This blog writer thought she yielded to no one in her admiration for The Wire. But I have found a post on the onetoein blog that is well more enthusiastic than anything I’ve said.

To say The Wire is the best show on television doesn’t do it justice. It narrows the playing field, especially for those who see television as a ghetto. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to call The Wire one of the best and most important pieces of American art of the early 21^st Century, and even that narrows it down.

I have to agree except I think it’s probably the major work of art that’s ever been presented on television.

In the year’s gap before the next series appears, I have found a potential substitute in the HBO mini-series that gave birth to The Wire. It’s called The Corner and is a set of 6 hour-long programmes, each based on a separate story. It won lots of awards and made it possible for the Wire to be created. I’ve only just glanced at the intro episode – in preparation of aserious 6 hour session) but it looks a lot like The Wire, though obviously it was made on a much lower budget .

So far it loooks promising. Even the first few minutes are shaping up as pretty funny and shrewd (once you get past the double set of serious intro talks – one is from a man who grew up on the corners and another is a mock interview with the man whose story provides the first episode.)

Buy The Corner dvd from Amazon

As always, weekends are hard going on the blog so as a cop out, I thought I would point you in the direction of some of the other blog posts I have been reading, rather than actually writing any.

Hilaly does it again, but so what? From the Evolving Thoughts blog, this is a reflection on the rantings of Sheik al-Hilaly and the implications Democracy has on allowing lunatics like this to rant.

What Is Evolution? An excellent blog post explaining just what Evolution is and isn’t.

David Paszkiewicz speaks out… Some follow up by PZ Myers on the objectionable creature briefly mentioned a week or so ago. In a nutshell he is a history teacher who informed his pupils they would go to hell if they didnt follow the teachings of Jesus.

I almost feel sorry for them More fom PZ Myers – this time he is commenting on people trolling on his 16 year old daughters blog trying to refute evolution. Sadly for the trolls, they are being beaten by the 16 year olds.

Accept the implications – again, you can see why Myers seems to get the most comments on science blogs! This time he is commenting on research which shows the more educated people become, the more likely they are to accept evolution (amongst other things).

Not a really diverse list, but an insight into where some of my source material comes from 🙂

Well to get the ball rolling on Bad Shops, I thought I would address the issues I had shopping with Ebuyer last September. Without going into too much detail for a first post, and I have bought from them quite a few times in the past, this last order was enough to ensure that, no matter what the potential savings, I wont shop there again.

Basically, I made an order for a 32″ LCD TV, a new graphics card, some mini-SD Memory and DVD blanks. Nice and simple. After I made the order I was sent an email from their customer services saying the order had failed (no particular reason) and could I try again. I duly recreated the order and this time it was successful. Too successful. Upon checking my account page, it appeared both orders had cleared and I was going to get two televisions. Wonderful.

I raised an “eNote” (this is a cumbersome system) which had little effect and I was informed by the system it could take up to 10 days to process the eNote – while the deliveries were going to take place in 5 days. Not wishing to be billed twice, I eventually called customer services and eventually got one order cancelled. At this point, while it was annoying that the eBuyer customer fulfilment software was erratic, it was not a major problem. Now for the rest of my rant, this was before expensive orders had free delivery, I had paid extra for the delivery to be within 5 days.
The next day I got an email informing me that my order would be delivered on (cant remember the exact date), which was the Friday that week (the fifth day). As the delivery windows are an entire day, I had to take a day off work. As you can imagine, nothing was delivered. I phoned customer services at 1500 hours only to be told deliveries can be as late as 1800. At 1830 I phoned up to be informed that my order was never going to be shipped anyway as payment had not yet cleared. Obviously dismayed that I had taken a day off work for a shipment which was never going to arrive the customer services assistant bore the brunt of some ire. As the customer services close at 1900, this was never fully resolved and I was informed i would be contacted by eNote with a new delivery date over the weekend.

On Sunday evening I received an eNote telling me the delivery would be on Monday. Lots of notice, but I managed to negotiate a short notice day off work. On Monday, 1800 rolled round and no delivery. Once again I phoned customer services who informed me that no delivery had been scheduled but it would be sent on Tuesday. Obviously at 1800 on a Monday there was no way I could get the time off, but fortunately my wife would be available to collect it.

Now by some miracle at lunchtime on Tuesday a delivery arrived. It was the graphics card. Nothing else. Once more, after work I called customer services to be informed that there had been a problem and the other items would be shipped separately. When I asked when I could expect them, no answer was forthcoming.

