blogolob

… so posting may be light for the next few days.

Richard Dawkins gives three good reasons why alternative treatments can be effective: spending more time with patients, the soothing effect of touch and a powerful placebo effect. In her Guardian article Sue Blackmore adds another: money.

Is it too much to expect that advocates of conventional medicine and the NHS dedicate their efforts to learning from this and increasing the effectiveness of their own treatments? Taxing homeopathy or other systems that they don’t believe in to further fund the bloated NHS is not the answer.

Despite being fired by telephone from his former club, Woking manager Frank Gray did the right thing when his new club played against his old. What a refreshing change from the more normal ‘win at all costs’ philosophy of the ‘Beautiful Game’.

It was goalless with only five minutes to go when Woking defender Matt Ruby went down injured in his own half.

A Grays player booted the ball into touch so he could be treated. When Ruby recovered, the ball was returned to play and Woking’s Matt Pattison passed it back to Grays’ keeper Ross Flitney.

Except the ball was caught by the wind and the pass turned into a lob. Flitney was stranded and Woking were 1-0 up and looking at their first win of the season. A couple of the Woking players celebrated.

But Frank Gray didn’t celebrate. He walked on to the pitch and made for his captain, Tom Hutchinson. A linesman tried to usher Gray away but he kept walking. He was told he could be sent off. He still kept walking. He told Hutchinson what had to be done. Hutchinson relayed the message to the rest of the team. Some of them were crestfallen. Grays took the kickoff and when striker Ben Watson took the next touch, the Woking players stood still.

When Watson got to the goal, the Woking keeper Nick Gindre put his head in his hands and stepped aside, too. The game finished 1-1.

If they’re going to build on flood plains why not build the houses on stilts?

I’m sure that someone could work out a way of building affordable housing complexes with a minimum of ground concrete (why make things worse?) that could be livable in during the occasional British flood. Once they’d safeguarded the water supplies, sewage and power supplies and provided residents with small boats, a village with its buildings on stilts could be a desirable place to live.

Alternatively, how about floating houses?

Ynet reports on the historic visit to Israel of Maulana Jameel Ahmed Ilyasi, the secretary-general of the All-India Association of Imams and Mosques, an organisation representing 200 million Muslims in India.

The time for violence has come to an end, and the era of peace and dialogue between Muslims and Jews has begun - that was the message delivered by Maulana Jameel Ahmed Ilyasi, secretary-general of the All-India Association of Imams and Mosques, during an interview with Ynetnews.

“My impression was initially that the Israelis are certainly dominating Muslims out here. Once I came here, that impression completely changed,” Ilaysi said. “I saw the reality on the ground, the mutual respect Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews have for each other. Constant conflict is not the reality here,” Ilaysi said, describing his visit to the Israeli-Arab village of Abu Gosh, frequented by Israeli Jews.

‘Muslims, Christians and Jews living side by side’

A visit to Jerusalem’s holy sites only served to reinforce what Ilaysi described as his “pleasant surprise.”

“I saw that Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side by side happily, not at each other’s throat,” he said.

Ilaysi’s message is simple: “The time has come to sit and resolve all problems by dialogue, and to completely abandon violent ways using guns and bombs. Islam never says you should fight with another person. This concept is wrong,” he said.

At a time when Hamas is firing hundreds of missiles into Israel from Gaza and Israel is retaliating by killing those it sees as responsible, news like this makes a very welcome change. (thanks: normblog)

This is a must-watch talk (20 minutes long but worth it) by the charismatic and humourous Hans Rosling, professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and developer of the amazing Gapminder software.

In addition to watching the video you can play with the software. You can examine all kinds of United Nations data on the Gapminder site - Income per Capita, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Child Poverty, even Contraceptive Usage. The fantastic graphics enable you to see clearly the relationships between the various parameters and to learn what’s really been happening in world health and economics.

Hours of fun.

Thanks to Wretchard of The Belmont Club

Ask PooterGeek.

Scientists have called for a wider search for alien life. With more than one hundred billion galaxies in the universe, each containing hundreds of billions of stars and goodness know how many planets, it’s possible that even in the absence of any proof whatsoever, ’scientists’ are rational in their belief that there’s probably alien life ‘out there’ and justified in the millions of dollars they want to spend in hunting it down.

Yet no one understands how the mind arises from the mindless matter of a human being. Although many scientists and materialists believe that mind is a mere epiphenomena arising from the complexity of the brain, no one knows how consciousness actually arises.

Isn’t it therefore rational to postulate that, with the trillions upon trillions of interconnections in the universe, from the electrical and chemical signaling between cells and neurons to the gravitational ‘communication’ between the stars and planets, man’s consciousness and even alien consciousnesses are not the only ones out there? Indeed, could the universe itself have a mind?

I think it is and ask, “Is God the mind of the universe?”

Throughout human history women have played the mating game by stealth, using the masks and decorations of makeup and fashion to advertise and enhance their attractiveness to men and to other women.

Continue Reading »

Adam LeBor, inspired and angered by David T’s piece in Harry’s Place, argues in The Times for the granting of asylum to the 91 Iraqi interpreters who will almost certainly be targeted for death and torture once the soldiers leave.

Michael J Totten also has an interesting story to tell.