Robonaught

Check this out. It's a humanoid robot that NASA is putting up onto the International Space Station. Seriously kool!

I hope they call it R2. That would be sweet.

While this one will be fixed in place. It is expected that future versions will be mobile and be able to do work on the ISS both inside and outside. That would be so awesome. And it brings everyones dream of humanoid robot servant that much closer.

NHS funding for homeopathy

The British government is making massive cuts to public spending with the axing of almost half a million public service jobs. And yet they still fund Homeopathy to the tune of about 4 million pounds a year.

Priorities?

I don't buy any of the justifications for this waste of British tax payers money.
The penetration of Homeopathy in British society probably owes a lot to the completely loopy Prince Charles. The nutter is a fan of all sorts of CAM and pseudo-scientific ideas.

Come on Britain.

Italian Woman Killed for Being Disobedient

So Beghm Shnez didn't approve of the arranged marriage of her daughter, Nosheen Butt. So the father took the rational course of action and killed her. WITH A BRICK!!! 


"According to Modena prosecutors’ initial findings, the father Ahmad Khan Butt, a 53-year-old construction worker, threw his wife to the ground and beat her with a brick while the brother Umair attacked his sister." 


This kind of religious sanctioned violence makes any reasonable person sick to their very core. The oppression and suffering of women in islamic culture is very real and must be stopped. This is not an isolated case. A few months ago a video circulated of a young woman being stoned to death. It has since been removed from the site where I saw it and I'm not surprised. It was horrifying and deeply disturbing and I would not link to it even if it were there still.


No person should be subject to such disgusting and deplorable acts. Even though people will be outraged about this latest incident in Italy. It will happen again. No real action will be taken to protect the woman of Islam in places where they should be able to find help.      

No Preggos or Bleeders Please

So Te Papa is telling woman that if they are pregnant or menstruating they should not go the behind the scenes tours because the tours include sacred Maori items. I'm sorry but wtf! This is not the eighteen hundreds. These days people don't believe in things like spirits and curses. Or so it would seem.

I do think that this is a ridiculous state of affairs. I guarantee that no single pregnant or menstruating woman will come to harm by being in proximity to some bit of wood or green stone. Or indeed any other such 'sacred' object that is sequestered in the dungeons of our place. The so called warning is, in my opinion, an excuse to push the cultural beliefs around such things on to others that do not share them.

This ridiculous superstition is seen by many as just that. But if you think about it. Is it really so out of step with our modern way of thinking as we might initially suspect. I would say no. Yes it is ridiculous. But no more so than the Catholic belief that during mass, the priest says magic words and turns bread and wine into the actual body and blood of a two thousand year old carpenter. Or that a priest must have a penis in order to truly serve their god.
The reaction to this superstition being practiced at Te Papa is justified. It's pointless and unnecessarily exclusive. Yet it is a massive hypocrisy to condemn one form of harmless superstition and then turn around and engage in another. If you want to be consistent. You either have to allow Te Papa to exclude pregnant and menstruating women. Or you condemn it and take a similar view of all superstitious actions and practices.

I for one think it's baseless and dumb. I think all superstition is a pointless waste of time. Though I am perfectly willing for others to engage in such behavior in cases when it does no harm.      

Miracle Mineral Solution Sucks

Have you heard of Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) before? Well if not then read on. And if you have. Then still read on because I'm going to explain why it's rubbish and why no one should ever use it. Ever. 


MMS is a 28%  solution of sodium chloride in mineral water. It  is marketed as a miracle cure for a whole range of ills. From the site miraclemineral.org.
"The answer to AIDS, hepatitis A,B and C, malaria, herpes, TB, most cancer and many more of mankind's worse diseases has been found. Many diseases are now easily controlled."
There is the first glaring red flag. As we know. When someone makes such wide sweeping and implausible claims fro their product. It's a good indicator of fraud and bad quack medicine. 


