Went to see this band on Saturday night. It was awesome, such a great band!

I'll be writing a review of the gig soon, but I thought I'd leave you with this:

This is Itch from The King Blues performing his ode to women: Five bottles of shampoo





She pushed in before me, in the supermarket queue
pretended not to see me, in that way women do.
She put on the counter some bread and milk too
and then she pulled out five different bottles of shampoo.
And I thought to myself, 'I will never understand women.'
And I hear some of you saying, 'Yeah but all men are all the same!
They all think they're so cool and are ruled by their dicks.'
That might be true of me, but it ain't true of all of us
so don't point that finger so quick.

I do see some of the blokes though,
In the clubs, pinching girls arses, trying to be intimidating
Making obscene passes. Man, she's a goddess, you can tell by the way she dances.
But you call her a slag when she don't accept your advances.
You just show you got no respect for yourself, show you ain't got the balls
to just talk to a girl.
So when she chats to me, you spit at her and shout 'Whore!'
Well it is written, in the art of war, to fight only the battles you can win.
But I will defend your honour til they kick my face in.
If you have to scrape me broken boned, bruised, bloodied, and battered up off the floor..
Well FUCK IT. Integrity is what black eyes were invented for.

So down with the dick-tatorship, that is so cock-sure,
they use rape as a weapon of war.
FUCK the man who thinks it's ok to give his wife a punch,
FUCK the judge who says it weren't rape cause she was drunk.
And if you're pro-life. I mean if you're PRO .. LIFE,
then become a doctor, or foster a kid.
Make it possible for people who are alive to live.
But don't you dare tell women what they can and can't do,
when it was a woman that gave life to you.

Yes, I'm a man, a fairly stereotypical one,
but I ain't afraid to say I think all women are beautiful and strong.
Too fat, too thin, that's just media spin,
you look best when you're comfortable in your own skin.
So I'm sorry, if we've made you feel undue,
the truth be known...I'm in awe of you.
You're a giver of life and warrior too.
So do you really need FIVE bottles of shampoo?

Hey folks, how y'all been?
I've slipped away from bllogging a little recently. The last few weeks have been quite tough, just as the last few months have been, but things are ticking along.
I kinda feel like my life is on hold at the moment. Like I can't start anything new.

One positive thing has come up though, that I'll just make a quick announcement about: I've decided on a change of career. For the past three years I've been a driving instructor, and it's just not for me. Not that I'm not good at my job - I am - but I feel quite unfulfilled by it. Also, being self-employed, I stink at the business side of things. I'm just not cut out for it. Instead, I've decided to become a teacher. I will return to university soon to complete the degree I started several years ago and then become a teacher of Maths and Physics. It's gonna be very tough getting there and I'm nervous about the road ahead, but this is what I want to do so here I come!

I'll also be returning to be a bit more involved in my group, Skepticism and Truth, which I've neglected a little too much recently. I'd like to build some kind of online skeptical community through the group, maybe with the aim of getting ideas involving doing some kind of public good. Perhaps. Who knows.

Anyway, I'll be back again soon. Won't neglect you all so much next time.

Every summer, my home town of Coventry put on a free festival in the park. It's a great thing, you can't really ask much more for free!!
I haven't been able to attend for the last couple of years, for various reasons, but in years prior to that I've had the chance to play with my old band on one of the stages. This year, we had Idlewild headlining the saturday night. I fell in love with Idlewild's first album when I was about... hmmm.... seventeen, so that's a good ten years ago. They've softened a lot since then, but it was still great to be there last night. I wore a suit and ended up in a moshpit... two things I haven't done for a long time!

While listening to them play, I couldn't help noticing how strongly I connected with some of their lyrics. He's quite a talented wordsmith. So if you have the time and the inclination, I've posted three of their songs, together with the lyrics. I always like to read lyrics as I listen to a song play, so you could do the same. I find it always enhances my enjoyment.

This has been a tough week, and today, in particular, has been a hell of an emotional drain! Hence the lack of blogging activity.