On the Wednesday the TV and the mini-SD arrived. Without any warning, other than an eNote sent to me one hour before the delivery informing me it was on the way. Fortunately my neighbours were able to take the delivery which prevented the farce escalating. Still no DVD blanks and now I was informed eBuyer was out of stock of them. Shocking.

Sheer bloody mindedness stopped me cancelling the order, and they duly arrived two weeks later – actually on the day the relevant eNote stated.

After complaining repeatedly to eBuyer by email, eNote and telephone to no avail, I wrote a ranting letter of complaint. The reply was the under their terms and conditions eBuyer do not compensate for any inconveience caused etc., etc., and the best they could offer was to refund the delivery charge. (about £10)

As a result of eBuyers dismal order fulfilment system I lost three days pay waiting for that order which, in the end, took nearly three weeks to deliver. This easily wiped out any savings I may have made based on their prices. As eBuyer is an online retailer, being able to deliver the goods the customer orders when promised is vital. It is probably the single most important part of maintaining customer loyalty and getting a brand recommended by word of mouth. In the past, I have recommended eBuyer. As you may guess, not only will I no longer EVER buy from them again, I would not recommend any one else did and actively advise people to shop elsewhere.

In the great scheme of things, I am only one person and my impact on their business is limited. If the balance of people like their service they will do well. Personally, I find paying slightly more (such as when I bought my new digital camera, it was £30 more but delivered free and exactly when said within a 2 hour time frame) for better customer service is more than worth it.

There may come the day that this blog has a section about which retailers we do recommend. If that happens I will let you know which companies have certainly come through with the goods 🙂

Well, its 2007 now so time for a new category. Following recent poor customer experience with a variety of online retailers, I have decided to provide space here to “name and shame” the wrongdooers.

Basically, companies which provide members of Why Dont You…? with poor products or poor customer service will be discussed here. If a company you like gets caught in the spotlight then let us know and we can consider revising our opinions.

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.

This source for part of the blog (i.e. me) must confess to being too pompous and argumentative in recent posts, so I’m hoping this will be mellower.

So, in diametric opposition to my normal posts, I am going to list what’s good in religions.

Almost all religions meet our need for a philosophy of existence. We all feel a sense of wonder at the universe. As far as I can see human beings will never grasp the nature of being, just because we  only have our human capacity for thinking.  This is not an argument against pushing our capacity to know things to its limit.   From our perspective, the universe can only know itself through us.

The best of religion provides a language by which we can conceive of our existence.  (In this sense only, I agree that science acts in the same way as religion.)

I suppose that’s saying the main value of religion is in its contribution to philosophy. There are plenty of other valuable things that religion can provide, such as a sense of community, rites of passage, rituals to help us deal with the unbearable.   But we would barely be able to conceieve of anything in philosophical terms without concepts that have been refined over thousands of years.

Religion provides metaphors for the knowledge that is always hanging outside our grasp.

Thought alone is not enough to express the complexity of our experience. 

Where religion – and any magical belief systems –  are distinct from raw philosophy is that they let us interact with the knowledge. They can integrate wonder into our logical-thought knowledge of the nature of  the universe. They offer ways to express this physically – good works, prayer, dance, song, exercise, observing fasts, taking part in pilgrimages, meditation or, even, fighting as in the case of kung fu.

Buddhism, taoism, hinduism, African pantheism and so on all seem to achieve this much more creatively than the God-of- Abraham religions. However, I suspect that may be partly because, in the West, we tend to know them only after any dubious social content has been filtered out (e.g. the caste system) and their philosophy has been interpreted for us. There are also plenty of brilliant things in the God-of- Abraham-style religions.

In that sense, even those of who can admire myth and metaphor without taking it as literally true can play with the ideas. This is a bit like being the kids who know there isn’t really a tooth fairy but will take the coin the tooth fairy leaves. 

The problems with religion are to do with power and ideology. The more powerful the religion, the grubbier it becomes. Religions are not just collections of insights and myths. They are forms of social organisation. They amass resources. They hold power or provide support to the powerful.

I disagree with Dawkins where he treats religion as if it, in itself, has power to cause social effects. I feel that this ignores the ideological role of religion, i.e. the power to influence opinions in favour of particular social groups. (Just because something serves as ideology doesn’t mean it’s not true.) Social change and religion are inextricable, each feeding on and shaping each other.   I don’t think it matters what we actually believe about the nature of the universe or morality.  It matters what we do about it. Specifically, what we do to people who think using a different set of metaphors.

