Just got this picture from another member of the blogging team at WhyDontYou.org.uk. After exhaustive research (Google images then) I think it’s a praying mantis? If anyone sees this and recognises it, please let us know.

There are two incomprehensible things with Technorati (whose name be praised – this is CONTRUCTIVE CRITICISM) at the moment.

1. It is supposed to drop blog links that are more than 180 days old. technorati’s blog It seems to interpret this at random. I.e.Even though there seems to be no change in the number of linked blogs less than 180 days old, the number goes down 🙁 (and occasionally up 🙂 ) seemingly at random.
2. Much more serious, it delays noticing the existence of some new posts until they are so old (say twenty minutes) appear on page two, when ranked by time/date. This can be really frustrating. It means that a post on a remotely popular tag topic doesn’t even have its conceptual Warhol’s five minutes of fame.

Only posts tagged with really unpopular tags are certain to stay on the front page for long enough for anyone to see them, and, obviously they are unpopular tags because almost no one ever clicks on them.

I keep hearing people saying things like “I’m being good todayand not eating any chocolate.”

Maybe it’s my concept of morality but I can’t see how denying yourself certain foods can constitute being “good.”  It’s not easy to define goodness, but there can’t be many definitions that don’t involve helping other people or saving the planet or rescuing dumb animals, and so on.

People  who talk about being “good” in relation to food aren’t talking about not eating meat or eating only local grown organic products – i.e. food choices that come into the realm of morality. They are talking about refusing sugar and salt and fat and eating fruit and vegetables. That is, their own diet.

Even accepting that the health and weight loss benefits of these dietary choices are real – a huge obstacle, given that most of what passes for knowledge about diet is based on the most spurious science imaginable – the only person to benefit would be – guess who? The person making the “sacrifices.”

There’s nothing wrong with self-interest in terms of choosing what to put into our bodies.  Seeing it as a moral choice is a different matter.

Traditional exhortations to kids who don’t want to eat something was to refer to the starving millions. They still exist, (although they are still never going to get a chance to eat your unwanted sprouts.)  I think pepople on the edge of starvation can see quite clearly that it isn’t “good” that we have access to far more food necessary for our survival and it’s  definitely “bad” that they are starving.

On a full scale rant, I’m going to suggest that the phrase reveals an infantile morality – seeking to please an imaginary authority who will punish us for indulging ourselves and reward us for self-denial.  We are constantly at war with our natural desires.

This relates to our whole disturbed mind-set around food.  Most of us are so far from the state of eating when we are hungry that we have no idea what hunger feels like. Daily media bombardment focuses on celebrities’ losses or gains of a few ounces of bodyweight. People who accept this sort of thing despise the celebrities - and despise themselves even more –  for being either anorexic or obese, with a 5 pound window between these extremes.

If we have to detect goodness and badness in relation to individuals’ responses to food, then why not look at it in terms of how our behaviour influences other people, especially children.   It is surely “good” to eat what you need when your body tells you it needs it and surely “bad” to obsess about your own body shape. “Good” to approach food rationally and to stop consuming planet-threateningly large quantities of industrialised crap but to enjoy food as one of life’s main pleasures. 

This is just as selfish but I contend that it’s a socially and psychologically healthier selfishness.

Global imbalances in the distribution of resources won’t be solved or even improved at all by individuals giving our food money to charity either, whatever rock stars might believe. (They are rock stars, ffs, not agrarian economists) Shifting the inequalities in the global food balance requires a lot of hard choices from all governments – minimising dependence on imports in the overconsuming countries, encouraging production for local needs in the hungry countries and so on. However, an adult concept of morality is one of the preconditions for this sort of thing.

Here are some links worth checking out, mostly examinations of bad science, bad medicine and crackpottery:

• http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/01/online_prayer_benefits_breast_cancer_pat.php
• http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/uhohthis_is_going_to_backfire.php
• http://blog.myspace.com/starlitexprss (this is pretty mad and may fuel a future blog post)
• http://www.badscience.net/?p=346

More may follow soon.