But I remain positive. Let's see how the next couple of weeks pan out!

Peace and love, everybody.x

What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? What happens to us when we die?

What does it mean to be "good"? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? Do you perceive the colour red the same way that I do?

Life is full of questions, many of which may never be answered. We are surrounded by mystery and wonder, and yet we never stop searching, looking for the answers, trying to solve those great mysteries.

Some of us believe that some of these questions are not only unanswered, but are unanswerable... while other questions, while answerable in theory, may forever elude us.

But tonight, one of life's greatest questions was answered...

I have a question that I'd like answered. It may sound a bit sarcastic, but that is honestly not my intention. If it sound ludicrous, then that is not because I mean to ridicule in an arrogantly mocking way, I'm just using a comparison that I feel is appropriate to where where I'm going with the follow-up to it. Here's the question:

Let's say I claim I can cure the flu (for the purpose of this question I'll use flu as an example, but any disease will do). To do this I take an empty bottle, seal it so that it's airtight, and then place my hands on it while concentrating really hard on that disease going away, out of somebody's body. I then give this bottle to a person suffering from the flu and tell them to open the bottle and breathe in the air inside it. This, I say,will cure them.
Am I legally allowed to do that?

I'm sure there must be some law against that, but I've done some searching, including The UK Statute Law Database and I'm struggling to find it. Perhaps I've been typing in the wrong keywords. If anybody knows anything about this, I'd appreciate the help.

Why do I ask?

Channel 4 News tonight ran a short feature on the Truth behind NHS's homeopathy budget in which it reveals that nearly �12million has been spent on homeopathy in the past three years. This is taxpayer's money.

The comparison between my proposed treatment and homeopathy isn't completely fair, I admit, because if I were to sell my magic air in a bottle, it would be for profit, whereas homeopathy on the NHS isn't (or is it... I'll come to that later). But as far as the efficacy of the treatment goes, and the plausibility of it working, the comparison is definitely valid.

Let's look at how homeopathy 'works':
1. In 1796 a German Physician by the name of Samuel Hahnemann put forth the idea of homeopathy. His 'theory' was that "like cures like". What that means is that if you are suffering from some particular symptoms, then you could use something that would produce similar symptoms to cure it. Lets say, for example, your eyes are continually watering. Onions make your eyes water. Therefore onion juice will cure your watery eyes. The fact that this makes absolutely no sense doesn't really matter, because we haven't even begun with the nonsense yet!
2. These examples of cures will only work if they are heavily diluted (apparently) so they dilute the onion juice in water. They have a special method for doing this: you take a drop of onion juice (or whatever substance produces symptoms similar to the ones you're suffering from) and drop it in a bottle of water. You then shake the water "ten times up and down and ten times side to side". You then take a tiny drop of this solution and drop it into another bottle of water and repeat the shaking process. You then take a drop of that solution and drop it into another bottle of water. Shake. Dilute again. Shake. Dilute again, etc, etc. Eventually, you have repeatedly diluted the solution so many times that by the time you get to the final solution, there is not a single molecule of onion juice mixed into it.
3. But if there's no onion juice in the final solution, how does it work? Well, because the water has a 'memory'. Each drop of water that you carry across to the next solution 'remembers' the onion juice.
4. You then drink the 'solution' (which, by this point, is not a solution at all, but pure water) and somehow it makes the symptoms disappear!

Only it doesn't make the symptoms disappear. Homeopathy has been tested again and again and again and again and it has been shown repeatedly to have no effect.

Peter Fisher (I refuse to call him "doctor") of the London Homeopathic hospital claims there is evidence supporting homeopathy. But his evidence has not stood up to the scrutiny that is demanded of all other types of medicine that the NHS provides. There is a clear double standard.

