Mike Meredith

Jul 132015
 

No, of course it isn't. It's only mainstream media that is dumb enough to think so. 

Pluto is a dwarf planet whose orbit averages about 39AU (i.e. about 39 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth) whereas the edge of the solar system is approximately 200AU.

Jul 112015
 

The usual response when someone brings up the subject of the rich being just too rich, is to mention the "politics of envy".  Which is a great way of suppressing a reasonable discussion of the matter; anyone would think that the phrase was invented by the rich to protect their excessive wealth. Most people would agree that those who work hard, are creative, and contribute towards the nation's wealth should get a bit more than a chav living on benefits.

Fair enough, but they already do – and far more than people realise. And not all of the rich do contribute a great deal towards the nation; many of them are merely sitting on growing piles of wealth.

Jul 052015
 

Herbal

An untested chemical that grows in the garden. Possibly not your garden.

It could be benificial – Aspirin is after all a cleaned up and tested version of what was previously a herbal remedy. It could be safe; at least it could be safe in the kind of doses suggested (everything is poisonous enough in high enough doses – even water).

But it has not been tested properly either for effectiveness, nor safety. And if it is effective, is it more effective than a placebo?

Chemical-Free

Another way of saying an empty bottle. If you shake your bottle and it rattles or gurgles, send it back as it's got chemicals in it.

Homeopathy

Expensive water.

In fact if there were any positive value to homeopathy, there would be no complaints of joint pain in hard water regions (calcium carbonate is supposedly a treatment for joint pain).  And guess what? I get both hard water through my taps, and joint pain. 

Natural

… as opposed to "man-made". Both are a means of production and neither means of production has any implications as to the effectiveness of a product.

However evolution does not tend to produce something whose sole purpose is to cure headaches; the willow tree evolved to have a nasty bitter tasting bark to discourage animals from eating its bark not to cure headaches. That was an accident. To treat a headache "naturally", you will need to find a willow tree, pull off a chunk of bark, grind it up, and eat it. A man-made pill labelled "Aspirin" is more readily available, safer (it only contains the chemical for the headache treatment), and is less damaging to those poor willow trees.

So in this case, "natural" is actually a bad thing.

Faith-Healing

Asking an imaginary friend for help. Frankly asking a real friend is just as likely to work, and any effectiveness is due to the placebo effect.

Acupuncture

If you want someone sticking pins in you to make a little wax figurine replica of you to say "Oww!" then by all means go ahead.

Jun 192015
 

2015-06-18 17.10.16

Around about where I live, they have been replacing "proper" pedestrian crossing lights with the silly little stealth ones you can see above.

I am sure those who designed the crossings and the height of these lights had some pretty good reasons for putting them where they are, but they might not have had the pedestrian in mind …

Firstly they are in an unnatural position forcing you to look away from the direction of travel. It is normal to look in the direction of travel, and when I do, I can miss the lights turning green. 

Secondly, and far more irritatingly, becuase these lights are just at beer belly height, it is all too common for people to stand in front of them blocking the view of the lights. So even if you are looking in the right direction, you can miss the lights turning green.

So what is so bad about the old kind of pedestrian crossing lights?