Stepping away from my quest for the ultimate in ID/Religious irony humour (only for a while though), I thought I would address some “Bad Science” which is frequently raising its ugly head as part of the War on Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV) – also known as 4x4s here in blighty.

Now, for quite some time the eco warriors have been campaigning against what they see as gas guzzling monsters being used, unnecessarily, on the school run. This has been picked up by successive news agencies and turned into a bit of a campaign issue for some politicians (i.e. Ken Livingstone). Now, without debating the rights and wrongs of driving an SUV or heading down the road of is a 32mpg SUV worse than a 16 mpg sports car (interesting in itself as the SUV may be carrying 5 people compared to the two in the sports car…), or even if you can make a moral value call on something like ownership of a type of vehicle, I wanted to highlight the science involved.

Recently, there has been reporting about a study which found SUV drivers 55% less likely than car drivers to have their hands in the “10 to 2” position on the wheel, which it then goes on to describe as the sign of a “safe and alert” driver. This is an insane premise. Speaking as a car driver, I rarely, if ever, have my hands at “10 to 2” and have never caused an accident in my life. As it stands though, I have no idea if there is any research which supports the “safe” claim so I will not comment on it any further other than to say it is a premise which needs proving.

Now, in light of the research (which you can read about on New Scientist) I decided to carry out a bit of my own. For various reasons I spent 90 minutes in a roadside service station on the A1(M) in the north of England on Tuesday 10 Jan 07. During this time I was able to observe a lot of passing vehicles and as the road was very, very busy there was a wide mix of vehicle types. As part of my study, I observed the drivers of 100 passenger cars, 100 sports utility vehicles and 50 light goods vehicles. I only noted the ones where I could clearly see the top half of the steering wheel to confirm the drivers hand positions so there were more vehicles which passed without me making a note. This is a much smaller study group than the
Now, of the 100 SUVs which passed, only six had drivers with their hands at “10 to 2” (interestingly all were female), the rest had either one hand on top or both hands out of sight. Now, this is then compared to the “normal” cars out of which a grand total of four had their hands at “10 to 2.” Of these four, two were “young drivers” one of which still had a green P plate. Of the 50 LGV/vans I looked at none had their hands at “10 to 2.”

In addition, both SUVs and Cars had four people each who were using phones while driving (seven vans were), and two van drivers were driving without seatbelts (no cars or SUVs were as far as I could see).

As this is a small study group, I realise the numbers may be far from accurate, so yesterday (Wednesday, 11 Jan 07), I carried out a similar study (100 cars, 100 SUVs – no vans) from a service station on the M1 motorway. This time, five SUV drivers were observed with their hands at “10 to 2” with four car drivers again. This means approximately 5% of SUV drivers have their hands in that position compared to around 4% of car drivers. For the numbers to have matched those in the study, I should have been looking at around 2 SUV drivers for 4 car drivers.
This broadly matches my own experience of being a passenger in other people’s cars and other people’s SUVs. I know no car drivers, with more than about 12 – 18 months driving experience, who drive with their hands at “10 – 2.” From my personal experience, driving with your hands at “10 to 2” is not a reliable indicator of a safe and alert driver. It also strikes me as inaccurate to say SUV drivers are less likely to drive in the “10 to 2” position than a normal car – with the exception of new drivers are, in turn, less likely to drive an SUV than a car.

I am not sure if this is bad science, but it strikes me as just being part of the slightly obsessive (and occasionally irrational) desire to demonise drivers of SUV/4x4s. I remember a few months ago reading about how SUV/4x4s gave smaller fields of view than normal cars (due to the width of side pillars), yet this never accounted for the increased field of view from the size of the vehicle and hight of the driver. I am not trying to support the use of SUVs but I think arguing against it should be rational and logical.