When you want to find out which research is credible, it's usually best to go for people who are doing research independantly, rather than people with a vested interest. If homeopathy funding is withdrawn, then Mr Fisher finds himself out of a job, so of course he's going to claim that it works. His claim to the efficacy of homeopathy is a bit like a turkey telling you that there is evidence that christmas is a bad idea. If you wanna know whether it really works, ask somebody with no vested interest either way who is genuinely seeking the truth. What do you find? No effect.

You may ask "what's the harm?"
Well aside from the example given in the link above, here are my main concerns over the harm done by homeopathy:
1. It takes people away from real treatment
If a person is sick and they need some serious treatment for their condition, homeopathy can be seen as a more attractive solution. Unlike chemotherapy, for example, there are no side effects (of course there are no side effects, you're drinking pure water). Each time a person goes for chemotherapy they come back feeling terrible. The treatment is tough and arduous and often painful, but it works. Not in 100% of cases, of course not, but the effects are significant and they help. After a homeopathic treatment, you don't feel more ill. In fact, the fact that you expect to feel better may actually affect your perception and make you believe you are feeling better. But as your illness progresses, the short term effect of feeling better soon fades away, and you have to go back for some more ineffective treatment. The longer this continues, the more the disease progresses and by the time you realise the treatment has failed and you decide to give the conventional medicine a go it may be too late.
2. The money could be put to better use
Perhaps one of the blessings in disguise of the recession is that there will need to be some budget cuts, and spending on useless treatments may soon come to an end. In the meantime, taxpayers are paying for people to go to get this "treatment".... at a cost of �170 per 'episode' of treatment, and a staggering �3,067 average cost per inpatient.
I've heard people say "but if it makes them feel better, then why not just let them do it?" Well a lot of things make people feel better, and it costs a lot less than �3,067. Heroin makes a junkie feel better, but is it really helping them? Chocolate makes me feel better, so should the NHS pay for it? (�3,067 would get me a LOT of chocolate! I'm beginning to like that idea). Perhaps one day "Retail Therapy" will be available on the NHS. "Here's some money, go buy yourself some new shoes." It'll make you feel better for a day or two, just like homeopathy, and then the effect will disappear again... just like homeopathy. The short point is that �12million is a lot for the tax payer to be spending on a few people wearing white coats and shaking up bottles of water when it doesn't do anything.
3. It encourages magical thinking
There's nothing really wrong with having a fantastical imagination. If you want to imagine a magical fantasy world then thats fine! Sometimes it can be nice to drift away into flights of fancy. But when that interferes with your perception of reality, it causes dangerous problems. You need to keep yourself grounded on more serious issues. Breathing in the air from my bottle won't cure your flu; acupuncture won't cure your back pain; homeopathy won't prevent malaria (yes, they really do claim this). You can imagine it could, that's fine, and if you want to pay for it out of your own pocket then knock yourself out! You can also imagine that magicians really do use magic to produce their effects. But if you actually believe that it will do anything, you are putting yourself in danger, and this is what the NHS needs to think about. They are putting a stamp of approval on something that simply doesn't work, and that puts credulous people in danger. So yes... the NHS is endangering peoples lives by using homeopathy.

One man interviewed by Channel 4 news said that if the NHS didn't provide the service, the people would go elsewhere and that when they come back to them even more sick, they are even more expensive to care for. If they stick with NHS homeopathy, at least they will be getting it alongside effective treatment. Providing a dishonest service may actually prove cost efficient. How do we "square that circle?"

BY MAKING THE FACTS KNOWN. By teaching people to think critically so that this kind of mumbo jumbo is never sought out in the first place. So often, education is put forward as the answer to all problems and that's becaus it really is. Educate people, starting young. Don't teach them what to think, teach them how to think. And then maybe we'll be in a bit less of a mess.



NOTE: It has been drawn to my attention that I've made a slight factual error in my description of how homeopathy works. Once the solution has been finalized you are NOT, in most cases, given the solution to drink. Instead, a drop of the "solution" is dropped onto a sugar pill and you are given the pill to eat... which only serves to further reduce the possibility of you getting any active ingredient.