This is parked over the road from me:

I hope it doesn’t explode.

Office 2007 will disable the Insert key by default. This can only be a good thing. If you want to save a document - surely the most common operation after entering text - you have to hit CTRL-S. Printing? CTRL-P. But if you want to completely break all normal word processing behaviour and enter a mode in which any text directly overwrites existing content you need only miss ‘delete’. Disabling this most useless of keys must be a good idea. You’d think.

I told this to my parents. They gave me a strange look. I deduced that they had no idea what I was talking about, so fully explained the full horror of the Insert key, and that over a decade it must have wasted literally centuries of time as people tried to understand why Word suddenly didn’t work any more. I finished, happy with my explanation. They gave me a strange look. “But we use that all the time”, they said.

My parents are the only people in the world who find the Insert key useful. They do some kind of copy-pasting from some funny program and something something something. I forget. My brain rejected it as craziness even as I was listening. If they ever upgrade to Office 2007, I’m going to have to re-enable Insert. That’s going to hurt.

In the autumn of 1997, while flicking through an in-flight magazine, I read the first reports hinting at a new Superman film. Despite the rather worrying prospect of Nicolas Cage in the suit, it was then that I started looking forward to a new big screen outing for my favourite superhero. Nine years, many directors, stars and false starts¹ later, and Superman Returns opened last Friday. And, thank goodness, it was worth waiting for.

Spoiler break…

Continue reading ‘Superman Returned’

1. one-time scriptwriter Kevin Smith later described how the producer had demanded Superman lose the suit, not be able to fly, and fight a giant spider. I read this script. It was bad. This producer is actually listed on Superman Returns, but it must be in name only. [↩]

Was it just me, or was the sun was particularly hot today?

(edit 3 mins later: it occurs to me that this is phrased rather badly, and the question is ambiguous; feel free to answer either way, however)

The Shocking Case of Mystery Manor is now up for sale at Kids’ Mysteries. It’s an all-girl mystery for 11-13 year olds, and involves magic and explosions Took me far longer than was reasonable to complete it, and I’m grateful to the site owner for being so patient.

Thursday’s Newsnight included an investigation into homeopathy and malaria. Undercover reporters contacted ten separate, and apparently randomly chosen, London homeopathic pharmacies and asked for help with preventing malaria. Every one recommended homeopathic remedies - none suggested going to a doctor, and some actively said that no other treatments would be necessary. The report is available on the BBC website via here.

Obviously this advice is complete toss - all homeopathy is - but this could easily kill somebody. This has been very well covered by Bad Science, the associated forums, and the Bad Homeopath. Fun facts include that the report states that homeopathic remedies are ‘99.99% water’, and contain ‘trace amounts’ of quinine. In reality - as the Bad Homeopath points out - the remedies are 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% water, so ‘trace amounts’ are highly unlikely to even be a single molecule.

What interests me particularly is the spokesperson from the Society of Homeopaths, who sat in the Newsnight studio and said the following:

She does a very good job of seeming to agree that the homeopaths in the report should have behaved differently, while actually saying nothing of the sort. She nods a lot, but after claiming she can’t do anything about homeopaths at risk of killing people until somebody complains, says:

“there has not been, to date, a large-scale research study into the prophylactic use for homeopathy in malaria”

I’ll give her that. I’m sure she’s correct. But that’s because every study into homeopathy has shown it to have no effect whatsoever. There’s no reason to even investigate such a claim, when huge numbers of other, methodically-identical, homeopathic claims have shown no effect. But the report wasn’t into homeopathy as a whole, so Simon Singh couldn’t really bring that up without changing the whole topic of debate, which the presenter may not have liked. Then, at the end, she slips in:

“it’s used prophylactically in diseases such as malaria. indeed the first remedy ever proved, as we call it - discovered - was a remedy for malaria”

This is a particularly evil redefinition of a word. She uses the word ‘proved’ completely differently from any dictionary definition. Anybody who doesn’t happen to know this would think she’s saying homeopathy has been shown to have some effect. In fact, homeopathic ‘proving’ involves giving homeopathic samples to people (just water, really) and measuring their symptoms¹. This is the way in which homeopaths discover which ailments/diseases should be treated with said solution, based upon the like-cures-like argument.