The NZ site miraclemineral.co.nz is a little more coy. They play the 'suppressing the cure' angle and refer to the 'controversy' and MedSafe directly. They even provide the correspondence from MedSafe right there on the front page. I'm not going to bother to blast away all the complete and total rubbish found on this site. Suffice to say that it's the same old tired stuff that one comes across time and time again with alternative medicine 'cures'.


Lets take a look at a few of the other red flags that we use to spot rubbish medicine. 


Red flag number one. Where is the evidence of efficacy? All the evidence of efficacy comes from anecdotes and unfalsifiable reports of "trials" that don't exist outside of the product promotional material. Surely if there was any validity to the claims for this product there would be some kind of independent or verifiable evidence. Perhaps a report on the results of a clinical trial. But with MMS there is no such evidence to be found.


Red flag number Two. What do independent sources have to say about MMS? 
The American FDA has this to say.
"FDA warned consumers not to consume or use Miracle Mineral Solution, an oral liquid solution also known as "Miracle Mineral Supplement.""
"Consumers who have MMS should stop using it immediately and throw it away."
Health Canada says:
"Health Canada advises that using this product as directed may cause serious health problems."
"Consumers should stop using Miracle Mineral Solution."
MedSafe says:
"Medsafe has been alerted to the Miracle Mineral Solution products (also known as "Miracle Mineral Supplement" - MMSI and MMSII) in the past and has communicated with the company to require them to cease making claims that their products are an effective treatment for several serious diseases."
"Consumers who have experienced any negative effects from MMS should consult with a healthcare professional as soon as possible."
That all seems pretty damming. It's a massive red flag when the independent sources of information on a product are so universally damming. And in this case not just of its efficacy. They are saying that it is actually directly harmful.  

Red Flag number three. The site miraclemineral.org has books and DVDs for sale. Why is this a red flag? It's a typical indicator of a medical scam. They create the product, and along with it, a whole new revolutionary way of looking at illness and disease. Then there are books and DVDs for sale that will allow you to learn about these new and powerful ideas yourself. Did I mention it's a scam? The book and the DVD contains no useful information. Even though I haven't personally read them. I can state it for a fact. The first part of the book is available for free. I did read this, and it's a complete load of nonsense. And it contains nothing of any use. What it does do is point you in the direction of the book you must pay for. In there, it is promised, are all the secrets to all the health and happiness you deserve. Scam. If you want to read it for yourself go here. It's 152 pages!!

So is MMS harmful. O you better believe it. I saved this part for last because it seems so unbelievable. If you followed the links to the FDA Health Canada or MedSafe and saw the warnings then you will have picked up on this already. If you didn't. Don't do it now. I want to be the one to tell you. Listening? Good.
Why is MMS harmful? Because when you mix the 28% sodium chloride with citric acid, as the instructions recommend, It creates and industrial strength bleach! And then you are supposed to drink it! It probably goes without saying that drinking bleach is a bad idea. In industrial applications this stuff is used to bleach textiles and as a disinfectant. Ingesting it can result in serious adverse health effects. These include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and symptoms of severe dehydration. 


If you know of anyone using or thinking of using this product. You best give them the facts. It's a very serious and dangerous piece of deliberate fraud. Yes. It is my opinion that this is a case of deliberate health fraud. It stretches credibility to believe that the people selling this product think it works. They are out to make their money off the misery, suffering and desperation of others. And they don't care how many they injure, or possibly kill, in the process. If you hate these idiots as much as I do. Feel free to send a polite tho strongly worded email to their NZ operation. info@miraclemineral.co.nz. I'm sure they would love to hear from you. 
    

How Can We Know What We Know?

We all, I think have a sense that we know certain things. Pieces of knowledge that come together to form our views and ideas of the world and how it works. I know that I enjoy chocolate ice cream and peaches. I also know that the earth goes round that sun and, that if I leave an ice cube out in the sun, it will melt. But how is it that I know theses particular things? Why did I choose these particular examples?

