Bad Day

Not only does my car need a new exhaust, but I also needed to ring security to get out of a car park tonight. Let's hope tomorrow is better!

Virtual Shelf

Take a look at my new Virtual Shelf. It needs a modern browser (try firefox or safari), but I think it is worth the effort (then again, I would say that :-P). Let me know what you think of the page, or my musical taste, or whatever in the comments.

If you get bored of that, you can take a look at my last.fm profile to see what I've been listening to on the ol' computer (but alas, not what CDs and vinyl have been spinning).

Pseudo Science Medicine

So many people are interested in alternative medicine nowadays. While I accept that western medicine does not have all the answers, I do get annoyed by some types. Mainly those that rely on a very rough form of science, and those that rely on psuedo science.

An example of rough science would be Chinese herbal medicine. While I accept that many plants are indeed medicinal, and will not dispute that the chinese herbs could, suitably used do some good, I do not accept it when I am told that they are better than western medicine. Why? Quite simply because western medicine already uses these, but refines them. Through testing the benefits and side effects are known (this is in common with herbal medicine). However, western medicine extracts the active ingredients, and refines them. Wintergreen oil has been developed the yield aspirin and parecetemol. All this development leads to more powerful drugs relative to the caused side effects (although, alas, still not eliminating them completley).

Now, even more annoying, is Homeopathy. The extreme dilution of a substance till the original component is not detectable. Various mechanisms have been suggested, but really this is just pseudo science. This is well expressed in this letter to New Scientist.

So, for alternative medicine to be meaningful, what must it do? Well, I would suggest that it must stop trying to be a poor imitation of what is done best by western medicine. Homeopathy may be a non-starter, but something else might just be real...

Green and Pleasant Land

It struck me last night, while driving back from Coventry (of all places), that once again this has become a "Green and Pleasant Land". Inspiring...

Finally,

The trees have thier leaves, the grass is radiant and the sun is shining.

Winter has lost its clutches and summer is here.