The trend towards fundamentalism in several religions can be explained in a million ways, and although i am obviously more than tempted, (Curse this hubris [note use of religious metaphors])  I’ll have to pass on that now, or this blog will never get published. The relevance here is that  you can’t just dismiss it as silly nonsense (OK, you can)  We need to think about what people are expressing when they hold to those beliefs and try to address the causes. 

(Tough on religion, tough on the causes of religion, following Blair.)

Sorry, I was blatantly lying about not being so pompous and argumentative. I promise to try harder in the next blog.

Well, I was not planning to make any more posts today but when I came across “The Fanciful Land of Evolution” I couldn’t help myself. It seem PZ Myers has his own personal stalker who is showing the valuable Christian traits of compassion, forgiveness and humility. If you are bored, the website is an excellent place to go to get a worrying insight into the insane mind. The author of blog seems to spend a lot of his time hunting round “evolutionist” blogs and trolling them under different names. He then waits until patience is worn out and has the temerity to say he was “banned for no good reason.” Its nice to see a crank like this in his home lair.

Not many today, visit them and you will see why:

• http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/carnivalia_and_an_open_thread_44.php
• http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/eskowyet_another_backlasher.php

Make sure you follow the links they offer.

It seems after my previous “complaints” there was a bit of a backlog in the comments on the Blasphemy Challenge article and now my comment is there. Phew. First off let me appologise for any misunderstanding made.

On a more entertaining note, it is pleasing to the see the cranks and crackpots can be guaranteed to turn up to a post like this (does this mean I am a crank?) as some of the comments show: (This is long, the bit on the home page is trimmed, please take the time to read on. It really is worth it)
Continue reading →

The joys of playing around with a Nokia N73 camera phone

Now, as mentioned in the past I am a big fan of the Respectful Insolence blog and I regularly use it as a jumping off point when I go blogsurfing. Also, I have in the past been forced to admit I am wrong and where required correct previously posted statements. Today, it seems I may be heading down this road again, but I am not sure yet.

Previously, I mentioned to apparent oddity of British people thinking that developing cancer or not was down to fate. This was fairly quickly challenged by a post here (albeit by a biased poster) which initially I ignored. My take on heather‘s post was that it was just a bit of semantic pedantry and I could ignore it. Today, however, after reading Orac’s post I see I may have been making too much of a broad brush judgement.

Now, heather quite rightly points out (as does a lot of Orac’s post) that chance does have the “final say” as to whether or not a person will develop a cancer. I agree and this isn’t what my complaint about poor education was meant to imply. Heather points out:

My point is that – even cancers caused by heavy irradiation are due to chance, although the chance may approach 100% with regard to certain substances. With most cancers, you can only consider the impact of lifestyle choices statistically. (And having some acquaintance with epidemiology, I can say this is a pretty arcane art).

And I cant really say anything which disagrees with this.

My point is, and I am painfully aware now that this is an assumption, the way I read the study was not that people believed their chance of developing cancer was a risk which was affected by various lifestyle and genetic factors but remained (non the less) a “chance” event.

I read the report on the survey as suggesting that the people thought the chance of them developing cancer was entirely down to fate with no impact from their lifestyle choices. My own discussions with British people (whilst not exactly being a survey) suggests this is about right. I know people who smoke 20 a day with almost no fear of cancer (putting developing it down to “fate”) but baulk at the thought of eating a foodstuff which may prove to contain a minute trace of a carcinogenic compound.
This leads nicely to one part of respectful insolence I actually don’t agree with.

Only people who have never tried to convince patients to change such lifestyles for the benefit of their health would so blithely attribute this belief in “fate” to stupidity or ignorance. In some cases it may be stupidity or ignorance, but in the majority of cases it probably is not. For instance, 90% of the people in the U.K survey knew that smoking increased the odds of developing cancer, and that still didn’t stop a significant proportion from attributing whether smokers get cancer or not to “fate.” It’s all easy from the air to dismiss patients as being “ignorant” or “stupid,” but it won’t help to persuade them that there are indeed actions that they can take themselves to decrease their risk of developing cancer.

Now, it strikes me that here Orac is no longer arguing that the people thinking developing cancer is down to fate are ignorant or not, he is simply saying the “patient” should not be thought of as ignorant. This is a wonderful point of view for a doctor to take but, at the risk of being rude, is fairly meaningless. Yes, it may not help persuade patients to modify their lifestyle but that certainly does not falsify the idea.

All in all, I stand corrected with the automatic assumption that the report implied the people thought it was Fate / Chance and no other factor. I (currently) still think that people who do think it is Fate / Chance and not lifestyle factors are poorly educated or stupid (or both).

I will try to retain an open mind though.