if you want to send in the maximum of fifteen.
Given that the total prize pot is £20K, if 1,000 people enter 15 images apiece that’s £25K in income. Plus, the AA and Sunday Times - and many, many others - are “backing” the competition - and they’re listed as sponsors, which usually means financial help. On that basis you’d expect the total revenue to be significantly higher.
I smell a rat.
This isn’t about health. It’s hysteria
The good people of Belmont in California want to expand the city’s smoking ban to the point where the only place it will be legal to smoke is in your own home - provided that home is completely detached (such homes, apparently, cost around nine hundred thousand dollars). Smoking in your own car, by yourself: illegal. Smoking in the street: illegal. Smoking in parks: illegal. And so on.
What’s interesting about this isn’t the ban as much as the internet debates about it. Inevitably it’s brought out the pro-smoking “you can take my cigarettes when you prise them from my cold dead fingers… my grandad smoked all his life and the fact he died horribly aged 24 is not connected in any way” yahoos who give considerate smokers a bad name, but more interestingly it’s brought out the anti-smoking puritans. And they’re the ones who scare me.
The problem with the puritans is they talk about health, but they mean annoyance. So - and this is a real example by an anti-smoker - you’re in your car at a red light, and the guy in the car in front is smoking a cigarette, and you can smell it. He is, clearly, trying to kill you.
There are lots of examples like that one, and while some people are perfectly honest - they hate smoking because they hate the smell - others are nuts. The dangers of second hand smoke aren’t as clear-cut as anti-smoking groups would have you believe - it’s certainly a risk factor if you’re constantly exposed to lots of it, and only the most deluded pro-smoking advocate would attempt to argue otherwise, but there’s this hysterical interpretation that essentially goes like this: second hand smoke can be a health risk. If I inhale a single molecule, I’m going to die. Therefore anybody who smokes is murdering me. Smoking must therefore be banned everywhere, and smokers punished.
This is a real post, from Fark.com:
Smokers think like NAMBLA.
NAMBLA is the American group whose members want to fiddle with kids.
Smokers argue that people have been smoking for millenia; NAMBLA would argue that people have been engaging in pre-adolescent sexual behavior for millenia. But it’s still disgusting and hurtful… Smokers argue that they have civil rights, freedom to do whatever feels good to them, tossing in as an aside “as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else”…and then descrying talk of second-hand smoke damage as non-conclusive. NAMBLA argues about freedom too; somehow discussion of emotional and physical damage to the young boys doesn’t ever resolve itself to a positive conclusion.
…there is no moderate level of carcinogenic gas.
What’s fascinating about that post isn’t the level of lunacy it’s exhibiting - NAMBLA? Carcinogenic gas? Jesus - but the complete lack of response to it. It’s actually quite a common viewpoint on US sites.
Now, smokers aren’t the most sympathetic of groups. It’s a bloody stupid thing to do, cigarette smoke annoys people who don’t smoke, some smokers give the rest of us a bad name by being inconsiderate twats and the smokers who are currently emailing anonymous death threats to Belmont’s mayor are utter arseholes. But there seems to be an attitude shift happening here: in the discussions on US internet sites, the *extreme* anti-smoking position seems to me as if it’s becoming the *mainstream* anti-smoking position. And of course, where California leads the UK eventually follows. We’ve already started with the “hospitals ban smoking in their grounds because they can’t be seen to condone smoking” nonsense, so the other stuff will follow.
So what we have here are two really scary, really popular viewpoints:
* I don’t like smoking, so the state must make sure that I never, ever encounter it.
And:
* I believe that if something is believed to be a health risk in certain circumstances, if it exists in the world at all then I am a murder victim who just hasn’t died yet. The state must eradicate every molecule of it.
Position number one, then, is a variation of the “I must never encounter anything of which I do not approve, and my view is all that matters” argument; position number two is the “despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary, I believe that electricity/paint/radio/the phone/flouride is EATING MY BRAIN and my feelings are more important than evidence. Yes, I am a hysterical nutcase but I PAY MY TAXES GODDAMMIT” argument. And increasingly, those are the mainstream opinions.
Am I the only person who thinks that’s utterly terrifying?
ID cards: a price worth paying
Sorry, I’m back on ID cards again. But it’s Squander Two’s fault, because his excellent post on the subject got me thinking about one of Blair’s emailed arguments:
If national ID cards do help us counter crime and terrorism, it is, of course, the law-abiding majority who will benefit and whose own liberties will be protected. This helps explain why, according to the recent authoritative Social Attitudes survey, the majority of people favour compulsory ID cards.
I’ve mentioned that survey before, but it’s worth coming back to. The key point:
Seven out of ten people believe that compulsory ID cards are “a price worth paying” to combat terrorism.
Now maybe I’m wrong - I can’t check, because the actual survey is a paid-only publication and I can’t see how the questions were worded - but assuming the above line is an accurate reflection of what people were asked, then it’s a leading question - it’s based on the very shaky assumption that ID cards do indeed combat terrorism. Based on the evidence so far, the survey could easily have asked this instead:
Compulsory ID cards won’t do anything to stop terrorism but could enable every little petty jobsworth to get on your tits, could make it considerably easier for criminals to steal your identity and could make it impossible for you to get benefits, to get healthcare, to travel or even to bank if some incompetent arse mucks up your entry on the database. Is that a price worth paying to prevent the government from looking stupid?
Sadly, they weren’t asked that, so the figure of 70% in favour of compulsory ID cards… hang on a minute, wasn’t this scheme supposed to be voluntary?… has to stand. So what else is A Price Worth Paying?
22% believe torturing terror suspects is a price worth paying.
35% believe that banning “some” peaceful protests and demos is a price worth paying.
45% believe that denying terror suspects trial by jury is a price worth paying.
79% believe that detention for weeks at a time without charge is a price worth paying.
Again, the questions were based on combatting terrorism, and as many others have pointed out the answers are based on the belief that these things would only affect other people, such as brown men with beards who look a bit shifty. I’d love to see how the people surveyed would have responded to this, which is essentially the same questions put in a slightly different way:
If you were peacefully protesting against a government policy and you were told such demonstrations were illegal, arrested, detained without charge, kept incommunicado for weeks, forced to endure physical and mental torture and finally released without apology or compensation, knowing that the state will watch you as a suspected terrorist for the rest of your days, and you were told that, hey, it’s a price worth paying… would you agree?
Far fetched? Not when we can falsely accuse people of training 9/11 hijackers, stick them in Belmarsh for five months and let them out again without any compensation, even though they’ve lost their job and suffered god knows what inside:
The Home Office argues that since Mr Raissi has neither been charged with an offence nor “completely exonerated” he does not qualify [for compensation].
That “completely exonerated” dig is telling - remember that Mr Raissi hasn’t been charged, so he’s innocent until proven guilty. As Steven Poole writes in his book, Unspeak:
You might still think it desirable that anyone accused of a crime in Britain should be assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. The widespread usage of the phrase “terrorist suspects”, on the contrary, presumes guilt. It derives from, and feeds back into, an alarming assumption that the lamentably old-fashioned ideal of presumed innocence is no longer appropriate to modern times. It is at one with the fine contemporary tradition of contempt for the courts evinced by Labour home secretaries. After the four co-defendants of Kamal Bourgass in the “ricin plot” trial were unanimously acquitted, and a further prosecution collapsed, Charles Clarke said: “We will obviously keep a very close eye on the eight men being freed today, and consider exactly what to do in the light of this decision.” Once you are a “terrorist suspect”, it seems, not even a not-guilty verdict will help you. You may no longer be a suspect, but you are still, by definition, a terrorist . . .