Although she gets the number of years wrong in the report - it’s far closer to 200 than 300 - the initial idea for like-cures-like came from a malarial drug - kinda. The original guy took an anti-malarial drug of the time, experienced the symptoms of malaria, and extrapolated wildly to produce the like-cures-like argument. More details here. And that’s to say nothing of the whole dilution thing. James Randi put it something like “the first rule says that you should take something which produces the same symptoms as your problem; the second rule says you don’t do that”.

It’s a shame the interview wasn’t longer, as I suspect Simon Singh would have demolished her final argument given another chance to speak. The whole thing is just appalling, and you’d think that if anybody actually died there’d be a strong criminal case.

1. according to Wikipedia, recent ‘provings’ have introduced placebo controls. This has resulted in the people taking placebos experiencing the same symptoms as those taking the remedies, and is explained away with ‘energetic resonance’ - I like how they’re trying to be scientific but give up if it doesn’t suit them [↩]

I’m the latest in Paul’s series of asking 20 questions to various bloggers. Big picture of me at the top of his site currently; not a good plan, Paul, you’ll scare everyone away! I think he’s trying to interview everybody from his blogroll, which is a nice thing to do¹, and it’s certainly fun to answer.

1. My inner english teacher is balking at the word ‘nice’. I can use ‘nice’ in this context, I’m sure. What other word is there - it’s nice! [↩]

Friday afternoon + sun + ice cream van = goodness. What could improve the situation? Superman Returns being released, that’s what.

*does the happy happy dance of, um, happiness*

I’m not seeing it tonight, however. I’m waiting until tomorrow. I forget why. It’s taking some Green Lantern-like willpower, I’ll have you know.

Stephen Fry’s new collection of essays contains a piece on critics. Lifted directly from the Harry’s Place post - hope they don’t mind:

As a child I saw on television a film starring Alistair Sim called The Green Man. Like almost any picture featuring that incomparable genius it contains moments of as absolute a joy as one is ever permitted on the sublunary plane. Watching it made me wriggle with delight, but more than that, it made me want to have something, anything, to do with a world where such pleasures were possible. The film was again shown recently on television. In the listings column of a Sunday newspaper the other week it was described as ‘a thin, ultimately unsatisfactory vehicle for Sim’. Now I would never claim that my liking for the film is definite, de gustibus and all that, but look at the style of this remark. How typical it is of everything that must displease about critics. The vile possessive impertinence of this jumped-up hack referring to the man by his surname, the ex cathedra¹ dismissal, the cold contempt, the complete absence of anything approaching enthusiasm or love.

It may be true that critics perform a service, that actors and writers and artists need their egos deflating, that the public needs to be advised about how, where and when to spend their money on artistic activities, that ’standards’ must be maintained. All the foregoing may be fine and convincing reasons for the existence of critics. The point is that no one would volunteer for this dreadful trade but the kind of worthless and embittered offal that we, by and large, get. What decent person would want to spend a life picking and cavilling? Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. ‘And what did you do?’ asks Saint Peter. ‘Well’, says the dead soul. ‘I criticised things’. ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, “thin and unconvincing”, “turgid and uninspired”, “competent and serviceable,”…you know’.

I think we can guess Saint Peter’s reaction.

The man has a way with words. I’m not convinced there’s any virtue in deflating egos or maintaining ’standards’, but I definitely agree with the overall point. It would be far more pleasant if critics did their best to enhance my enjoyment of music/tv/film/theatre, instead of extracting joy and crushing it with cynicism and hate. Tell me the stories behind the art, tell me about subtle meanings I might miss, tell me of homages and references and detail. Don’t give me arbitrary film theory, elitist pretension, snide irrelevancies and tirades against the mainstream. I’ll make my own decisions about what I enjoy, thanks. I don’t care what critics didn’t like, I care about what they did, because that makes my life better.