Allow me to explain. There are some things that we can know subjectively. That is to say that we know them from our own personal experience of existing in the world. My like of chocolate ice cream and peaches falls into this category. I know that I like these things because when I eat them I experience pleasure. Philosophic discussions about what it means to experience pleasure aside. I feel confident in saying that I know I like chocolate ice cream and peaches. And I'm sure a functional magnetic resonance imaging scam of my brain while I eat these things would back me up. But thats a subjective experience. What about things that I can't or don't experience?

How do we know that the earth goes round the sun? From our perspective it certainly doesn't seem that way. And indeed if I were living in a different time I may have rubbished the idea that the earth on which we stand is hurtling though space at 108,000 km/h around a giant ball of light. I mean really, How absurd. And yet we know this to be the truth. The reason for this knowledge is objective evidence. There is evidence, completely independent of anything we can say or do, that points towards this conclusion. There are numerous supporting theories and branches of science. That would have to be modified or discarded if it were found not to be true. There are countless observations and experiments that have been performed that are consistent with this reality. All this converging evidence leads me to believe that the earth, does indeed, go around that sun.

Now I will turn to the ice cube. I picked this particular example because, unlike the previous one, it is obvious to everyone with experience of ice that it will melt if left out in the sun in temperatures above freezing. So this is something we can know without having to make and rigorous measurements or observations. Just put the ice cube down and watch it melt. But I choose this example for a reason. The ice cube melting is perfectly consistent with all that we know about thermodynamics and the chemical and physical properties of water. If you so wanted to. You could take all the theoretical knowledge about the phenomenon of melting ice and create a mathematical  model of the ice melting. This model would then allow you to predict the exact way in which the ice would melt and these predictions would match what you observe.  

So. What is that point I'm trying to make here. Well my point is am important one. And I think it is very often over looked when explaining science to the general public. And the point is that science must be consistent with our observations of how the world actually works. That's really important. And it is one of the most important things that allows a distinction to be made between actual science and pseudo-science. In science. When the model of reality and reality disagree. Then it is the model that must be wrong. This is what gives science the power to discover what is true and what is real in an objective way.

So how do we know what isn't true? Well I'm going to once again turn my skeptical eye onto CAM. And particularly that affront to Haman reason, Homeopathy. How do we know that Homeopathy is bunk and doesn't work. Well, it fails every time it is properly tested. There are no well constructed, well performed tests that have shown an effect for homeopathy. Strike one. If something cannot be shown to have a real effect in the real world then there is no difference between this and it having no affect at all.
Homeopathy has no plausible mechanism of action. This means that there is no way within our current scientific model of reality that allows Homeopathy to work. Remember what I said in the previous paragraph. Our current model of reality agrees with what we have been doing and observing for the last 200 years or more. If homeopathy worked. We would need to change and reinterpret huge areas of physical and biological science. Strike two. If something is not consistent with the current scientific model. It requires a lot of good quality proof for it to be accepted.              
The only evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathy comes from anecdotes. This is often a tough point for some people to grasp. But anecdotes are not evidence. There are simply too many things that can affect an individuals experience that we cannot consider such experience proof of anything. This is particularly so in CAM. For example. A patient with a sore wrist takes a homeopathic remedy and feels better. How are we to know that the remedy was responsible? It may have been the remedy. Or it may have been what he ate for dinner. Or that a swallow happened to pass over his head at precisely the right time to realign his chakras and restore the flow of subtle energy to his wrist. Or he may have just healed on his own had he not taken the remedy. The point is that we can't know. That is why we test these things scientifically. Such testing removes the possible ambiguities and allows the one variable to be assessed. When this is done. Homeopathy fails. Strike three. Anecdotes are  not evidence. When the only positive evidence for something are anecdotes. The likelihood if it being real is slim.

So to sum up. When it comes to real questions about how the real world works. We have to learn to step outside our own narrow, biased and flawed perceptions and embrace objective evidence and rationalization. This is the only way we can form a coherent world view. This is the only way we can truly know what is real and what is not. And the only way we can tell truth from fiction.