1. hadn’t heard this before - it apparently means speaking from a position of infallible authority [↩]

The Labour Humanist points out an entertaining question in the House of Lords yesterday, in which a bishop asks for vicars, priests etc. to get priority in receiving flu vaccinations in the case of a pandemic. There’s another question a few minutes later that interested me:

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, if there is a pandemic, there will be people wanting and needing the last rites. Is the Minister aware that chaplains in hospital deal with the dying, and that ministers of religion visit dying people in their homes? If they are not key workers, who are on the list of key workers?

You can almost hear the inflection on the last sentence. How about medical staff, people involved in food production, people who deliver the food, people who, you know, do something useful? You know what? My religion says I should die while watching strippers. They give me great solace in times of need, and should be key workers too, dammit.

As far as I can tell the ‘last rites’ involve listening to confession and giving bread and wine to people. Emotionally useful, maybe, but of no practical value whatsoever. It would give great solace to allow dying people to e-mail goodbyes to their relatives, but I’m not suggesting that all computer technicians get priority vaccinations. It does sound heartless, on the face of things, to say that people who would genuinely feel better with the help of ‘last rites’ should be denied, but a major pandemic would be a full-on emergency condition, and you have to prioritise above things that are so completely unimportant and unproductive. I like the reply (emphasis mine):

Lord Warner: My Lords, the current proposal is that frontline healthcare workers would be a priority group but, as I said in my reply, no final decisions have been taken in this area on specific employment groups. I assure the noble Baroness and the right reverend Prelate that guidance on infection control is available to ministers of religion attending the dying or deceased.

Forgive me for asking something so obvious, but if they’re doing such good work, why doesn’t their deity just prevent them from getting ill? I hope any creationist bishops don’t ask for more than one vaccination, either.

Is it me, or is everything a bit depressing at the moment?

• MPs and the police are fighting over whether yesterday’s arrest of Lord Levy was ’symbolic’. Reminds me of US police arresting Michael Jackson a few years ago and being forced to defend themselves against accusations of it being a smear campaign against MJ’s latest album. Because the police have nothing better to do than engage in symbolism and smear campaigns. Whichever way, one of the parties must be behaving ridiculously.
• Israel’s doing its thing, and as ever there’s no hope of any kind of reasonable solution because it’s all such an insane historical mess.
• There’s a huge amount of fuss over three bankers being extradited. I’m not saying whether I think it’s ok - I really have no clue - but I do wonder whether there’d be anything like as much fuss if the other party weren’t the US.

Good news? Well, Norway’s killed fewer whales than they intended.

I think I’ll just skip the news websites for the next few days.

Channel 4 are offering free tickets for an honest-to-goodness drive-in, sound-via-the-radio cinema that’s touring the country. I’ve always wanted to visit one of those. They’re showing:

London, Gunnersbury Park - 15/16 July
Catch me if you can
Sideways

Birmingham, Weston Park - 22/23 July
The Shawshank Redemption
As Good As It Gets

Manchester, Arley Hall - 29/30 July
Pulp Fiction
Moulin Rouge

Brighton, Brighton Racecourse - 5/6 August
True Romance
American Beauty

Edinburgh, Hopetoun House - 12/13 August
The Usual Suspects
A Beautiful Mind

Unfortunately I’m away for the Birmingham screenings

A busy day in Parliament:

MPs have signalled their anger at Tony Blair over the extradition to the US of three bankers to face a fraud trial.

They voted by a majority of 242 to adjourn the Commons early in symbolic protest at the government’s extradition arrangements after a three hour debate.

So, let me get this straight: rather than actually trying to do something useful, MPs have voted to go home early. And, look ho, isn’t it a beautiful summer’s day? It certainly is symbolic. I’m going to now stage my own protest by having a nap.

Ok, so maybe they’re not all actually going off for a nice cup of tea, but have they any clue how ridiculous this looks from the outside?

Update: Kerron knows far more about what happened than I do - be sure to check the comments too.

…I’d release an exercise video called ‘Pilates of the Caribbean’. Except I guess people might call it ‘Dead Man’s Chest’, which wouldn’t be so good.

I saw the finale of Doctor Who’s second season last night. Spoilers follow…

Continue reading ‘Doomsday’